Blog
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The EARN IT Act Is Back, and It’s More Dangerous Than Ever
This is the latest entry in my lengthy archive of writing, talks, and interviews about the EARN IT Act: * Blog posts at the CIS blog: part 1, part 2, part 3,…
Electronic Surveillance
Blog
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"Tool Without a Handle: Tools for Vigilantes"
“This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do…
Blog
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I Have a Lot to Say About Signal’s Cellebrite Hack
This blog post is based off of a talk I gave on May 12, 2021 at the Stanford Computer Science Department’s weekly lunch talk series on computer security topics.…
TILT 2021 | Day One | Deepfakes in the Courtroom: A New Evidentiary Challenge
TILT 2021 | Day One | Deepfakes in the Courtroom: A New Evidentiary Challenge Riana Pfefferkorn - Research Scholar, Stanford Internet Observatory…
Blog
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When You Hack Phones on the Fly, but Won’t Confirm or Deny, That’s a Glomar!
In late December, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), challenging the FBI’s “Glomar” re…
Blog
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What Will 2021 Hold for Tech Policy?
Out of the 7.5 billion people on Earth, I’m guessing that approximately zero percent will be sad to see this benighted year come to an end. Looking back is too…
Press
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The Supreme Court Will Hear Its First Big CFAA Case
“The Supreme Court’s opinion in this case could decide whether millions of ordinary Americans are committing a federal crime whenever they engage in computer ac…
Press
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Deep-Dive Discussion about Cybersecurity with Riana Pfefferkorn
Riana Pfefferkorn is the Associate Director of Surveillance and Cybersecurity at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Riana’s work focuses on investiga…
The FTC Zoom Case: Does the FTC Need a New Approach?
It was inevitable. On Monday, Zoom joined an exclusive club of tech companies – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Microsoft, Google, Uber, Snap, and more. This club…
Press
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The Police Can Probably Break Into Your Phone
Phone-hacking tools “have served as a kind of a safety valve for the encryption debate,” said Riana Pfefferkorn, a Stanford University researcher who studies en…
Blog
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House Introduces EARN IT Act Companion Bill, Somehow Manages to Make It Even Worse
On September 30, Representatives Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) and Ann Wagner (R-MO) introduced the House version of the EARN IT Act (H.R.8454), which had previously bee…
Deepfake Dallas
Is your voice your own? Maybe not anymore. Using artificial intelligence, someone can make an algorithm that sounds just like you. And then they can say... what…