Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans
This is not the dystopia we were promised. We are not learning to love Big Brother, who lives, if he lives at all, on a cluster of server farms, cooled by envir…
Publication
Now we can cheaply sequence DNA, how do we store all that data?
In 2003, the international consortium of scientists working on the Human Genome Project completed the final first draft for the human genome - a DNA blueprint f…
Website operators are in the dark about privacy violations by third-party scripts
by Steven Englehardt, Gunes Acar, and Arvind Narayanan. Recently we revealed that “session replay” scripts on websites record everything you do, like someone l…
EFF to Court: Don’t Let Trolls Get Away With Asserting Stupid Software Patents
If trolls don’t face consequences for asserting invalid software patents, then they will continue to shake down productive companies. That is why EFF has filed…
Judicial Nominee Howard C. Nielson’s Own Torture Memo
UPDATED 1/4: A number of President Trump’s judicial nominations have collapsed in recent days after the candidates’ utter lack of qualifications was revealed,…
Here’s how Google is helping, not hurting, democracy
Sean Richey and J. Benjamin Taylor have a new book on how Google searches affect democratic knowledge, “Google and Democracy: Politics and the Power of the Inte…
Three Questions on the WannaCry Attribution to North Korea
The Trump Administration this week formally accused the North Korean government of responsibility for the WannaCry ransomware attacks that hobbled hundreds of t…
The benefits of police body cams are a myth
In the three years since Michael Brown’s fatal shooting in Ferguson, police body-worn cameras have been sold to the public as a tool that would primarily deter…
How Facebook Stymies Social Science
What exactly was the extent of Russian meddling in the 2016 election campaign? How widespread was its infiltration of social media? And how much influence did i…
Clerkships are invaluable for young lawyers. They can also be a setup for abuse.
Last week, The Washington Post reported that six women, all former law clerks and legal externs, have accused federal appeals court Judge Alex Kozinski of “inap…
Law, Borders, and Speech Conference: Proceedings and Materials
Law, Borders, and Speech Conference Tensions between national law and the Internet’s global architecture have existed since the network’s earliest days. They t…
Expect Fewer Great Startups if the FCC Kills Net Neutrality
Instead of listening to the thousand of startups and investors who argue that ending net neutrality would damage online innovation, FCC chair Ajit Pai is pushin…