Featured Articles

Comcast Gets Slapped, But the FCC Wisely Leaves its Options Open

August 07, 2008 05:26

The FCC’s recent Comcast action—whose full text is unavailable as yet, though it was described in a press release and statements from each comissioner—is a lesson in the importance of technological literacy for policymaking. The five commissioners’ views, as reflected in...

Piracy Statistics and the Importance of Journalistic Skepticism

October 09, 2008 13:45

If you've paid attention to copyright debates in recent years, you've probably seen advocates for more restrictive copyright laws claim that "counterfeiting and piracy" cost the US economy as much as $250 billion. When pressed, those who make these kinds of claims are inevitably vague about exactly...

Transit Card Maker Sues Dutch University to Block Paper

Edward W. Felten
July 15, 2008 12:11

NXP, which makes the Mifare transit cards used in several countries, has sued Radboud University Nijmegen (in the Netherlands), to block publication of a research paper, “A Practical Attack on the MIFARE Classic,” that is scheduled for publication at the ESORICS security conference in...

The Trouble with "Free Riding"

October 24, 2008 17:12

This week, one of my favorite podcasts, EconTalk, features one of my favorite Internet visionaries, Clay Shirky. I interviewed Shirky when his book came out back in April. The host, Russ Roberts, covered some of the same ground, but also explored some different topics, so it was an enjoyable...

Recent Articles

Yet again, why banking online .NE. voting online

July 06, 2011 17:32

One of the most common questions I get is “if I can bank online, why can’t I vote online”. A recently released (but undated) document ”Supplement to Authentication in an Internet Banking Environment” from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council addresses some of the risks of...

Supreme Court Takes Important GPS Tracking Case

June 27, 2011 19:06

This morning, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal next term of United States v. Jones (formerly United States v. Maynard), a case in which the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals suppressed evidence of a criminal defendant's travels around town, which the police collected using a tracking device...

What Gets Redacted in Pacer?

Timothy B. Lee
June 16, 2011 21:48

In my research on privacy problems in PACER, I spent a lot of time examining PACER documents. In addition to researching the problem of "bad" redactions, I was also interested in learning about the pattern of redactions generally. To this end, my software looked for two redaction styles. One is the...

Universities in Brazil are too closed to the world, and that's bad for innovation

June 15, 2011 19:18

When Brazilian president Dilma Roussef visited China in the beginning of May, she came back with some good news (maybe too good to be entirely true). Among them, the announcement that Foxconn, the largest maker of electronic components, will invest US$12 billion to open a large industrial plant in...

Deceptive Assurances of Privacy?

June 14, 2011 18:10

Earlier this week, Facebook expanded the roll-out of its facial recognition software to tag people in photos uploaded to the social networking site. Many observers and regulators responded with privacy concerns; EFF offered a video showing users how to opt-out. Tim O'Reilly, however, takes a...

New Research Result: Bubble Forms Not So Anonymous

June 08, 2011 04:27

Today, Joe Calandrino, Ed Felten and I are releasing a new result regarding the anonymity of fill-in-the-bubble forms. These forms, popular for their use with standardized tests, require respondents to select answer choices by filling in a corresponding bubble. Contradicting a widespread...