Posted on September 2nd, 2009 by William McGeveran
This isn’t exactly fast-breaking news, but since I wrote a long post last year about the Lori Drew case and then noted the judge’s decision to rescind her conviction, I wanted to point out that the judge has now issued a written opinion explaining his reasoning. Eric Goldman has some cogent analysis. Like [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Computer crime, Court Decisions, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Social Networking, Virtual Worlds
Posted on July 14th, 2009 by Derek Bambauer
Bruce Schneier links to a paper from HotSec that argues strong passwords accomplish little; instead, stronger user IDs and limits on log-in attempts are better solutions. (Implicit in this argument is that dictionary or guessing attacks are lower-priority threats than phishing or keyloggers.) And John Kelly of the Washington Post bemoans the standard yet brain-dead [...]
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Filed under: Computer crime, Encryption, Internet & Society, Scholarship, Security, Software
Posted on July 2nd, 2009 by William McGeveran
A federal judge has set aside last fall’s convictions of Lori Drew on misdemeanor criminal charges arising from the cyberbullying and resulting suicide of Missouri teenager Megan Meier. Given the awful consequences of the nasty hoax against Meier, it is hard to exactly celebrate. But I did sign an amicus brief arguing that the prosecution [...]
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Filed under: Computer crime, Court Decisions, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Privacy, Social Networking, Virtual Worlds
Posted on June 16th, 2009 by Derek Bambauer
The Washington Post covers a letter by security researchers and academics urging Google to adopt encryption (HTTPS) as the default for all of its services. (Disclosure: I signed the letter.) The letter makes the case convincingly:
Google uses industry-standard Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) encryption technology to protect customers’ login information. However, encryption is not enabled [...]
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Filed under: Computer crime, Digital Media, Encryption, ISP, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Law School, Media, Privacy, Security, badware
Posted on June 9th, 2009 by Derek Bambauer
Minnesota’s Department of Public Safety has withdrawn its effort to compel the state’s ISPs to filter ~200 gambling Web sites, in the face of a lawsuit filed by iMEGA. State officials are maintaining a brave (poker) face, along with some bad analogies – they claim not to have “folded their hand.” John Willems – the [...]
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Filed under: Computer crime, Court Decisions, Digital Media, First Amendment, ISP, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Media, Minnesota, civil procedure
Posted on June 2nd, 2009 by Derek Bambauer
You can follow along with Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2009 (”Creating the Future”) even if you’re not here in DC (where the weather is surprisingly lovely for June): via Twitter at Tweezup, the CFP blog, and streaming video. The Filtering panel, which also now includes Catherine Crump from the ACLU and Nicole Wong from Google, [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Computer crime, Digital Media, Filtering, First Amendment, ISP, Internet & Society, Media, Privacy, Scholarship, Search Engines, Social Networking, Video, international
Posted on June 2nd, 2009 by Derek Bambauer
Bronxnet has a video up of a show on cyber-harassment where I get to talk about the topic. (No, I did not give a “how-to” tutorial. I charge for that sort of thing.) This has become a vexing issue legally, from the Megan Meier / Lori Drew tragedy to the AutoAdmit case. I’d love your [...]
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Filed under: Anonymity, Computer crime, Court Decisions, Digital Media, First Amendment, Internet & Society, Media, Privacy, Social Networking, Video
Posted on January 20th, 2009 by William McGeveran
Perhaps lost amidst some other minor news today, we learn of possibly one of the largest data breaches ever. According to the Security Fix blog on the Washington Post, a large payment processor called Heartland Payment Systems was infiltrated by a piece of malicious software:
Heartland does not know how long the malicious software was [...]
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Filed under: Computer crime, Privacy, Security, badware
Posted on December 18th, 2008 by Derek Bambauer
Network World has an interesting article called “CAN-SPAM: What Went Wrong?” This title is akin to: “Subprime Mortgages: A Bad Idea?” There are three depressing trends: spam remains a huge problem, both in IT costs and in volume; legal efforts have been mostly useless; and experts still disagree about solutions. There are two interesting ones: [...]
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Filed under: Computer crime, Filtering, ISP, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Microsoft, Security, Software, Spam, badware
Posted on December 2nd, 2008 by Derek Bambauer
Wired has an article on the trade in virtual world items – armor, swords, ninja monkeys, etc. – that takes place using real-world currency. (It tracks the rise and fall of former child actor Brock Pierce and his startup, Internet Gaming Entertainment. You can also find a how-to outlining the virtual gold trade.) The article [...]
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Filed under: Cognitive Decisionmaking, Computer crime, Digital Media, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Media, Scholarship, Software, Virtual Worlds