After my previous blog post about the FBI, Apple, and the San Bernadino iPhone, I’ve been reading many other bloggers and news articles on the topic. What seems to be missing is a decent analogy to explain the unusual nature of the FBI’s demand and the importance of Apple’s stance in opposition to it. Before I dive […]
Apple, the FBI, and the San Bernadino iPhone
February 17, 2016 by
Apple just posted a remarkable “customer letter” on its web site. To understand it, let’s take a few steps back. In a nutshell, one of the San Bernadino shooters had an iPhone. The FBI wants to root through it as part of their investigation, but they can’t do this effectively because of Apple’s security features. […]
Updating the Defend Trade Secrets Act?
January 23, 2016 by
Despite statements to the contrary by sponsors and supporters in April 2014, August 2015, and October 2015, backers of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) now aver that “cyber espionage is not the primary focus” of the legislation. At last month’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the DTSA was instead supported by two different primary reasons: […]
New Professors' Letter Opposing The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2015
November 17, 2015 by
As Freedom to Tinker readers may recall, I’ve been very concerned about the problems associated with the proposed Defend Trade Secrets Act. Ostensibly designed to combat cyberespionage against United States corporations, it is instead not a solution to that problem, and fraught with downsides. Today, over 40 colleagues in the academic world joined Eric Goldman, Chris Seaman, Sharon […]
How is NSA breaking so much crypto?
October 14, 2015 by
There have been rumors for years that the NSA can decrypt a significant fraction of encrypted Internet traffic. In 2012, James Bamford published an article quoting anonymous former NSA officials stating that the agency had achieved a “computing breakthrough” that gave them “the ability to crack current public encryption.” The Snowden documents also hint at […]
