Imagine a scientist reading a new research paper. The results seem important in the context of her obscure specialty. Routinely, she checks the citation for a key supporting result and discovers a paper she is not familiar with, from a researcher unknown to her. As she continues reading she begins…

The recent chaos on Twitter demonstrates a point I’ve been arguing in this blog, that major online platforms should support voluntary strong verification of legal identity, with proper modeling both of humans and non-human legal entities. I have also argued for the importance of archiving. For the benefit of posterity…

Upon rereading 1984, it’s interesting to contemplate the accuracy of Orwell’s vision. Orwell peered 35 years into the future to write 1984, and his vivid if sinister projections were clairvoyant, but in some cases overly pessimistic, and in others not pessimistic enough. Orwell‘’s vision of mass surveillance is the dominant…

A review of Peter Pomerantsev’s “This Is Not Propaganda” I finished Pomerantsev’s latest book This Is Not Propaganda (2020) about a week ago and here are the parts that stuck with me: Pomerantsev makes an interesting connection between interrogation techniques used during torture sessions by Soviet/Russian interrogators, and the patterns of harassment that are used to attack people like journalists and activists online.

Reflections upon my arrival at DFRLab 360/Open Summit in Brussels. Modern democracy is on the ropes. Every major election seems like a trial of the resilience of society against dishonesty and disinformation. Narratives of voter fraud in the United States and of Ukraine’s fascist leaders on Russian state TV demonstrate…

A belated congratulations on the publication of her first novel

Seek and Hide by Amy Gajda is a must-read for privacy and anti-abuse professionals. Between public outrage over digital data, the courtroom drama of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, and Elon Musk’s ranting tweets about the bots on Twitter, America is experiencing a dramatic evolution in the balance between privacy…

Content moderation alone will not fix the misinformation problem Censorship is experiencing a revival in America. In state legislatures and school boards across the land, citizens are embracing their contempt for ideas they consider objectionable, expressing their rage by exercising the well-worn path to censorship. They are identifying the books…

Imagining a world with no personally identifiable information. Automobile registration is a significant intrusion on personal privacy, with significant harms, both real and potential. The numbers displayed publicly on state-issued license plates make it possible to track the movements of specific vehicles and their operators. They can be used to…