How could I resist posting an item the title, The paranoid computer user’s guide to privacy, security and encryption? I’m not presenting it as an endorsement of any content or recommendations, but for your consideration. The guide to safer computing was prepared by the staff of the Globe and Mail in Canada.
Category: Misc
Encryption as protest
A really thought-provoking post by Arvind Narayan on Freedom to Tinker begins: As a computer scientist who studies Privacy-Enhancing Technologies, I remember my surprise when I first learned that some groups of people view and use them very differently than I’m used to. In computer science, PETs are used for protecting anonymity or confidentiality, often via…
ICANN suppresses a privacy advocate’s dissent
The Internet Governance Project (IGP) writes: ICANN’s Expert Working Group (EWG) on Whois and privacy, which published its final report today, has unfortunately continued a long tradition of failing to find consensus between privacy advocates and business interests. The business interests see coerced publication of domain name registration data as an invaluable aid to brand protection and law enforcement,…
Hoofnagle & Urban Reexamine Alan Westin’s Privacy Classifications of Consumers
Via Public Citizen: Chris Jay Hoofnagle and Jennifer M. Urban, both of Berkeley, have written Alan Westin’s Privacy Homo Economicus, 49 Wake Forest Law Review 261 (2014). Here’s the abstract: Homo economicus reliably makes an appearance in regulatory debates concerning information privacy. Under the still-dominant U.S. “notice and choice” approach to consumer information privacy, the rational…