October 2010
11 posts
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New ACLU Report Calls On FCC To Take Action To... →
Protecting the Internet against content discrimination by broadband carriers is crucial to protecting First Amendment rights in the age of modern technology, the American Civil Liberties Union said today in a new report on network neutrality. In the report, “Net Neutrality 101,” the ACLU urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to create strong policies that prevent Internet...
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OkTrends Faces Off With Assumptions on Gay Sexual... →
OkCupid has done some great dating data mining for posts on their OkTrends blog, and some not-so-great. This week they posted Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex where they examine the widely-held cultural assumption that gay dudes will do anything to have sex with straight guys and that gay people inherently intend by their very nature to convert non-gays into being gay. They combed the habits of their...
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Cyber Fugue →
There is a desire by a constituency to promote solutions to problems that they are uniquely suited to solving. If asked about how to clean up air pollution a mechanic will likely tell you to tune up your car and make sure it is running as efficiently as possible. Ask an ethanol producer and they will tell you switching to their form of fuel will solve the air pollution problem. Neither is wrong,...
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Caught Spying on Student, FBI Demands GPS Tracker... →
A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do. It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the...
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Hacking the D.C. Internet Voting Pilot →
The District of Columbia is conducting a pilot project to allow overseas and military voters to download and return absentee ballots over the Internet. Before opening the system to real voters, D.C. has been holding a test period in which they’ve invited the public to evaluate the system’s security and usability. This is exactly the kind of open, public testing that many of us in the...
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Facebook Moves Closer to EFF Bill of Privacy... →
Today Facebook announced three new features that help move the social networking giant closer to satisfying EFF’s Bill of Privacy Rights for Social Networking. While EFF continues to have outstanding issues with Facebook, we greatly appreciate these important steps toward giving Facebook users more transparency and control when it comes to how the information they post to Facebook is...
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Stuxnet →
Computer security experts are often surprised at which stories get picked up by the mainstream media. Sometimes it makes no sense. Why this particular data breach, vulnerability, or worm and not others? Sometimes it’s obvious. In the case of Stuxnet, there’s a great story. As the story goes, the Stuxnet worm was designed and released by a government—the U.S. and Israel are the...
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Government Seeks Back Door Into All Our... →
The New York Times reported this morning on a Federal government plan to put government-mandated back doors in all communications systems, including all encryption software. The Times said the Obama administration is drafting a law that would impose a new “mandate” that all communications services be “able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages” — including...
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