http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/sealand-and-havenco.ars A data haven is "the information equivalent to a tax haven," a country that helps you evade other countries' rules on what you can and can't do with your bits. (Think "Swiss banking" for data.) The best-known example comes from Neal Stephenson's 1999 best-seller Cryptonomicon, whose heroes go up against murderous warlords, rapacious venture capitalists, and epic authorial digressions in their quest to bring untraceable communications to the masses and get rich in the process. ]]> Thu, 29 Mar 2012 06:46:28 -0700 http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/sealand-and-havenco.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/sealand-and-havenco.ars A data haven is "the information equivalent to a tax haven," a country that helps you evade other countries' rules on what you can and can't do with your bits. (Think "Swiss banking" for data.) The best-known example comes from Neal Stephenson's 1999 best-seller Cryptonomicon, whose heroes go up against murderous warlords, rapacious venture capitalists, and epic authorial digressions in their quest to bring untraceable communications to the masses and get rich in the process. ]]> Wed, 28 Mar 2012 03:42:27 -0700 http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/sealand-and-havenco.ars http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/28/2753951/computer-viruses-infect-worms-frankenmalware?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter/computer-viruses-infecting-worms-to-create-hybrid-frankenmalware-says-bitdefender-the-verge IT'S ALIVE! Computer viruses begin infecting worms to create 'Frankenmalware' http://t.co/jlDkGP7t #hybrids ]]> Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:36:02 -0700 http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/28/2753951/computer-viruses-infect-worms-frankenmalware?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter/computer-viruses-infecting-worms-to-create-hybrid-frankenmalware-says-bitdefender-the-verge http://articles.boston.com/2011-05-22/bostonglobe/29571858_1_data-privacy-public-health Who owns the data in that cloud has been the subject of ferocious debate. It’s not all stored in one place, of course — our lives are tracked and documented by a diffuse assortment of entities that includes private companies like Google and Visa, as well as governmental agencies like the IRS, the Department of Education, and the Census Bureau. Up to now, the public conversation on this kind of data has taken the form of an argument about privacy rights, with legal scholars, computer scientists, and others arguing for tighter restrictions on how our data is used by companies… ]]> Mon, 30 May 2011 15:11:01 -0700 http://articles.boston.com/2011-05-22/bostonglobe/29571858_1_data-privacy-public-health http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html When historians of the future look back on the perils of the early digital age, Stacy Snyder may well be an icon. The problem she faced is only one example of a challenge that, in big and small ways, is confronting millions of people around the globe: how best to live our lives in a world where the Internet records everything and forgets nothing — where every online photo, status update, Twitter post and blog entry by and about us can be stored forever. With Web sites like LOL Facebook Moments, which collects and shares embarrassing personal revelations from Facebook… ]]> Sun, 25 Jul 2010 07:15:00 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html http://bostonreview.net/BR35.3/morozov.php In 2006 Stacy Snyder, a 25-year-old student at Millersville University in Pennsylvania, was denied a teaching degree just days before graduation. University officials had discovered a photo of her, captioned “Drunken Pirate,” on MySpace. The photo showed Snyder wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup, and the university accused her of promoting underage drinking. As Viktor Mayer-Schönberger tells the story in his new book Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, Snyder lost control over the photo when it was indexed by Google and other search engines: “the Internet remembered what Stacy wanted to have… ]]> Sun, 13 Jun 2010 23:59:00 -0700 http://bostonreview.net/BR35.3/morozov.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message, a form of security through obscurity. The word steganography is of Greek origin and means "concealed writing" from the Greek words steganos (στεγανός) meaning "covered or protected", and graphein (γράφειν) meaning "to write". The first recorded use of the term was in 1499 by Johannes Trithemius in his Steganographia, a treatise on cryptography and steganography disguised as a book on magic. Generally, messages will appear to be something else: images,… ]]> Thu, 22 Apr 2010 02:50:03 -0700 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/26/dark-side-internet-freenet In the 'deep web', Freenet software allows users complete anonymity as they share viruses, criminal contacts and child pornography. The modern internet is often thought of as a miracle of openness – its global reach, its outflanking of censors, its seemingly all-seeing search engines. "Many many users think that when they search on Google they're getting all the web pages," says Anand Rajaraman, co-founder of Kosmix, one of a new generation of post-Google search engine companies. But Rajaraman knows different. "I think it's a very small fraction of the deep web which search engines are bringing to the surface. I… ]]> Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:14:00 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/26/dark-side-internet-freenet