The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School is a leader in the study of the law and policy around the Internet and other emerging technologies.
The annals of science fiction are full of visions of the future. Some are techno-utopian like “Star Trek” in which humanity has joined together in peace to explore the cosmos. Others are dystopian, like the World State in “Brave New World.” But many of these stories share one thing in common – they envision a time in which humanity has moved past narrow ideas of tribe and nationalism. That assumption might be wrong.
Since the dawn of the Internet, American regulators and companies have pursued two goals to protect our privacy: that people should be in control of their data and that companies should be transparent about what they do with our data. We can see these goals detailed in the privacy policies and terms of service that we “agree” to as well as companies’ increasingly complicated systems of privacy dashboards, permissions and sharing controls.
Over the past few days, Britain has entered into a major political crisis. Negotiators for the Conservative Party government made a deal with European Union negotiators over the Brexit process. However, the deal was unacceptable to the Democratic Unionist Party, which the government relies on for support, as well as to the Labour Party and many members of the Conservative Party. Now rebel Conservatives have gathered the necessary votes to challenge the leadership of Prime Minister Theresa May. How did this happen, and what happens next?
The United States, like other countries, frequently uses the tactic of hostage taking in trade disputes. When it imposes punitive tariffs against another country, it very often targets politically sensitive products to put more pressure on the government. At the World Trade Organization, it is refusing to agree to the appointment of new judges, to try to force other WTO members to accede to its demands.
n 2017, Rudolph W. Giuliani was named as a cybersecurity adviser to President Trump. This was widely seen as a consolation prize. Giuliani had been in charge of a cybersecurity firm but had reportedly wanted to become secretary of state. More recently Giuliani has come to play a central part in Trump’s legal team, and has also acted as a public advocate battling on behalf of Trump across a wide variety of media.
Suzanne Mettler is the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions in the department of government at Cornell University. She is also the author of a new book, “The Government-Citizen Disconnect,” which argues that citizens are often unaware of the benefits they receive from the government. I spoke to her about her arguments.
Letter to Australia's Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) regarding a proposed "compromise" version of the Assistance and Access Bill.
On November 4, 2016, the hacker “Guccifer 2.0,” a front for Russia’s military intelligence service, claimed in a blogpost that the Democrats were likely to use vulnerabilities to hack the presidential elections. On November 9, 2018, President Donald Trump started tweeting about the senatorial elections in Florida and Arizona.
Democracy is an information system.
That's the starting place of our new paper: “Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy.” In it, we look at democracy through the lens of information security, trying to understand the current waves of Internet disinformation attacks. Specifically, we wanted to explain why the same disinformation campaigns that act as a stabilizing influence in Russia are destabilizing in the United States.
