WiredNews reports on the growing desire by governments to use RFID tags to help identify (and track?) automobiles on the public roads: The British government is preparing to test new high-tech license plates containing microchips capable of transmitting unique vehicle…
Category: Platforms
Through the Google Goggles: Sociopolitical Bias in Search Engine Design
Alejandro Diaz, a grad student at Stanford University in Communications (with a BA in Computer Science), has written an excellent (and nearly 200-page) honors thesis entitled "Through the Google Goggles: The Sociopolitics of Search Engine Design" [pdf]. Here is the…
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Popular Science on Vehicle Safety Communication Technologies
Popular Science features an article on "The Future of the Car: Behold the All-Seeing, Self-Parking, Safety-Enforcing, Networked Automobile" where one of the emerging technologies discussed is Vehicle Safety Communication technology:The next giant leap in sensing will be radio networking that…
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Academia’s quest for the ultimate search tool
CNET reports that the University of California at Berkeley is creating an interdisciplinary center for advanced search technologies in search of creating the "ultimate search tool" and to "address the explosive growth of Internet search and the complex issues that…
Google as Library or Neutral Source of Information? Perhaps neither…
Siva Vaidhyanathan has been engaged in a lengthy discussion regarding Google's recent decision to slow down their Google Print Library project. Much of the conversations have centered on whether Google should be considered a library. This response from Eileen Snyder,…
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Public Surveillence via Cellphone
Bruce Schneier points to this Wired piece on an MIT student's research project where he handed out specially-equipped cellphones as a way to document the lives of students and employees of MIT. From the article: Eagle's Reality Mining project logged…
Is Your Printer Spying On You?
[from the EFF]Imagine that every time you printed a document, it automatically included a secret code that could be used to identify the printer -- and potentially, the person who used it. Sounds like something from an episode of "Alias,"…
Papers on Privacy and Vehicle Safety Communication Technologies
I am on my way to The Netherlands to particpate in two exciting conferences. I will be presenting my paper "Surveillance, Privacy and the Ethics of Vehicle Safety Communication Technologies" [PDF] at the International Conference of Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry.…
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Designing a New Internet with a New Architecture
Wired News reports that David Clark is beginning work (within academia and with the help of the NSF) on a new "clean slate" internet architecture:Clark, who served as chief protocol architect for the government's internet development initiative in the 1980s,…
Privacy Norms in the Blogosphere
Daniel Solove (guest blogging at Balkinization) writes about privacy norms in the blogosphere, citing a case where a Korean woman who didn't clean up her dog's waste was subject to highly critical and invase online treatment. As one blogger described…
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