I am thrilled to announce that I have been awarded an NSF EAGER (EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research) grant to pursue a research collaboration with Dr. Jessica Vitak (University of Maryland) and Drs. Jason Pridmore and Daniel Trottier (Erasmus University) on “Mapping…
Category: Personal Tech
Amazon Removes Books from Kindle, Exposing the True Concern: They’re Watching, They’re in Control
Amazon has remotely removed copies of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from user’s Kindles while crediting their accounts, indicating that the books were improperly added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have the rights to them. More than just an eBook reader, the Kindle represents the latest cog in Amazon's large-scale infrastructure of intellectual surveillance.
Quick links: Cellphone privacy
A couple of stories popped up on my radar this morning related to cellphone privacy: The New York Times has a story on advertisers increasingly collecting behavioral and locational data from consumers' cellphone activities: "Advertisers Get a Trove of Clues…
Sony Provides Complete Everquest 2 Server Logs to Researchers
One of my students pointed me to this post noting that Sony Online Entertainment has provided 4 years of server log data for their online game EverQuest 2 to researchers. From the Ars Technica story: With the cooperation of Sony,…
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“Is My Cellphone Spying on Me?” Eagle Eye DVD Commentary
Following up, the DVD for the hit action/thriller movie “Eagle Eye” has been released. The second disc of the 2-disc special edition includes the commentary "Is My Cellphone Spying on Me?", featuring reflections on technology and surveillance by the actors…
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“Should we be scared?”: Privacy & technology (WUWM “Lake Effect”)
I recently taped an interview with Milwaukee's public radio affiliate, WUWM, and it aired today. The topic was privacy and technology, focusing mostly on how to balance the speed and ubiquity of new technology, the conveniences they provide, and the…
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Commentary for the “Eagle Eye” DVD
UW-Milwaukee has issued a nice press release regarding my contribution to the DVD bonus material for the action/thriller movie “Eagle Eye,” which features sophisticated surveillance technologies as one of its plot devices. The closing paragraph pretty much sums up where…
Feds Sought Identities of Book Buyers; Amazon Resists
Recalling the (in)famous DOJ v Google matter, where Google resisted attempts by government to obtain thousands of user search queries, we learn today that federal prosecutors had sought the identities of thousands of people who bought used books from Amazon,…
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Is Apple Collecting Personally Identifiable iPhone Usage Data?
I recently bought an iPhone (my tech-porn for the year), and it has been a pleasurable experience (notwithstanding AT&T's poor coverage in much of my apartment). But I'm troubled by a rumor that has emerged claiming that "Apple is keeping…
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Google & Dell Taking Your Spelling Mistakes to the Bank
It wasn't so long ago that Google was complaining about Internet Explorer 7’s search box will ship with Microsoft’s MSN Search as the default search engine. I, like most commentators, quickly scolded Google for being hypocritical since they enjoy default…
Read More Google & Dell Taking Your Spelling Mistakes to the Bank
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