Collaborate Disseminate
Good debate in the Wall Street Journal. This isn’t an obvious one; there are good arguments on both sides…. Continue reading Should You Be Allowed to Prevent Drones from Flying Over Your Property?
Lawfare is turning out to be the go-to blog for policy wonks about various government debates on cybersecurity. There are two good posts this week on the Going Dark debate. The first is from those of us who wrote the "Keys Under Doormats" paper last year, criticizing the concept of backdoors and key escrow. We were responding to a half-baked… Continue reading More on the Going Dark Debate
It’s a known truth that most Android vulnerabilities don’t get patched. It’s not Google’s fault. It releases the patches, but the phone carriers don’t push them down to their smartphone users. Now the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are investigating, sending letters to major carriers and device makers. I think this is a good thing. This is… Continue reading FTC Investigating Android Patching Practices
Two excellent posts. It’s such a badly written bill that I wonder if it’s just there to anchor us to an extreme, so we’re relieved when the actual bill comes along. Me: "This is the most braindead piece of legislation I’ve ever seen," Schneier — who has just been appointed a Fellow of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard… Continue reading Julian Sanchez on the Feinstein-Burr Bill
I’m writing a book on security in the highly connected Internet-of-Things World. Tentative title: Click Here to Kill Everybody Peril and Promise in a Hyper-Connected World There are two underlying metaphors in the book. The first is what I have called the World-Sized Web, which is that combination of mobile, cloud, persistence, personalization, agents, cyber-physical systems, and the Internet of… Continue reading I’m Writing a Book on Security
Dilbert has a series: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. SMBC. And three more that make it clear this is a security vs. surveillance debate. Also this…. Continue reading Encryption Backdoor Cartoons
Monday is Tax Day. Many of us are thinking about our taxes. Are they too high or too low? What’s our money being spent on? Do we have a government worth paying for? I’m not here to answer any of those questions — I’m here to give you something else to think about. In addition to sending the IRS your… Continue reading IRS Security
Reddit has received a National Security Letter. I have long discounted warrant canaries. A gag order is serious, and this sort of high-school trick won’t fool judges for a minute. But so far they seem to be working. Now we have another question: now what? We have one piece of information, but not a very useful one. We know that… Continue reading Reddit’s Warrant Canary Just Died
Here’s a 1,300-page Congressional report on "surveillance technology" from 1976…. Continue reading A 1976 Congressional Report on Surveillance
On Monday, the FBI asked the court for a two-week delay in a scheduled hearing on the San Bernardino iPhone case, because some "third party" approached it with a way into the phone. It wanted time to test this access method. Who approached the FBI? We have no idea. I have avoided speculation because the story makes no sense. Why… Continue reading FBI vs. Apple: Who Is Helping the FBI?