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subjectComputers And Society
authorThe New York Times
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The Frightening Things You Hear at a Black Hat Conference
From ACM Opinion

The Frightening Things You Hear at a Black Hat Conference

Here is a look at some of the highlights and scarier happenings taking place at the annual Black Hat hacker conference in Las Vegas last week.

From ACM Opinion

The Public Is Left in the Dark When Courts Allow Electronic Surveillance

A big part of Magistrate Judge Stephen W. Smith's job in Federal District Court in Houston is to consider law enforcement requests for cellphone and email records...

The Trouble With Online Education
From ACM Opinion

The Trouble With Online Education

"Ah, you're a professor. You must learn so much from your students."

From ACM Opinion

The End of Privacy?

Cellphones, email, and online social networking have come to rule daily life, but Congress has done nothing to update federal privacy laws to better protect digital...

A Weapon We Can't Control
From ACM Opinion

A Weapon We Can't Control

The decision by the United States and Israel to develop and then deploy the Stuxnet computer worm against an Iranian nuclear facility late in George W. Bush's presidency...

Free Speech For Computers?
From ACM Opinion

Free Speech For Computers?

Do machines speak? If so, do they have a constitutional right to free speech?

Apple's Stash of Credit Card Numbers Is Its Secret Weapon
From ACM News

Apple's Stash of Credit Card Numbers Is Its Secret Weapon

That little iPhone in your pocket is perfectly positioned to become a clone of the credit cards in your wallet or purse.

Why Attack When We Can't Defend?
From ACM Opinion

Why Attack When We Can't Defend?

In December 2010, after we had reverse engineered the Stuxnet virus, I argued that the attackers must have known they would open Pandora's box. Others suggested...

The Flight From Conversation
From ACM Opinion

The Flight From Conversation

We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.

Following the Breadcrumbs on the Data-Sharing Trail
From ACM Opinion

Following the Breadcrumbs on the Data-Sharing Trail

Would you like to donate to the Obama campaign? Sign up for a college course? Or maybe subscribe to Architectural Digest? 

God and Man in Tennessee
From ACM Opinion

God and Man in Tennessee

Earlier this month state senators in Tennessee approved an update to our sex-education law that would ban teachers from discussing hand-holding, which it categorizes...

Don't Be Evil, but Don't Miss the Train
From ACM Opinion

Don't Be Evil, but Don't Miss the Train

Back in 2004, as Google prepared to go public, Larry Page and Sergey Brin celebrated the maxim that was supposed to define their company: "Don’t be evil."

From ACM Opinion

From the Birthplace of Big Brother

The George W. Bush team must be consumed with envy. Britain's government is preparing sweeping new legislation that would let the country's domestic intelligence...

How China Steals Our Secrets
From ACM Opinion

How China Steals Our Secrets

For the last two months, senior government officials and private-sector experts have paraded before Congress and described in alarming terms a silent threat: cyberattacks...

A High-Tech War on Leaks
From ACM Opinion

A High-Tech War on Leaks

Back in 2006, before the Obama administration made leak prosecutions routine, a panel of three federal appeals court judges in New York struggled to decide whether...

Erasing the Boundaries
From ACM Opinion

Erasing the Boundaries

Technology used to be so simple.

From ACM Opinion

Privacy, Technology, and Law

Every day, those of us who live in the digital world give little bits of ourselves away. On Facebook and LinkedIn. To servers that store our email, Google searches...

Beyond Sopa
From ACM Opinion

Beyond Sopa

We welcomed the collapse this month of two flawed bills to prevent online piracy, bills that could have stifled speech and undermined Internet safety. But piracy...

From ACM Opinion

The Rise of the New Groupthink

Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement...

From ACM Opinion

Research Bought, Then Paid For

Through the National Institutes of Health, American taxpayers have long supported research directed at understanding and treating human disease.
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