Judge Issues Lori Drew Opinion

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 [...]

Passwords and Post-Its

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 [...]

Judge Rescinds Lori Drew Conviction

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 [...]

Google, Encryption, and Security

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 [...]

Minnesota Backs Down

Minnesota’s Department of Public Safety has withdrawn its effort to compel the state’s ISPs to filter ~200 gambling Web sites, in the face of a lawsuit filed by iMEGA.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 [...]

Follow CFP 2009 Live

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, [...]

Cyber-Harassment

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 [...]

Disclosure as Deterrent

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 [...]

Like the Poor, Spam Is Always With Us

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: [...]

Virtual Property: Not

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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