Privacy & Cryptography
| Apercus | .org |
| Apercus means a series of discerning perceptions or insights. Apercus.org offers articles and information about the intersection of law, technology, and culture not found in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal. We are an official student organization at Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California, Berkeley. |
Privacy & Cryptography |
| Privacy Protection: Time to Think and Act Locally and Globally. Dyson examines the unique aspects on online communications and interactivity and analyzes the chances for privacy on the Internet. Published in First Monday 1998. By Ester Dyson. | |
| Privacy As Intellectual Property? The market incentives for firms to collect and process personal data are very high. Data about users is not only useful in assessing how a firm might improve its service for its customers, but it also has become a key commercial asset which firms use both for internal marketing purposes and for licensing to third parties. Although the Clinton Administration has worked very hard to persuade Internet economy firms to adopt privacy policies and practices to make users more comfortable about engaging in e-commerce transactions in cyberspace, these efforts have done little to overcome the inertia of the current technical and economic environment that is generally hostile to privacy interests. This symposium has been convened to consider whether the law should play a greater role in promoting greater information privacy in cyberspace. A draft of a forthcoming paper to be published in Stanford Law Review 2000. By Pam Samuelson, | |
| Information Hiding: A Survey. An article about protecting multimedia content on the Internet. Published in the IEEE 1999. By Fabien A.P. Petiitcolas, Ross J. Anderson, and Markus G. Kuhn. | |
| A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. Inernet public policy pioneer, former Grateful Dead lyricist, and EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow makes the case for freedom and liberty on the Internet. Published in 1996. By John Perry Barlow | |
| Web-Site Sensitivity to Privacy Concerns: Collecting Personally Identifiable Information and Passing Persistent Cookies. A common trait of many Web sites is the need to monitor visitor use in order to know how the site is being used. For sites that wish for more information than can be provided by server log files, one option is the use of cookies that can keep track of a user's visit and store other useful information. Registration and cookies have become prevalent on the Web at the same time that problems with these practices are being increasingly noted as a possible invasion of privacy. This paper analyzes an EPIC study of 100 popular Web sites to determine a baseline figure for the appearance of privacy policies as well as for use of visitor registration and cookies. A good but slightly outdated paper. Published in First Monday 1998. By Bill Helling. | |
| Cypherpunk Manifesto. Hughes argues that privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age and that we need cryptography in order to achieve that privacy. Published in 1993. By Eric Hughes. | |
| Twilight of the Crypto-Geeks. Some digital libertarians are abandoning their faith in the ability of technology to defend our privacy and are turning to social structures like government and the law. Published in Salon 2000. By Ellen Ullman. | |
| 'And the Word Was Made Flesh and Dwelt Among Us...': Towards Pseudonymous Life on the Internet. The use of pseudonyms creates "managed ambiguity", permitting relationships while allowing the user to conceal elements of his identity. Pseudonymity differs from anonymity in that an alias is bestowed upon or chosen by the user, and used consistently over time. Published in M/C. By Alan Macdougall. | |
| Why Cryptography is Harder Than It Looks. Schneier explains why we should assume that science and technology will soon be able to things they can not yet do. By Bruce Schneier | |
| Biometrics: Uses and Abuses. A brief summary of the advantages and disadvantages of using the body's own unique identifiers (fingerprints, iris scans, etc.) as security passwords. Published in Communications of the ACM 1999. By Bruce Schneier. | |
| How to Cheat the Lottery (or, Massively Parallel Requirements Engineering). Collaborative software projects such as Linux and Apache have shown that a large, complex system can be built and maintained by many developers working in a highly parallel, relatively unstructured way. Anderson reports on an experiment to see whether a high quality system specification can also be produced by a large number of people working in parallel with a minimum of communication. By Ross Anderson. | |
| Cryptography and Liberty 2000. An international survey of encryption policy. By EPIC.org. | |
| Welcome to SeaLand. Now Bugger Off. Sealand, a windswept gun tower anchored six miles off the stormy coast of England, is about to become the first Internet data haven. HavenCo believes it can offer a safe haven from governments around the world that are becoming more and more interested in Internet regulation and taxation. Published in WIRED 2000. By Simson Garfinkel. | |
| Solitaire Encryption Algorithim. A working encryption system designed to be used with a deck of playing cards. Developed by the founder and CTO of Counterpane Internet Security and featured in Neal Stephenson's excellent novel, Cryptonomicon. By Bruce Schneier. | |
| National Security Agency Report to Congress on Legal Standards for Electronic Surveillance. Legal standards for the intelligence community in conducting electronic surveillance. | |
| EPIC v. DOJ. EPIC filed this motion with the District Court in the District of Columbia. It seeks information on and a temporary restraining order against the FBI's electronic surveillance system, Carnivore, under the Freedom of Information Act. | |
| Fending Off Automated Mass Electronic Mail: or, How to Distinguish Yourself From a Computer. Is there a way for e-mail addresses to be openly available, if their owners so desire, on the Net, yet preventing the current practice of harvesting email-addresses by the thousands for unsolicited email advertisements? Beke proposes a solution and examines the phenomenology of mass e-mail in a somewhat broader context. Published in First Monday 1998. By Tibor Beke. | |
| Anonymizer.com. Surf the Internet anonymously and discover what website operators are able to learn about your identity when you visit their Internet sites. | |
| Anonymous Emailer: Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC.org). Anonymity is essential to protect free speech. It can be used to protect human rights workers reporting abuses, politial dissidents commenting on government actions, writers publishing controversial literature and other important functions where revealing a person's identity would threaten a person's life or wellbeing. Send emails anonymously. | |
| Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC.org). EPIC is a public interest research center in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values. | |
| Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF.org). EFF is a non-profit, non-partisan organization working in the public interest to protect fundamental civil liberties, including privacy and freedom of expression in the arena of computers and the Internet. EFF was founded in 1990, and is based in San Francisco, California, with a satellite office in Washington, DC. | |
| Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE.org). The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email is an ad hoc, all volunteer organization, created by Netizens to advocate for a legislative solution to the problem of spam. Learn why spam is a problem and what you can do about it. |