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
Why You Shouldn't Be Freaked Out By What Marketers Know About You
Becky Burr, chief privacy officer of Neustart, discusses the company's privacy-by-design policy, public misconceptions about data collection, and what she does...
From ACM Opinion
The New Editors of the Internet
Bowing to their better civic natures, and the pleas of James Foley's family, Twitter and YouTube have pulled down videos and photos of his murder.
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
Tor Project's Struggle to Keep the Dark Net in the Shadows
The BBC has interviewed Andrew Lewman, executive director of the Tor Project.
From ACM Opinion
Anatomy of an Air Strike: Three Intelligence Streams Working in Concert
In a fast-moving war with an elusive foe like the Islamic State militants, information is as important as guns, jet fighters and bombs.
From ACM Opinion
Police Cameras Can Shed Light, but Raise Privacy Concerns
Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager who was shot during an encounter with police in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 9, was recorded by a convenience store surveillance camera...
From ACM Opinion
Cryptography Expert Says, 'pgp Encryption Is Fundamentally Broken, Time For Pgp to Die'
A Senior cryptography expert has claimed multiple issues with PGP email encryption—an open source end-to-end encryption to secure email.
From ACM Opinion
Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet
All these people are trying to kill email.
From ACM Opinion
Former Nsa Deputy Director John C. Inglis
More than a year after ex-National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden began leaking details of the agency's electronic surveillance programs, questions remain...
From ACM Opinion
Why the Public Library Beats Amazon—for Now
A growing stack of companies would like you to pay a monthly fee to read e-books, just like you subscribe to Netflix to binge on movies and TV shows.
From ACM Opinion
Okcupid's Co-Founder on Experiments, Data Science and the Myth of the 'unicorn'
Christian Rudder, co-founder and president of the IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s OkCupid, caused a stir recently when he responded to Facebook's news feed controversy with...
From ACM Opinion
What It's Like to Fly Passenger Planes from the Ground
Bob Fraser explains what it feels like to pilot a Jetstream airliner containing passengers on 800-kilometre trips from his desk at BAE Systems in Warton, U.K.
From ACM Opinion
Founder of America's Biggest Hacker Conference: 'we nderstand the Threat Now'
For one weekend every year, thousands of the world’s best—or worst, depending on your point of view—hackers meet in Las Vegas, Nevada, for Defcon.
From ACM Opinion
Why One of Cybersecurity's Thought Leaders ses a Pager Instead of a Smart Phone
In the computer and network security industry, few people are as well known as Dan Geer.
From ACM Opinion
How Wwi Codebreakers Taught Your Gas Meter to Snitch on You
In the depths of night on August 5th 1914 the British Cable Ship Alert took the first significant action of World War I, severing the five German submarine cables...
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
Security Secrets, Dated but Real
Was the National Cryptologic Museum designed using a code of some kind?
From ACM Opinion
The Nsa's Cyber-King Goes Corporate
Keith Alexander, the recently retired director of the National Security Agency, left many in Washington slack-jawed when it was reported that he might charge companies...
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