The Portland Press Herald published an editorial that deserves broader distribution and discussion: The website Politico — which covers politics, naturally enough — reported this week about an escalation in “opposition research” that should concern Americans of all political persuasions. For those who aren’t familiar with what campaign strategists call “oppo,” it usually involves researching…
Category: Misc
Programming Note
I’ll be offline until Monday, traveling with some friends. Blogging will resume Monday. Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their week!
Protecting privacy by adding noise
Fascinating piece by FTC technologist Ed Felten that I just got around to reading: When I wrote previously about differential privacy, a mathematical framework that allows rigorous reasoning about privacy preservation, I promised to work through an example to show how the theory works. Here goes. Suppose that Alice has access to a detailed database about everyone…
Facial recognition software’s privacy concerns
James Temple writes that facial recognition technology has outpaced policy on its use: There are obviously useful applications, like automatically tagging your buddies in a social-network photo or – on an entirely different scale – recognizing known terrorists at airports. But there are frightening ones as well: allowing authoritarian states to identify peaceful protesters, enabling…