Google has posted the brief they submitted to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus justifying their participation in Chinese censorship of information. The argument basically boils down to "providing Chinese access to filtered information is better than no information." Another nugget…
Category: Issues
Public Comments on RFID Passports are…Public
The government's plans to institute passports with RFID chips were open for public comment since last February. The public feedback was overwhelmingly negative, noting concerns over both security and privacy. In an odd bit of irony, most of the public…
More on Search Engine IP Logging
John Battelle did some digging for a reader who wondered whether Google (and search engines in general) could easily match search terms with IP addresses, and vice versa. Here are the questions Battelle bounced off his contacts at Google:"Given a…
In Support of Google
Some arguments in support of Google's participation in Chinese censorship: From Google itself, arguing that service for Chinese users will be better overall, and that some information is better than no information at all:Google users in China today struggle with…
Google’s Action Makes A Mockery Of Its Values
Bambi Francisco writes that Google's recent decision to officially censor search results in China violates its core values:It's profound what being a public company can do to the core values of a young firm. was less than two years ago…
Love/Hate relationship with RFID
This Doctor Fun cartoon does a good job depicting our culture's love/hate relationship with RFID tags. Reminds me of that Spanish nightclub offering to implant RFID tags in patrons' wrists so they don't have to be bothered with carrying wallets…
Why IP Address Logging is a Big Deal
Adam Fields has an excellent post discussing why you should be concerned about the fact that your IP address can (and likely is) being tracked by online companies, such as Google. This is such an important topic, I will provide…
Google Updates Censorship Policy
Google's official policy on censoring and otherwise altering search results has been updated since their decision to provide censored results for China. The policy can be found at the help page for the question "Does Google censor search results?" The…
Spyware Workshop, March 16-17
Helen Nissenbaum (NYU; my dissertation chair) and Ed Felton (Princeton) are co-organizing an interdisciplinary Workshop on Spyware at NYU on March 16-17. The lineup of speakers reflects a range of viewpoints on technical, legal, and policy aspects of the spyware…
Irony via e-mail
I recently received an e-mail from a reader of this site saying "Privacy is gone. Thank you for your efforts to preserve it." Kind words, and I thanked the writer. However, the writer's e-mail "signature" included the his/her full name,…
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