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
Algorithms Are Great and All, But They Can Also Ruin Lives
On April 5, 2011, 41-year-old John Gass received a letter from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles.
From ACM Opinion
How to Save the Net: Keep It Open
For all of its history, the Internet has enjoyed the fruits of an openness principle: the idea that anyone can reach any site online and that information and data...
From ACM Opinion
This Sci-Fi Author Thinks Amazon Will Cause an Apocalypse
Charles Stross is an award-winning science fiction author whose books include The Bloodline Feud, about timeline-hopping narco-terrorists, Halting State, a near...
From ACM Opinion
The Weird Reasons Why People Make p False Identities on the Internet
Sockpuppetry—using false identities for deception—is centuries old, but the advent of the web has made creating sockpuppets, and falling for their tricks, easier...
From ACM Opinion
The Moral Hazards and Legal Conundrums of Our Robot-Filled Future
The robots are coming, and they're getting smarter.
From ACM Opinion
The Troubling Truth of Why It's Still So Hard to Share Files Directly
It's not always easy to spot the compromises in the technology we use, where we've allowed corporate interests to trump public ideals like privacy and press freedom...
From ACM Opinion
The Nightmare on Connected Home Street
I wake up at four to some old-timey dubstep spewing from my pillows.
From ACM Opinion
How the Nsa Could Bug Your Powered-Off Phone, and How to Stop Them
Just because you turned off your phone doesn't mean the NSA isn't using it to spy on you.
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...
From ACM Opinion
Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook's Future, From Virtual Reality to Anonymity
No one ever accused Mark Zuckerberg of standing pat.
From ACM Opinion
It's Time to Encrypt the Entire Internet
The Heartbleed bug crushed our faith in the secure Web, but a world without the encryption software that Heartbleed exploited would be even worse.
From ACM Opinion
10 Years On, Gmail Has Transformed the Web as We Know It
Google loves to unveil a good gag product on April Fool's Day.
From ACM Opinion
A Close Look at the Nsa's Most Powerful Internet Attack Tool
We already knew that the NSA has weaponized the Internet, enabling it to "shoot" exploits at anyone it desires.
From ACM Opinion
Why You Should Embrace Surveillance, Not Fight It
I once worked with Steven Spielberg on the development of Minority Report, derived from the short story by Philip K. Dick featuring a future society that uses surveillance...
From ACM Opinion
Why Copyrighted Coffee May Cripple the Internet of Things
With its single-serving coffee pods, Green Mountain Coffee has transformed the business of brew.
From ACM Opinion
Tim Berners-Lee: We Need to Re-Decentralise the Web
Twenty-five years on from the web's inception, its creator has urged the public to re-engage with its original design: a decentralised internet that at its very...
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
The Internet of Things Is Wildly Insecure—and Often npatchable
We're at a crisis point now with regard to the security of embedded systems, where computing is embedded into the hardware itself—as with the Internet of Things...
From ACM Opinion