Communications of the ACM
Innovation Is Overrated: A Provocation
Digital innovation is not working in the interest of the whole of society. It is time to radically rethink its purpose without…
From ACM Opinion
Editing the Internet's Second Screen
The great social media cleanup of the past two years hasn't seemed to leave it much cleaner.
From ACM Opinion
Borders in the Cloud
Amazon may well be one of the companies with the strongest data security in the world.
From ACM Opinion
Google Is Listening
You know the cliché that if you're not paying for the product, you are the product?
From ACM Opinion
The Social Security Number's Insecurities
In both the Anthem insurance hack and the two Office of Personnel Management hacks this year, attackers gained access to Social Security numbers, affecting 80 million...
From ACM Opinion
Why Mlb Fans Should Lament the Failure of Google Glass
The consumer tech world received a jolt in January when the Wall Street Journal reported that Google executives were freezing all sales of its futuristically goofy...
From ACM Opinion
So Sayeth Google
Search for "vaccines." At least within our filter bubble, the top item in Google's "In the news" section earlier this week was an anti-vax column about the "feds'...
From ACM Opinion
Google's Eyes in the Sky
When Sergey Brin and Larry Page built the search engine that would become Google, they started by making maps.
From ACM Opinion
Four Technology Fallacies That Need to Die
As any historian, psychologist, sociologist, or scientist will tell you, the truth of an idea has very little to do with how fast it spreads and how well it's believed...
From ACM Opinion
Why Did the Justice Department Indict Five Chinese Military Officers?
At first glance, the Justice Department's 31-count indictment of five Chinese military officers for hacking into the computers of six American corporations, in...
From ACM Opinion
Bots on the Beat
On March 24 at 2:36 p.m., the New York Post reported that the body of former Nets basketball player Quinton Ross had been found in a shallow grave on Long Island...
From ACM Opinion
What Do Data Brokers Know About Me?
I once ran into a friend and her husband at the playground in our neighborhood in Manhattan.
From ACM Opinion
Let the Nsa Keep Hold of the Data
One of the recommendations by the president's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies on reforming the National Security Agency—No. 5, if you're...
From ACM Opinion
Pretty Good Privacy
Few critics of the NSA will find much satisfaction in President Obama's speech this morning or in the set of reforms that he announced.
From ACM Opinion
Why Snowden Won't (and Shouldn't) Get Clemency
I regard Daniel Ellsberg as an American patriot.
From ACM Opinion
Whither Net Neutrality?
As the new Federal Communications Commission chairman, Tom Wheeler, has kicked up some dust in the tech community by laying the groundwork for a grand vision for...
From ACM Opinion
In Search of Planetary Intelligence
It is said that Mahatma Gandhi, when asked about Western civilization, remarked, "I think it would be a good idea."
From ACM Opinion
WikiLeaks' Teenage Benedict Arnold
When he met Julian Assange for the first time, Sigurdur Thordarson admired the WikiLeaks founder's attitude and quickly signed up to the cause.
From ACM Opinion
Former Nsa Chief on Latest Leaked Dragnet Spy Program: It's Real, and It's Spectacular
Does the NSA really operate a vast database that allows its analysts to sift through millions of records showing nearly everything a user does on the Internet,...
From ACM Opinion
The Taming of the Spook
On March 24, 2009, the National Security Agency’s inspector general issued a 51-page draft report on the President’s Surveillance Program, the warrantless authority...
From ACM Opinion
Connecting the Dots, Missing the Story
Could Big Data have prevented 9/11? Perhaps—Dick Cheney, for one, seems to think so.12