Looking back at 2016, A Status Check on Government Hacking
Last year, the ongoing encryption debate took a backseat to a steady drip of stories and developments related to government hackings. This set the stage for a s…
Publication
Follow Buddies and Block Buddies: A Simple Proposal to Improve Civility, Control, and Privacy on Twitter
The 2016 election has put squarely on the public agenda a series of questions related to the norms of social media, everything from the proliferation of fake ne…
Op-ed: Five unexpected lessons from the Ashley Madison breach
On December 14, 2016, the Federal Trade Commission settled a complaint with the company running the adult finder site Ashley Madison over the 2015 data breach t…
White House Retaliation for Russian Hacking
This afternoon the White House announced several actions against Russia in retaliation for Russian interference in the U.S. election. Key among them is the use…
Uber must follow California’s laws
Uber is testing its self-proclaimed “self-driving” vehicles on California roads without complying with the testing requirements of California’s automated drivin…
Wrongful Arrest by Software
Managing information is central to the criminal justice system, and so it’s inevitable that mistakes happen. Names get confused, files lost. When these errors o…
Thomas Schelling has died. His ideas shaped the Cold War and the world.
The University of Maryland has confirmed the death of Thomas Schelling, perhaps the most important economist and social scientist of his generation. Most social…
Why it's dangerous to outsource our critical thinking to computers
The lack of transparency around the processes of Google’s search engine has been a preoccupation among scholars since the company began. Long before Google expa…
The Economic Incentives for International Cybersecurity Coordination
On Friday, the President’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity published its final report, making 16 recommendations and identifying 53 action items…
Memo to President Obama: You Have Another Memo to Withdraw
The election of Donald Trump has triggered an anxious conversation about how President Obama can entrench some of his accomplishments before January 21, 2017.…
Law school administrators would like al-Qaeda to go after U.S. News & World Report. This is why.
Wendy Nelson Espeland and Michael Sauder’s new book, “Engines of Anxiety,” explains how law schools try to game the U.S. News & World Report’s academic rank…
Facebook Must Stay Out of China
Andrew McLaughlin, technology executive: Though it has been evident for years that Mark Zuckerberg really, really wants Facebook to operate in China, I’m genui…