Tag: transparency
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A Peek at A/B Testing in the Wild
[Dillon Reisman was previously an undergraduate at Princeton when he worked on a neat study of the surveillance implications of cookies. Now he’s working with the WebTAP project again in a research + engineering role. — Arvind Narayanan] In 2014, Facebook revealed that they had manipulated users’ news feeds for the sake of a psychology study…
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Why Making Johnny's Key Management Transparent is So Challenging
In light of the ongoing debate about the importance of using end-to-end encryption to protect our data and communications, several tech companies have announced plans to increase the encryption in their services. However, this isn’t a new pledge: since 2014, Google and Yahoo have been working on a browser plugin to facilitate sending encrypted emails…
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Apple, FBI, and Software Transparency
The Apple versus FBI showdown has quickly become a crucial flashpoint of the “new Crypto War.” On February 16 the FBI invoked the All Writs Act of 1789, a catch-all authority for assistance of law enforcement, demanding that Apple create a custom version of its iOS to help the FBI decrypt an iPhone used by one of the San…
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Free Law Project Partnering in Stewardship of RECAP
More than five years ago, I spoke at CITP about the US Federal Courts electronic access system called PACER. I noted that despite centuries of precedent stating that the public should have access to the law as openly and freely as possible, the courts were charging unreasonable rates for access to the public record. As…
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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 request, the onus is on you to look for a backdoor. What you want is software transparency. Transparency of this type is a much-touted advantage…
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Open Internet Advisory Committee kick-off
Last Friday, we had the first meeting of the Open Internet Advisory Committee (OIAC), called for by the FCC in the recent Open Internet Order. The members of the OIAC consist of a mix of folks from venture capital firms, ISPs, governance organizations, community organizations, and academics like myself. The OIAC’s mission is to “track and evaluate…
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The Engine of Job Growth? Tracking SBA-backed Loans Through Recovery.gov
Last week at a Town Hall Meeting in New Hampshire, President Obama stated that “we’re going to start where most new jobs start—with small businesses,” and he encouraged Congress to transfer $30 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to a new program called the Small Business Lending Fund. As this proposal was unveiled, the…