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
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.
From ACM Opinion
I Would Have Hired Edward Snowden
I don't know Edward Snowden, but I know his kind.
From ACM Opinion
Why Americans Don't Fear the Nsa
Cybersnooping was always scheduled to be an important topic during President Obama’s meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
From ACM Opinion
Who's Watching You? Not Just the Nsa.
While you were tweeting an Instagram of your home-cooked tikka masala last night, we learned that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting data on...
From ACM Opinion
Our Guts May Hate Mars
Eighty thousand people recently applied for a trip to Mars, an excursion that will allegedly be funded by selling reality-TV show rights for the voyage.
From ACM Opinion
Government Plan to Build 'back Doors' For Online Surveillance Could Create Dangerous Vulnerabilities
Recently, the FBI has been attacking the "going dark" problem—that is, its inability to read all electronic communications—from both legal and technological angles...
From ACM Opinion
Escape Plans
When the Russian asteroid became a fireball in the air over Chelyabinsk, destroying buildings and injuring hundreds, we were lucky it wasn’t worse.
From ACM Opinion
Ok, Glass, Don't Make Me Look Stupid
A man sitting alone at his kitchen table pauses before eating his breakfast.
From ACM Opinion
What Is the Syrian Electronic Army Trying to Accomplish, Anyway?
In June 2011, just a few short months after protests first erupted in Syria, the country's president, Bashar Al-Assad, made a speech in which he thanked a group...
From ACM Opinion
Superhero or Supervillain?
From invisibility to superhuman strength to telekinesis, a wave of emerging technologies promise to give people powers once reserved for comic-book characters.
From ACM Opinion
How Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen See the Future
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is ready for a future where his smart mattress monitors sleep patterns and alerts the curtains to allow daylight in, waking...
From ACM Opinion
Why I Love the National Internet Sales Tax Plan
The Internet, in the popular imagination, is supposed to be free—"the last bastion of our economy untouched by the government," as they say on Fox News.
From ACM Opinion
We Need More Cameras, and We Need Them Now
On Thursday afternoon, the FBI released photos and video of two persons of interest in the Boston Marathon bombing.
From ACM Opinion
How New Military Technologies Can Help Prevent the Next Boston or Newtown
This week, it's bombs. In December, it was guns.
From ACM Opinion
Will Bitcoins Make Me Rich?
Let me begin this column with a lengthy disclosure. One morning last week, I stopped at my bank, filled out a withdrawal slip for $1,027.51, and walked away with...
From ACM Opinion
The Chilling Effects of the Dmca
It was hard to believe, but the student insisted it was true.
From ACM Opinion
Why We'll Never Make an npickable Lock
It would be roughly accurate to say that there have been locks as long as there have been things humans wanted to guard.
From ACM Opinion
Can Your Boss Read Your Email?
Harvard faculty members responded with shock after the Boston Globe revealed that theuniversity’s administration had searched 16 faculty deans’ email accounts to...
From ACM Opinion