I just published a new opinion piece in the New York Times, entitled “Beware the Smart Campaign”. I react to the Obama campaign’s successful use of highly quantitative voter targeting that is inspired by “big data” commercial marketing techniques and implemented through state-of-the-art social science knowledge and randomized field experiments. In the op-ed, I wonder […]
If Reddit Really Regrets "Not Taking Stronger Action Sooner", What Will It Do in the Future?
October 18, 2012 by
[Editors note: The New York Times weighed in with “When the Web’s Chaos Takes an Ugly Turn“, which includes several quotes from Tufekci.] Reddit may be the most important Internet forum that you have never heard of. It has more than a billion page-views a month, originates many Internet memes, brilliantly exposes hoaxes, hosts commentary […]
Sloppy Reporting on the "University Personal Records" Data Breach by the New York Times Bits Blog
October 4, 2012 by
This morning I ran across a distressing headline while perusing my RSS feeds. The New York Times’ Bits Blog proclaimed that, “Hackers Breach 53 Universities and Dump Thousands of Personal Records Online.” I clicked, and was informed that: Hackers published online Monday thousands of personal records from 53 universities, including Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, Princeton, Johns […]
Goodbye, Stanford. Hello, Princeton!
September 24, 2012 by
[Editor’s note: The Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) is delighted to welcome Arvind Narayanan as an Assistant Professor in Computer Science, and an affiliated faculty member in CITP. Narayanan is a leading researcher in digital privacy, data anonymization, and technology policy. His work has been widely published, and includes a paper with CITP co-authors […]
Privacy Threat Model for Mobile
September 10, 2012 by
Evaluating privacy vulnerabilities in the mobile space can be a difficult and ad hoc process for developers, publishers, regulators, and researchers. This is due, in significant part, to the absence of a well-developed and widely accepted privacy threat model. With 1 million UDIDs posted on the Internet this past week, there is an urgent need […]
