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Glenn Greenwald's Pulse-Pounding Tale of Breaking the Snowden Leaks
From ACM Opinion

Glenn Greenwald's Pulse-Pounding Tale of Breaking the Snowden Leaks

In June 2013, Edward Snowden was sitting in his room at the Mira hotel in Hong Kong, watching the world react to the first of his explosive leaks about the NSA's...

The Peril of Knowledge Everywhere
From ACM Opinion

The Peril of Knowledge Everywhere

Thanks to advances in technology, we may soon revisit a question raised four centuries ago: Are there things we should try not to know?

A World Digital Library Is Coming True!
From ACM Opinion

A World Digital Library Is Coming True!

In the scramble to gain market share in cyberspace, something is getting lost: the public interest.

Here's How to Learn How Much Your Data Is Worth to Facebook and Google
From ACM Opinion

Here's How to Learn How Much Your Data Is Worth to Facebook and Google

The anti-virus software company AVG has created PrivacyFix, an app to help you get a handle on just how much you're worth to big-time data players Facebook and...

4 Ways the Political Elite Try (and Fail) to Avoid Leaving a Trail of Incriminating Messages
From ACM Opinion

4 Ways the Political Elite Try (and Fail) to Avoid Leaving a Trail of Incriminating Messages

The most powerful people in the country are just not as good as teenagers when it comes to being discreet. Mostly that’s by design—there are freedom of information...

The White House Big Data Report: The Good, The Bad, and The Missing
From ACM Opinion

The White House Big Data Report: The Good, The Bad, and The Missing

Last week, the White House released its report on big data and its privacy implications, the result of a 90-day study commissioned by President Obama during his...

The Secret Messages Inside Chinese ­rls
From ACM Opinion

The Secret Messages Inside Chinese ­rls

An American friend living in Beijing once said she refused to communicate with anyone whose email address consisted of a string of numbers, such as 62718298454@163...

How Cloud Storage Complicates the Supreme Court Debate Over Cell Phone Privacy
From ACM News

How Cloud Storage Complicates the Supreme Court Debate Over Cell Phone Privacy

Should police be able to search the contents of your smartphone without a warrant?

Cyborg Angst: 5 Ways Computers Will Perplex ­S in 2039
From ACM News

Cyborg Angst: 5 Ways Computers Will Perplex ­S in 2039

Brain chips mean we are struggling to distinguish our own thoughts from ideas implanted by advertisers.

Maths Spying: The Quandary of Working For the Spooks
From ACM Opinion

Maths Spying: The Quandary of Working For the Spooks

For the past 10 months, a major international scandal has engulfed some of the world's largest employers of mathematicians.

Putin's Fear of the Internet
From ACM Opinion

Putin's Fear of the Internet

In the mid-nineteen-sixties, Brezhnev's Soviet Union introduced a law aimed at stifling ideological dissent.

Robots Are Coming
From Communications of the ACM

Robots Are Coming

Considering the societal implications of the robotics revolution.

Building a Virtual Community of Practice For K-12 CS Teachers
From Communications of the ACM

Building a Virtual Community of Practice For K-12 CS Teachers

Bringing educators together and focusing their interests toward improving computer science education in high schools.

Tom Kilburn
From Communications of the ACM

Tom Kilburn: A Tale of Five Computers

Reflections on a British computer engineer who influenced several important machines, including the first stored-program computer.

What Happened to Video Game Piracy?
From Communications of the ACM

What Happened to Video Game Piracy?

How video games thrive in a world of piracy.

Why Bitcoin Has Value
From Communications of the ACM

Why Bitcoin Has Value

Evaluating the evolving controversial digital currency.

The Justice of Coders
From ACM Opinion

The Justice of Coders

Among the most important changes in the structure of this society is the rise of engineers and the ethics they make manifest.

The Limits of Social Engineering
From ACM Opinion

The Limits of Social Engineering

In 1969, Playboy published a long, freewheeling interview with Marshall McLuhan in which the media theorist and sixties icon sketched a portrait of the future that...

The Most Expensive Lottery Ticket in the World
From ACM Opinion

The Most Expensive Lottery Ticket in the World

No Exit, the new book from Gideon Lewis-Kraus, should be required reading for anybody who thinks it might be a good idea to found a startup in Silicon Valley.

If the Robots Kill ­s, It's Because It's Their Job
From ACM Opinion

If the Robots Kill ­s, It's Because It's Their Job

In the movie Transcendence, which opens in theaters on Friday, a sentient computer program embarks on a relentless quest for power, nearly destroying humanity in...
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