Current Events and Other Resources of Relevance to CSC 199/299:
Social Implications of Computing
Spring 2012
The following are links to recent (and some not-so-recent) articles
related to the subject of
the course. They aren’t intended to be comprehensive or
even representative of anything in particular—they’re just things
that caught my eye, or were brought to my attention. You may find
them useful as starting-off points for current-events assignments.
- Tech-Related Public Policy Organizations
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- Security and Privacy
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- What They Know—Digital Privacy (Wall Street Journal)
- Sept.–Oct., 2005: Two and a half years after its launch, SEVIS has become business as usual on campuses—almost (Christopher Connell, International Educator)
- Nov. 2005: Information
Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks, by Ralph Gross
and Alessandro Acquisti. Proc. of the 2005 ACM Workshop
on Privacy in the Electronic Society.
- Nov. 10, 2011: F.T.C. Said
to Be Near Facebook Privacy Deal (NY Times)
- Nov. 19, 2011: Editorial: A Push for Online Privacy (NY Times)
- Nov. 29, 2011: Facebook Agrees to F.T.C. Settlement on Privacy (NY Times)
- Nov. 29, 2011: A Proposal for E.U.-Wide Data Protection Regulation (NY Times)
- Jan. 7, 2012: Health care privacy in the Internet age (Rochester Democrat & Chronicle). Editorial by Connie Lawrence and Natalie Masco.
- Jan. 23, 2012: Europe Weighs Tough Law on Online Privacy (NY Times)
- Jan. 23, 2012: Justices Say GPS Tracker Violated Privacy Rights (NY Times)
- Jan. 27, 2012: Google privacy policy: Who will be affected and how you can choose what information gets shared (Washington Post)
- Jan. 28, 2012: Privacy, Technology And Law (NY Times). Editorial by Prof. Barry Friedman, NYU Law School. Argues that the United States v. Jones decision reenforces the notion that rights erode as technology advances.
- Feb. 4, 2012: Should Personal Data Be Personal? (Somini Sengupta, NY Times)
- Feb. 4, 2012: Facebook Is Using You (NY Times). Editorial by Lori Andrews.
- Feb. 23, 2012: White House, Consumers in Mind, Offers Online Privacy Guidelines (Edward Wyatt, NY Times)
- Mar. 22, 2012: U.S. Relaxes Limits on Use of Data in Terror Analysis (Charlie Savage, NY Times)
- Mar. 25, 2012: Senators ask feds to probe requests for passwords (Manuel Valdes, AP)
- Mar 26, 2012: U.S. Agency Seeks Tougher Consumer Privacy Rules (Tanzina Vega and Edward Wyatt, NY Times)
- Mar. 29, 2012: Conflict Over How Open ‘Do Not Track’ Talks Will Be (Edward Wyatt and Tanzina Vega, NY Times)
- Apr. 2, 2012: Britons Protest Government Eavesdropping Plans (Alan Cowell, NY Times)
- Freedom of Speech, Transparency
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- Universal Access, Digital Democracy, the “Digital Divide,” etc.
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- Cyber Crime
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- Feb. 10, 2012: Traveling Light in a Time of Digital Thievery (Nicole Perlroth, NY Times)
- Mar. 4, 2012: The Bright Side of Being Hacked (Somini Sengupta and Nicole Perlroth, NY Times)
- Mar. 15, 2012: For Apple, Pressure Builds Over App Store Fraud (Evelyn M. Rusli and Brian X. Chen, NY Times)
- Mar. 17, 2012: The Soul of the New Hacktivist (Somini Sengupta, NY Times)
- Mar. 29, 2012: Case Based in China Puts a Face on Persistent Hacking (Nicole Perlroth, NY Times)
- Apr. 1, 2012: Washington Is First State to Take On Escort Sites (William Yardley, NY Times)
- Law Enforcement
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- Social Media
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- Dec. 13, 2011: The Facebook Resisters (NY Times)
- Dec. 15, 2011: Facebook’s New Design Brings Back User’s Past (NY Times)
- Dec. 15, 2011: Please Stop Sharing (Timothy Egan, NY Times)
- Dec. 31, 2011: Defining Words, Without the Arbiters (NY Times)
- Jan. 31, 2012: Personal Data’s Value? Facebook Is Set to Find Out (NY Times)
- Feb. 4, 2012: The Death of the Cyberflâneur (NY Times). Editorial by Evgeny Morozov.
- Feb. 24, 2012: Rutgers Dorm Spying Trial Begins With Questions of Motivation (Richard Pérez-Peña, NY Times)
- Mar. 16, 2012: Jury Finds Spying in Rutgers Dorm Was a Hate Crime (Kate Zernike, NY Times)
- Mar. 19, 2012: Make the Punishment Fit the Cyber-Crime (NY Times). Op-ed piece by Emily Bazelon, a senior editor at Slate. Argues that offenders like Dharun Ravi are being disproportionately punished.
- Legal Issues
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- Intellectual Property
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- The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA);
Summary of the Act from the US Copyright Office
- UR IT information on file sharing and downloading
- Dec. 2005: A Risky Gamble With Google (Siva Vaidhyanathan, Chronicle of Higher Education)
- Nov. 26, 2011: Going After the Pirates (NY Times editorial)
- Dec. 14, 2011: Lines Are Drawn on Legislation Against Internet Piracy (NY Times)
- Jan. 10, 2012: White House Says It Opposes Parts of Two Antipiracy Bills (NY Times)
- Jan. 15, 2012: Bills to Stop Web Piracy Invite a Protracted Battle (NY Times)
- Jan. 16, 2012: Wikipedia to Go Dark on Wednesday to Protest Bills on Web Piracy (Jenna Wortham, NY Times)
- Jan. 18, 2012: Web Protests Piracy Bills, and Senators Change Course (NY Times)
- Jan. 18, 2012: USACM Statement on SOPA and PROTECT IP. From the US Public Policy Council of the Association for Computing Machinery, the leading professional organization for Computer Science.
- Jan. 20, 2012: Senate Postpones Vote on Internet Piracy Bill (NY Times)
- Jan. 28, 2012: Beyond SOPA (NY Times editorial). Endorces the OPEN act.
- Feb. 5, 2012: A New Question of Internet Freedom (David Jolly, NY Times)
- Feb. 8, 2012: In Piracy Debate, Deciding if the Sky Is Falling (Jenna Wortham and Amy Chozick, NY Times)
- Feb. 19, 2012: Copyright Cheats Face the Music in France (Eric Pfanner, NY Times)
- Mar. 15, 2012: Inside the Chinese Boom in Corporate Espionage (Michael Riley & Ashlee Vance, Bloomberg BusinessWeek)
- Mar. 14, 2012: RIAA chief: ISPs to start policing copyright by July 1 (Greg Sandoval, CNET News)
- Apr. 9, 2012: Forget SOPA. Is CISPA the Internet's New Enemy? (Fahmida Y. Rashid, PC Magazine)
- Nov. 30, 2011: Text of CISPA (Library of Congress)
- Electronic Publishing, e-Learning, etc.
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- Sept. 10, 2012: Disappearing
ink; The transformation of the book industry (editorial) (The Economist)
- Sept. 10, 2012: Great
digital expectations; The books business (The Economist)
- Dec. 4, 2011: Online Learning, Personalized (NY Times)
- Dec. 19, 2011: M.I.T. Expands Its Free Online Courses (NY Times)
- Dec. 24, 2011: Publishers vs. Libraries: An E-Book Tug of War (NY Times)
- Jan. 19, 2012: Apple Introduces Tools to (Someday) Supplant Print Textbooks (NY Times)
- Jan. 28, 2012: The Bookstore’s Last Stand (NY Times)
- Jan. 25, 2012: Amazon's Hit Man (Brad Stone, Bloomberg Businessweek). Discusses Amazon's move into direct into competition with traditional publishers.
- Mar. 4, 2012: Finding Your Book Interrupted ... By the Tablet You Read It On (Julie Bosman and Matt Richtel, NY Times)
- Mar. 9, 2012: YouTube Subtracts Racy and Raucous to Add a Teaching Tool (Stephanie Strom, NY Times)
- Mar. 27, 2012: A Surge in Learning the Language of the Internet (Jenna Wortham, NY Times)
- Risk Management
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- Computer-Related Risks, by Peter G. Newmann. Addison-Wesley, 1994.
- Geekonomics: The Real Cost of Insecure Software, by David Rice. Addison-Wesley, 2008.
- In general, see the long-running Inside Risks column, originally started by Newmann, in Communications of the ACM.
- Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine, by Ariel J. Feldman, J. Alex Halderman, and Edward W. Felten. Proc. of the 2007 USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology Workshop, August 2007.
- Insecurities and Inaccuracies of the Sequoia AVC Advantage 9.00H DRE Voting Machine, by Andrew W. Appel, Maia Ginsburg, Harri Hursti, Brian W. Kernighan, Christopher D. Richards, and Gang Tan. Expert testimony prepared for the New Jersey Superior Court, Sept. 2008.
- Jan. 23, 2012: Collision in the Making Between Self-Driving Cars and How the World Works (NY Times)
- Jan. 17, 2012: Drones Close to Home (Louis Macaluso, City Newspaper)
- Work/Employment
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- Ethics
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- Technology in the Public Interest
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