I testified today at a Senate Judiciary committee hearing on Oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Here is the written testimony I submitted.
Software Transparency
September 16, 2013 by
Thanks to the recent NSA leaks, people are more worried than ever that their software might have backdoors. If you don’t believe that the software vendor can resist a backdoor request, the onus is on you to look for a backdoor. What you want is software transparency. Transparency of this type is a much-touted advantage […]
On Security Backdoors
September 11, 2013 by
I wrote Monday about revelations that the NSA might have been inserting backdoors into security standards. Today I want to talk through two cases where the NSA has been accused of backdooring standards, and use these cases to differentiate between two types of backdoors.
NSA Apparently Undermining Standards, Security, Confidence
September 9, 2013 by
The big NSA revelation of last week was that the agency’s multifaceted strategy to read encrypted Internet traffic is generally successful. The story, from the New York Times and ProPublica, described NSA strategies ranging from the predictable—exploiting implementation flaws in some popular crypto products; to the widely-suspected but disappointing—inducing companies to insert backdoors into products; […]
Axciom Opens (Some) Consumer Data; What Should You Do?
September 5, 2013 by
Yesterday Axciom, a large data broker, rolled out their data transparency site, aboutthedata.com. The sites lets you view some data that Axciom has about you, including demographic data, family status, financials, commercial history, and shopping preferences. The site also lets you correct any errors in the data. It looks like you can modify the data […]
