Studying Cyberwar

The Washington Post has a great piece about the InfoWar Monitor project, including interviews with my former ONI colleagues Ron Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski. Cyberwar is a new, murky, and fascinating zone of interstate conflict. Most interestingly, it’s one where combat is outsourced: hackers and denial of service attacks can come from volunteers and on-line [...]

AT&T: Safe, But Mocked

Works in more places… I suppose the fake place name would be NSFrancisPying. (Hat tip to an anonymous friend!)
The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the Sixth Circuit’s ruling that the plaintiffs in the NSA suit here in Michigan lacked standing. The hard part, of course, is it’s extremely difficult to prove standing [...]

U.S. Intelligence Eyes Second Life

Robert O’Harrow, a Washington Post reporter who is very insightful and current in his coverage of data privacy (and author of a good book on it too), today chronicles the inevitable first stirrings of government fear about virtual worlds such as Second Life:
Intelligence officials who have examined these systems say they’re convinced that the qualities [...]

Underwater Fun with Overhead Imagery

There’s significant furor over a photograph (found by Dan Twohig of MonsterMaritime) of an Ohio-class missile sub that shows the boat’s “stealth” propeller (designed to generate minimal noise and hence evade detection). The photo appears on Microsoft’s Live Local (run using Virtual Earth) service (a Google Earth competitor), though credit goes to Pictometry, which uses [...]

The Brady Law, Privacy, and the Bat-Computer

Sorry for my blogging absence — I am grading. (It would be easier if I used this technique, but I don’t.)
I’ve wanted for a while to post something about proposals to improve the database used to conduct background checks for gun purchases under the Brady Law. Last month’s tragic shootings at Virginia Tech demonstrated [...]

“John Doe” Speaks Out Against NSL Gag Orders

The Washington Post has published a powerful op-ed piece by the anonymous recipient of one of the FBI’s national security letters, who is prohibited by law from disclosing even the fact that he received one. National security letters (or “NSLs”) are the demands for information, issued without any requirement of judicial approval, that were [...]

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