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
Judges Poised to Hand .s. Spies the Keys to the Internet
How does the NSA get the private crypto keys that allow it to bulk eavesdrop on some email providers and social networking sites?
From ACM Opinion
I Spent Two Hours Talking With the Nsa's Bigwigs. Here's What Has Them Mad
My expectations were low when I asked the National Security Agency to cooperate with my story on the impact of Edward Snowden’s leaks on the tech industry.
From ACM Opinion
Our Government Has Weaponized the Internet. Here's How They Did It
The internet backbone—the infrastructure of networks upon which internet traffic travels—went from being a passive infrastructure for communication to an active...
From ACM Opinion
Orson Scott Card Talks Ender's Game
In Ender's Game, the Nebula Award-winning 1985 novel by Orson Scott Card, a 6-year-old boy is taken from his family on Earth to an orbital military academy to be...
From ACM Opinion
How to Design—and Defend Against—the Perfect Security Backdoor
We already know the NSA wants to eavesdrop on the Internet.
From ACM Opinion
Want to Evade Nsa Spying? Don't Connect to the Internet
Since I started working with Snowden’s documents, I have been using a number of tools to try to stay secure from the NSA.
From ACM Opinion
Google in Jeopardy: What If IBM's Watson Dethroned the King of Search?
Remember Watson, IBM's Jeopardy! champion?
From ACM Opinion
How Advanced Is the NSA's Cryptanalysis—And Can We Resist It?
The latest Snowden document is the U.S. intelligence "black budget."
From ACM Opinion
The End of Digital Tyranny: Why the Future of Computing Is Analog
Our world is ruled by 1s and 0s.
From ACM Opinion
Phew, Nsa Is Just Collecting Metadata. (you Should Still Worry)
We now know that every day, U.S. phone companies quietly send the government a list of who called whom and when—"telephony metadata"—for every call made on their...
From ACM Opinion
Connecting the Dots on Prism, Phone Surveillance, and the Nsa's Massive Spy Center
Physically, the NSA has always been well protected by miles of high fences and electrified wire, thousands of cameras, and gun-toting guards.
From ACM Opinion
Google's Chief Internet Evangelist on Creating the Interplanetary Internet
When some future Mars colonist is able to open his browser and watch a cat in a shark suit chasing a duck while riding a roomba, they will have Vint Cerf to thank...
From ACM Opinion
Why We Often View Digital Culture Through Insect Metaphors
Swarms. Hive minds. The Web.
From ACM Opinion
How Pixar sed Moore's Law to Predict the Future
Whether you call it a data-driven prediction or think of it as a self-fulfilling prophecy, Moore's Law has been going strong.
From ACM Opinion
Meet the Data Brains Behind the Rise of Facebook
Jay Parikh sits at a desk inside Building 16 at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, and his administrative assistant, Genie Samuel, sits next to...
From ACM Opinion
No Longer Vaporware: The Internet of Things Is Finally Talking
The rise of the machines has begun: Steve Sande’s household fan is now self-aware.
From ACM Opinion
Linus Torvalds Compares Hard Disks to Satan
Linus Torvalds—creator of the Linux open source operating system—is a man of strong opinions.
From ACM Opinion
How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking
In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed.
From ACM Opinion