On April 18, 2013, the US House of Representatives passed the Bill H.R. 624, also known as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). An earlier version of the bill had been passed already by the US HR, but did not pass the Senate (for earlier analysis of the Read more
In 2002, Joss Whedon created a science fiction series called Firefly. You will be forgiven for never having heard anything about it, the show was cancelled during its first season by Fox, leaving us with only 14 episodes. But the series became an instant cult classic, it was a charming Read more
With the publication today of the first issue of the 10th volume of SCRIPTed – A Journal of Law, Technology & Society, we mark 10 9 years of this open access experiment. Every four months I clear 3 entire days in my schedule to format and upload the excellent content Read more
As I am finishing writing this post, Bitcoin (BTC) is in the middle of a crash, or what some people call in technical terms, going completely bonkers. I have been unhealthily interested in bitcoins for more than a year, and I have been following it closely. This includes reading papers, Read more
Download the report here. For those interested in the subject of data mining, here is an article written by Diane Cabell and Yours Truly dealing with the issue of data mining in UK higher education. Here is the introduction to see if you are interested in reading it further. Feel Read more
Imagine a device that records your location at all times, that can be used to take videos and pictures of any event and upload it to social media with little concern for privacy of the subjects. Were you thinking of Google Glass? I was actually thinking of the worse threat Read more
Jen breaks the Internet The Internet is currently slowed down because of a massive DDoS attack against one anti-spam organization. At least this is the story being reported everywhere, from the New York Times to The Guardian. Or is it? Spamhaus is a non-profit organisation dedicated to fighting unsolicited communications Read more
There is a saying in Spanish that I’ve always liked: “pueblo chico, infierno grande” (small town, big hell). The Internet is vast, but social media has brought us together in ways that constantly remind me of this phrase. Short social connection pathways lead to clusters of communities where a tiny Read more
Privacy is dead. There is no such thing as privacy. We are all under constant, unending, crushing surveillance. Depressed? You should be. This is the powerful conclusion reached by security guru Bruce Schneier in this brilliant op-ed for CNN. Schneier writes: “The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit Read more
Continuing on the series on Internet centrality, an important element of the argument that the web is greatly centralised rests on the fact that the Web’s architecture is becoming less distributed with time. The push towards the cloud has been translated into fewer name servers, and fewer hosting choices. Pingdom, Read more