CITP Blog is hosted by Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, a research center that studies digital technologies in public life. Here you’ll find comment and analysis from the digital frontier, written by the Center’s faculty, students, and friends.
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The saga of Lavabit, the now-closed “secure” mail provider, is an interesting object of study. They’re in the process of appealing a court order to produce their SSL private keys,…
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The Linux Backdoor Attempt of 2003
Josh wrote recently about a serious security bug that appeared in Debian Linux back in 2006, and whether it was really a backdoor inserted by the NSA. (He concluded that…
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A Start-Up Born at CITP
As is probably the case with many start-ups, Gloobe was born late at night. Early in 2013, on the night of a snowstorm in Princeton, I presented at the student-led…
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Silk Road, Lavabit, and the Limits of Crypto
Yesterday we saw two stories that illustrate the limits of cryptography as a shield against government. In San Francisco, police arrested a man alleged to be Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR),…
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Senate Judiciary Testimony: FISA Oversight
I testified today at a Senate Judiciary committee hearing on Oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Here is the written testimony I submitted.
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The Debian OpenSSL Bug: Backdoor or Security Accident?
On Monday, Ed wrote about Software Transparency, the idea that software is more resistant to intentional backdoors (and unintentional security vulnerabilities) if the process used to create it is transparent.…
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Software Transparency
Thanks to the recent NSA leaks, people are more worried than ever that their software might have backdoors. If you don’t believe that the software vendor can resist a backdoor…
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Is the NSA keeping your encrypted traffic forever?
Much has been written recently about the NSA’s program to systematically defeat the encryption methods used on the internet and in other communications technologies – Project Bullrun, in the parlance…
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On Security Backdoors
I wrote Monday about revelations that the NSA might have been inserting backdoors into security standards. Today I want to talk through two cases where the NSA has been accused…