Ethan Zuckerman

Title: TBA
When: Thursday, November 13, 2008 - 4:30 PM
Where: ORFES 101 - First Floor Classroom New ORFE/CITP Building

Ethan Zuckerman

James Grimmelmann

Title: TBA
When: Wednesday, October 1, 2008 - 4:30 PM
Where: ORFES 101 - First Floor Classroom New ORFE/CITP Building

James Grimmelmann

Martin Wattenberg

Title: TBA
When: Thursday, September 25, 2008 - 4:30 PM
Where: ORFES 101 - First Floor Classroom New ORFE/CITP Building

Martin Wattenberg

Ronald D. Lee

Title: Government Data Mining and Commercial Data Profiling
When: Thursday, September 18, 2008 - 4:30 PM
Where: ORFES 101 - First Floor Classroom New ORFE/CITP Building

Ron Lee, Princeton Class of 1980, and a national security, privacy,
and technology law partner at Arnold & Porter LLP in Washington, D.C.,
looks forward to a return visit to the best damn place of all. He
will discuss government data mining and commercial data profiling.
Although these two topics are often considered separately, they are
increasingly united because of the government’s interest in studying
commercial transactions to identify and prevent terrorism, the
government’s legal authority to access private databases, and the
private sector’s increasing reliance on the collection and analysis of
personal information and transactions. Lee will present emerging
consensus approaches to regulating and overseeing government data
mining activities, and will consider whether these approaches are
transferable to the private sector. He will also examine
technology-based approaches to meeting privacy concerns raised by
commercial data profiling, and the public and governance issues that
these approaches raise. Lee will then touch upon issues raised by
datamining at the intersection of law, policy, business, technology,
and human behavior where an ongoing public/private/academic
collaboration might make a lasting contribution.

For more information about Ronald D. Lee, please see his biographical information.

Phil Weiser

Title: TBA
When: Thursday, November 20, 2008 - 4:30 PM
Where: ORFES 101 - First Floor Classroom New ORFE/CITP Building

Professor Phil Weiser is a professor of law and telecommunications at the University of Colorado. At CU, he has worked to establish a national center of excellence in telecommunications and technology law, founding the Journal on Telecommunications & High Technology Law and the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship as well as writing and teaching in the areas of telecommunications and information policy. Over the last ten years, Weiser has co-authored two books (Digital Crossroads: American Telecommunications Policy in the Internet Age (MIT Press 2005) and Telecommunications Law and Policy (Carolina Academic Press 2006)), numerous articles, and has testified before both houses of Congress.

Prior to joining the CU faculty, Professor Weiser served as senior counsel to the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division at the United States Department of Justice, advising him primarily on telecommunications matters. Before his appointment at the Justice Department, Weiser served as a law clerk to Justices Byron R. White and Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the United States Supreme Court and to Judge David Ebel at the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. Weiser graduated with high honors from both the New York University School of Law and Swarthmore College.

Memory Research Project Source Code

« Back

July 16, 2008 — This page contains source code for some of the software that we developed in the course of this research. These prototype applications are intended to illustrate the techniques described in the paper; we are unable to provide technical support.

Memory imaging

Automatic key-finding

Error-correction for AES key schedules

 

You can check the signatures with this public key.

Past Events

Luis von Ahn

Title: Human Computation
When: Wednesday, October 8, 2008 - 4:30 PM
Where: ORFES 101 - First Floor Classroom New ORFE/CITP Building

Professor Luis von Ahn works in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, and was named one of Popular Science Magazine’s most “Brilliant 10″ scientists of 2006. He has also been named one of the 50 most influential people in technology by silicon.com. His research interests include encouraging people to do work for free, as well as catching and thwarting cheaters in online environments.

Over 200 million hours are spent playing computer and video games every day in the United States. Indeed, by age 21, the average American has spent over 10,000 hours playing such games – at eight hours per day and five days per week, that’s equivalent to five years of working a full time job.

What if this time and energy could be channeled into useful work?
What if people could play computer games and accomplish work without even realizing it? What if billions of people collaborated to solve important problems for humanity or generate training data for computers? My work aims at a general paradigm for doing exactly that: utilizing human processing power to solve computational problems in a distributed manner.

In particular, I focus on harnessing human time and energy for addressing problems that computers cannot yet solve. Although computers have advanced dramatically in many respects over the last 50 years, they still do not possess the basic conceptual intelligence or perceptual capabilities that most humans take for granted. By leveraging human skills and abilities in a novel way, I want to solve large-scale computational problems and/or collect training data to teach computers many of these human talents.
To this end, I treat human brains as processors in a distributed system, each performing a small part of a massive computation.
Unlike computer processors, however, humans require an incentive in order to become part of a collective computation. Among other things, I use online games as a means to encourage participation in the process.

In this talk, I will describe my work in the area of Human Computation.

Live Chat

Our chat service is not working, apparently due to a problem at Meebo. We apologize for the outage.

Framing Science: Journalism and Science Debates

Title: Framing Science: Journalism and Science Debates
When: Monday, March 31, 2008 - 11:45 PM - 1:30 PM
Where: Wallace Hall, Room 300

Matthew Nisbett, Assistant Professor, School of Communication, American University and Chris Mooney, free lance writer and journalist.

Lunch is provided at 11:45am

For more information please see the STEP website

Policy Lunch: JuicyCampus.com Debate

3.13.08
Noon-1:30 in room 302 of the Computer Science Building: Food at noon. Discussion begins at 12:25 pm. Everyone invited.

JuicyCampus.com, a site allowing students to comment anonymously on one another, has emerged (perhaps predictably) as a haven for hateful and unaccountable messages among students on several campuses. Students at Pepperdine have called on their university to block access to the site from the school’s network.

A similar site, AutoAdmit, found itself hosting vicious comments about several Yale law students, who sued, thus far unsuccessfully, to obtain the identities of their critics.

Operators of these sites have asserted immunity under the Communications Decency Act, which gives “service providers” special status as against traditional publishers. How far do provisions like this one actually extend? How far should they extend? Is it possible to protect genuine service providers without creating a moral hazard for irresponsible publishers?

Policy Lunch: Information Technology in Africa: A Journey from Grassroots Research to Policy Reform

05.01.08
Noon-1:30 - Location: 302 Computer Science Building. Food at noon. Discussion begins at 12:25 pm. Everyone invited.

Marc E. Fiuczynski
Associate Research Scholar, Princeton University
R&D Staff member, PlanetLab Consortium

The deployment of networking and information technologies in the developing world can improve access to education, health care, and commerce and achieve better governance. While the basic technological building blocks are available (both in terms of price and ruggedness), there are many challenges when moving beyond a pilot deployment to a large scale deployment in rural villages. To overcome these challenges requires rethinking how such solutions are integrated into the fabric of the village’s society—i.e., beyond just parachuting technology into a rural village and hoping for the best.

This talk is about the beginning of an effort to bring information and communication technology (ICT) to developing nations. Marc is exploring what the “future internet” will look like for those who have never really experienced (or benefited) from it before. Marc has explored various avenues of bringing PlanetLab-based technologies to developing regions.

Recently, he has started pilot deployments at a Health Clinic near Belmopan, Belize and at a fishing village in Kokrobitey, Ghana. While giving talks about these efforts in an attempt to smoothen out the deployment plans in Ghana, Marc was nominated to serve on the South African government’s e-skills council, where he is in the new position of tackling the challenges of integrating ICT into the fabric of a developing region from a top-down, policy perspective.

Future of News Workshop: Panelists’ Bios

Eric Alterman

Eric Alterman is a Distinguished Professor of English, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and Professor of Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is also “The Liberal Media” columnist for The Nation and a fellow of the Nation Institute, a senior fellow and “Altercation” weblogger for Media Matters for America, (formerly at MSNBC.com) in Washington, DC, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC, where he writes and edits the “Think Again” column, a senior fellow (since 1985) at the World Policy Institute at The New School in New York, and a history consultant to HBO Films. Alterman is the author of seven books, including the national bestsellers, What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News (2003, 2004), and The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America (with Mark Green, 2004). The others include: When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and its Consequences, (2004, 2005). His Sound & Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy (1992, 2000), won the 1992 George Orwell Award and his It Ain’t No Sin to be Glad You’re Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen (1999, 2001), won the 1999 Stephen Crane Literary Award, and Who Speaks for America? Why Democracy Matters in Foreign Policy, (1998). His newest book is Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook to Post-Bush America, (2008).

More about Eric Alterman

Kevin Anderson

Kevin Anderson is the Guardian’s blogs editor. He writes about technology, US politics and media. Before joining the Guardian, he was the Washington correspondent for the BBC News website covering politics, technology and current affairs in North America

More about Kevin Anderson

David M. Blei

David Blei is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science department of Princeton University. His Ph.D. advisor was Michael Jordan at U.C. Berkeley Computer Science. He was a postdoctoral researcher with John Lafferty at CMU in the Machine Learning department. David’s research interests include: Probabilistic graphical models and approximate posterior inference, topic models, information retrieval, and text processing and nonparametric Bayesian statistics.

More about David M. Blei

Steve Boriss

Steve Boriss is the Associate Director of the Center for the Application of Information Technology at Washington University in St. Louis and blogs for The Future of News.com. His career background includes business management, marketing, advertising, public relations, consulting, and teaching at University College (”The Future of News”). He has also worked for Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Fleishman-Hillard, and on his own. Steve’s educational background includes B.A. University of Rochester and M.B.A. University of Michigan.

More about Steve Boriss

Gordon Crovitz

L. Gordon Crovitz is former Publisher, The Wall Street Journal, former EVP of Dow Jones & Company, and president of the Company’s Consumer Media Group. He was responsible for the Company’s media operations serving consumers, including The Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal Online, Barron’s and Barron’s Online, MarketWatch and the company’s other web properties as well as television, video and audio, and the Company’s SmartMoney and Vedomosti joint ventures. He was a member of the Dow Jones executive committee. Prior to assuming his last position in February 2006, Mr. Crovitz served since October 1998 as SVP of Dow Jones and president of the Electronic Publishing group, where he was responsible for the Company’s Dow Jones Newswires, Financial Information Services, Dow Jones Indexes and Dow Jones Consumer Electronic Publishing businesses, which included The Wall Street Journal Online, Barron’s Online and MarketWatch.

Mark Davis

Mark Davis is the Vice President for Strategy for The San Diego Union-Tribune.

More about The San Diego Union-Tribune

Dan Gillmor

Dan Gillmor is the director of the new Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The Knight Center is working to help create a culture of innovation and risk-taking in journalism education, and in the wider media world. He is also the school’s Kauffman Professor of digital media entrepreneurship.

Dan remains the director of the the Center for Citizen Media, a joint project with ASU and Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. (The center was formerly affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley.) He also write articles and has published a book called We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People (2004; O’Reilly Media) — the paperback version of We the Media was released in January 2006 — and is working on a new book about media in the digital age.

More about Dan Gillmor

Matt Hurst

Matt Hurst is a scientist at Microsoft’s Live Labs; co-creator of BlogPulse. He blogs at http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mining. His interests include: computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, data/text mining, gis, strategy, weblogs, and online personal media (OPM).

More about Matt Hurst

JD Lasica

J.D. Lasica is one of the world’s leading authorities on social media and the revolution in user-created media. A writer, strategist, blogger and consultant, he is the co-founder and editorial director of Ourmedia.org, president of the Social Media Group and a partner in Outhink Media, a company that enables social media and distributed video production. He is currently helping to architect Bid4Vid, a new marketplace for getting videos produced. His book Darknet: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation (Wiley & Sons, May 2005) explores the personal media revolution and the emerging media landscape.

More about JD Lasica

Reihan Salam

Reihan Salam is an associate editor at The Atlantic and Fellow at the New America Foundation. He was previously a producer for NBC News, a junior editor and editorial researcher at The New York Times, a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a reporter-researcher at The New Republic. He is the co-author of Grand New Party: How Conservatives Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (Doubleday, 2008). He writes regularly on politics, culture, and technology for The Weekly Standard, Slate, and other publications, and he is the editor of “The American Scene,” a wide-ranging blog.

More about Reihan Salam and The Atlantic

How to Think About Privacy in a Web 2.0 (and Beyond) World

4.24.08
Noon-1:30 - Location: 302 Computer Science Building. Food at noon. Discussion begins at 12:25 pm. Everyone invited.

Harriet Pearson, Chief Privacy Officer, IBM

There’s no simple formula or law that can tell a consumer, developer, or business executive how to protect privacy in a Web 2.0 environment. But there are some fairly simple concepts that can help all three constituencies to balance privacy expectations with the sharing of information that is at the heart of many business models. This talk will help those involved in Web 2.0/social computing with a foundation for analysis of these issues.

Harriet is IBM’s Chief Privacy Officer and a Vice President in the Legal and Regulatory Affairs function. As CPO she and a global team of data privacy officers and focal points set IBM’s privacy policies and support the company’s compliance and thought leadership in this area. An internationally recognized privacy and data protection expert, in 2007 Harriet received the Vanguard Award, given annually by the International Association of Privacy Professionals to the professional who best exemplifies innovation and leadership in the privacy profession. She’s a 15-year veteran of IBM and has had executive roles in Legal, Governmental Programs, HR and Communications. Harriet is a Tiger (Class of 1985, B.S.E. Civil Engineering) and went to law school at UCLA.

Policy Lunch: Future Directions of Policy Lunch

4.17.08
Noon-1:30 in Room 302 of the Computer Science Building: Food at noon. Discussion begins at 12:25 pm. Everyone invited.

Tomorrow, we will have a meta-lunch to talk about how to improve our lunch series in the coming academic year. Which topics work best? Are we reaching all the right communities? Could the format be improved? Could the process of topic-choosing itself be “crowdsourced” in some way?

Policy Lunch: Case Study: “Phorm” — Online Marketing Through Network Hacks

4.10.08
Noon-1:30 in Room 302 of the Computer Science Building: Food at noon. Discussion begins at 12:25 pm. Everyone invited.

The UK-based marketing firm Phorm—which has lined up several of the country’s largest ISPs as clients—bills itself as creating a “privacy revolution” for users, allowing behaviorally targeted marketing without the usual privacy concerns. Like most offers that sound too good to be true, this one probably is. Harlan Yu, a graduate student in the Center, has pointed to ways the new technology may reveal personal details about individual users and harm Internet infrastructure. He will lead the discussion.

Policy Lunch: Voluntary Collective Licensing for Music Downloads

4.3.08
Noon-1:30 in room 302 of the Computer Science Building: Food at noon. Discussion begins at 12:25 pm. Everyone invited.

Jim Griffin, a music industry consultant who is in the unusual position of being recognized as smart and reasonable by participants across a broad swath of positions in the copyright debate, revealed last week that he’s working to start a new music industry organization that will urge ISPs to bundle a music licensing fee into their monthly service costs, in exchange for which the major labels will agree not to sue (and, presumably, not to threaten suit against) the ISP’s customers for copyright infringement of the music whose rights they own. The goal, Griffin says, is to “monetize the anarchy of the Internet.”

This idea has a long history and has at various times been propounded by some on the “copyleft.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example, issued in April 2004 a report entitled “A Better Way Forward: Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing“. This report even suggested the $5 per user per month ($60 per user per year) that Griffin apparently has in mind.

At lunch, we’ll explore some of the legal and technical challenges to this approach, as well as its possible costs and benefits.

James E. Katz, Ph.D. - Biographical Statement

James E. Katz, Ph.D., is chair of the Department of Communication at Rutgers University where he also directs the Center for Mobile Communication Studies. His present focus is on how personal communication technologies, such as mobile phones and the Internet, affect social relationships and how cultural values influence usage patterns of these technologies. Currently he heads an NSF-sponsored project with the New Jersey Liberty Science Center museum to investigate ways to stimulate teens from urban environments to use mobile communication technology for informal science and health learning.

Professor Katz has devoted his career to exploring the relationship among the domains of science and technology, knowledge and information, and social processes and public policy. He has been granted two patents and has won several awards including the 2009 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Twentieth Century Communications History, which will take him to Italy, as well as Bellcore’s Distinguished Member of Staff Award, a Mellon Foundation Scholar award, and the Distinguished Scholar Award of the Society for the Social Study of Mobile Communication. Katz is also the author of more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles. His books, which include Magic in the Air: Mobile Communication and the Transformation of Social Life and Social Consequences of Internet Use: Access, Involvement, Expression, have been translated into Chinese, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. His latest book, published by MIT Press, is Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies.

In terms of public outreach, Katz is frequently interviewed by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and has appeared many times on network evening news programs and PBS NewsHour. He also serves on the boards of several organizations and professional journals.

CITP Calendars and Mailing Lists


Subscribe to the CITP online calendar: XML ICAL HTML



Subscribe to CITP mailing lists for:

1. General CITP announcements
2. Thursday CITP lunch discussion announcements

To subscribe to either of these two lists you must have a LISTSERV Password.

You may then subscribe to CITP-ANNOUNCE and/or CITP-LUNCH.

If you need additional help in subscribing to our email lists, please see the OIT Knowledge Base for Lists or email Laura Cummings-Abdo at lcumming@princeton.edu.

Policy Lunch: NJ Voting Machine Discrepancies

3.27.08
Noon-1:30 in room 302 of the Computer Science Building: Food at noon. Discussion begins at 12:25 pm. Everyone invited.

In the February 5th primary election, Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines in at least five New Jersey counties displayed anomalous results: They reported a difference between the number of Democrats (or Republicans) who voted on a particular machine and the number of Democratic (or Republican) ballots cast on that machine. In Cranford, for example, a machine reported that 55 Republican voters had cast 57 ballots. Printed tapes documenting the anomalies, as well as a published response from Sequoia that offers one possible theory of how they could have arisen, are on the Center’s web site.

The counties wanted to commission our Center to do a study of the anomalies, but Sequoia’s legal threats brought that process to a halt. Ed Felten, who would lead the study, has discussed the anomalies and argued that Sequoia’s explanations thus far are not enough. He will explain the nature of the discrepancies, the vendor’s explanation of the cause, and the larger significance of this incident in the debate over voting technologies generally.

New Jersey E-Voting Documents

This page is an index of documents relating to discrepancies reported by Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines in New Jersey’s February 5, 2008 presidential primary election.

Documents from Sequoia

Sequoia’s memo about the cause of the discrepancies

Voting Machine Summary Tapes

These tapes are printed by the Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines when the polls are being closed at the end of election day. On each of these tapes, the total number of votes recorded for each party differs from the number of times the machine says it activated that party’s ballot (the “Option Switch Totals”).

From Bergen County:

From Burlington County

From Camden County

From Cape May County:

From Gloucester County:

From Hudson County:

From Ocean County:

From Union County:

Other Documents Provided by Union County

Farinaz Koushanfar

Title: Active Integrated Circuit Metering Techniques for Security and
Digital Rights Management
When: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 - 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Where: B205, EQuad

Abstract: We introduce the first suit of active hardware metering scheme that aims to protect integrated circuits (IC) intellectual property (IP) against runtime tampering and piracy. The novel metering method simultaneously employs inherent unclonable variability in modern manufacturing technology, and functionality preserving alternations of the structural IC specifications. Active metering works by enabling the designers to lock each IC and to remotely disable it. The objectives are realized by adding new states and transitions to the original state transition graph and the finite state machine (FSM). On each chip, the added control signals are a function of the unique manufacturing variability IDs and are thus unclonable. To facilitate remote disabling of ICs, black hole states are integrated within the FSM. We analyze several types of potential attacks against the proposed active metering method. We further propose a number of countermeasures that must be taken to preserve the security of active metering against the potential attacks. The implementation details of the method with the objectives of being low-overhead, unclonable, obfuscated, stable, while having a diverse set of keys is presented. The active metering method was implemented, synthesized and mapped on the standard benchmark circuits.
Experimental evaluations illustrate that the method has a low-overhead in terms of power, delay, and area, while it is extremely resilient against the considered attacks.

Biography: Farinaz Koushanfar is an assistant professor at the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Computer Science (CS) at Rice University since August 2006. She obtained her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and her M.A. in Statistics at UC Berkeley in December 2005. Prior to joining Rice, she held the Coordinated Science Lab (CSL) fellowship at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include hardware security and intellectual property protection, content security, data integrity, and distributed embedded systems. She is the director of the Texas Instruments (TI) DSP Leadership University Program at Rice, a recipient of the DARPA/MTO young faculty award (YFA), and a recipient of the NSF CAREER award. She has also received Intel Open Collaborative Research fellowship, a best paper at Mobicom, NSF graduate student fellowship, and the UCLA Woman4change leadership awards.

Sponsored by: Department of Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering Seminar
Host: Prof. Sharad Malik

Workshop: The Future of News

Thanks to the UChannel we’re pleased to offer a
complete video of this event.

Sponsored by Microsoft

When Wednesday, May 14, 2008: 9:30 AM - 6:00 PM
Thursday, May 15, 2008: 8:15 AM - 3:15 PM
Where: Friend Center, Convocation Room
Princeton University

Open to the public. Registration Information and Directions >>

The Internet—whose greatest promise is its ability to distribute and manipulate information—is transforming the news media. What’s on offer, how it gets made, and how end users relate to it are all in flux. New tools and services allow people to be better informed and more instantly up to date than ever before, opening the door to an enhanced public life. But the same factors that make these developments possible are also undermining the institutional rationale and economic viability of traditional news outlets, leaving profound uncertainty about how the possibilities will play out.

Agenda

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

9:30 - 10:45 Registration
10:45 - 11:00 Welcoming Remarks
11:00 - 12:00 Keynote talk by Paul Starr
12:00 - 1:30 Lunch, Convocation Room
1:30 - 3:00 Panel 1: The People Formerly Known as the Audience
3:00 - 3:30 Break
3:30 - 5:00 Panel 2: Economics of News
5:00 - 6:00 Reception

Thursday, May 15, 2008

8:15 - 9:30 Continental Breakfast
9:30 - 10:30 Featured talk by David Robinson - Title: Attention, Distraction, and Information Glut
10:30 - 11:00 Break
11:00 - 12:30 Panel 3: Data Mining, Interactivity and Visualization
12:30 - 1:30 Lunch, Convocation Room
1:30 - 3:00 Panel 4: The Medium’s New Message
3:00 - 3:15 Closing Remarks

Panels

Panel 1: The People Formerly Known as the Audience:

How effectively can users collectively create and filter the stream of news information? How much of journalism can or will be “devolved” from professionals to networks of amateurs? What new challenges do these collective modes of news production create? Could informal flows of information in online social networks challenge the idea of “news” as we know it?

Panel 2: Economics of News:

How will technology-driven changes in advertising markets reshape the news media landscape? Can traditional, high-cost methods of newsgathering support themselves through other means? To what extent will action-guiding business intelligence and other “private journalism”, designed to create information asymmetries among news consumers, supplant or merge with globally accessible news?

Panel 3: Data Mining, Visualization, and Interactivity:

To what extent will new tools for visualizing and artfully presenting large data sets reduce the need for human intermediaries between facts and news consumers? How can news be presented via simulation and interactive tools? What new kinds of questions can professional journalists ask and answer using digital technologies?

Panel 4: The Medium’s New Message:

What are the effects of changing news consumption on political behavior? What does a public life populated by social media “producers” look like? How will people cope with the new information glut?

Panelists’ bios.

Other Information

Registration: Registration, which is free, carries two benefits: We’ll have a nametag waiting for you when you arrive, and — this is the important part — we’ll feed you lunch on both days. To register, please contact CITP’s program assistant, Laura Cummings-Abdo, at lcumming@princeton.edu. Include your name, affiliation and email address.

Local Directions: The Friend Center Building is located on Olden Street between Nassau and Prospect. It is on the corner of William and Olden, across the street from the E-Quad and next to the Computer Science Building. Enter the main doors of the Friend Center Building and walk down the hallway. The Convocation Room is the first room on the right. To see its exact location, go to Princeton University’s campus map, click on the drop down menu and go to the Friend Center.

Commuting Directions: Please click on the link to get commuting directions to the Friend Center.

Recommended lodging: The Nassau Inn, Ten Palmer Square, Princeton, NJ 08542 - Phone: 609.921.7500 - www.nassauinn.com.

New Jersey Voting Machine Study

Computer scientists at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy are performing a study to determine the cause of discrepancies reported in election results in New Jersey’s February 5, 2008 presidential primary. The study is directed by Edward W. Felten, a Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton. The study was requested by the New Jersey Constitutional Officers Association, whose members include all of New Jersey’s county clerks.

The study is currently underway.

Any public information regarding the study’s status and conclusions will be posted here.

Shantanu Narayen

Title: Experience Matters-Computing Across the Cloud, Desktop, Mobile Device and TV
When: Monday, March 24, 2008 - 4:00 PM
Where: Friend Center Convocation Room

Shantanu Narayen is president and CEO of Adobe Systems, where he has held key positions in management, research, and development since 1998. Prior to joining Adobe he worked at Pictra (an early pioneer of digital photo sharing over the internet), Silicon Graphics, and Apple Computer.

This event will consist of a presentation and brief demonstration of AIR, a recently-introduced Adobe solution for the deployment of rich internet applications, followed by a Q&A and discussion of the future implications of AIR and related technologies.

For more information about Shantanu, see: Shantanu Narayen.

Policy Lunch: Privacy Breaches, Technology, and the Law

3.6.08
Noon-1:30 in room 302 of the Computer Science Building: Food at noon. Discussion begins at 12:25 pm. Everyone invited.

Following an example set by California in 2003, at least 39 states now require companies or other organizations that accidentally release private data to notify the affected parties (or, in some cases, the public). In most of these laws, there is a “safe harbor” that eliminates or relaxes disclosure requirements if the leaked data was encrypted. CSO magazine, a trade publication for corporate executives who handle security, has published an interactive map of the U.S. with details on each measure.

One clearinghouse has cataloged at least 110 disclosures that have been made since the start of 2008.

Our own Center’s recent research into “cold boot” attacks on encryption keys demonstrated that most encryption systems used on laptops can be decrypted using simple materials and well-documented methods. It’s not clear how many data breaches have gone undisclosed thanks to the encryption safe harbor rules. But in light of this most recent result, there are serious questions about the wisdom of including this technical standard in statutory language. Will legislation be revised? Are there more “futureproof” ways for legislators to express their intent, on this and other technology questions? What might ideal language look like – and what external supports would it need?

The discussion will be led by Alex Halderman, who was the lead author of our recent paper.

James E. Katz

Title: How Are Mobile Phones Changing Families?
When: April 30, 2008 - 4:30 PM
Where: Friend Center, Room 008

James E. Katz, Ph.D., is chair of the Department of Communication at Rutgers University where he also directs the Center for Mobile Communication Studies.

Now that more than 75% of Americans have mobile phones, it is worth asking how this particular technology is affecting the life and vitality of the American family. This question is important not only because families are increasingly communicating and coordinating via mobiles, but also because policymakers are ever more frequently looking to mobile phones to address critical social problems ranging from education to public safety.

In this talk, I review data from a range of sources including surveys, case studies, interviews and news reports to identify trends in the way mobile phones are used in family life. The implications of these practices are traced for parent-child relationships, social integration, and peer socialization. I also show how the mobile phone fits within the framework of other technologies of contemporary family life such as the Internet and automobile. Finally, based on these usage trends, I will consider the future of family life in the United States under a regime of mobile communication.

For more information about Professor Katz, please see his biographical statement

Garrett Graff

Title: The First Campaign: Why Tech is Central to Politics in 2008
When: Thursday, March 27, 2008 - 4:30 PM
Where: Robertson Bowl 001

Garrett M. Graff is an editor at the Washingtonian magazine, where he covers media and politics, edits the Capital Comment section, and serves as internet director. His first book, “The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web, and the Race for the White House,” was published in December 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He teaches graduate-level internet and social media at Georgetown University.

From the first speeches, the 2008 presidential campaign has been shaped by technology at every level—from the candidates speaking at Google headquarters about the need for innovation in the 21st Century, to viral campaign ads zipping back and forth on YouTube. What makes this election a particularly transformative one? How will the next president value tech policy and the increasingly interconnected issues of the economy, trade, technology, and education?

Jonathan Zittrain

Title: The Future of the Internet — and How to Stop It
When: Wednesday, March 26, 2008 - 4:30 PM
Where: Friend Center, Room 008

Jonathan Zittrain is a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, a founder of HLS’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and also holds the chair in internet governance at the Oxford Internet Institute. At Oxford he is a professorial fellow of Keble College.

Jonathan is currently spending the spring term visiting NYU and will come to Princeton to talk about the themes of his new book,
“The Future of the Internet — and How to Stop It.” In the book Jon warns of the new legal and regulatory challenges to the future growth of the net.

For more information about Jonathan, see: Jonathan Zittrain.

If you’d like more information about his book, see: The Future of the Internet — and How to Stop it

View Jonathan’s March 26th lecture here.

Event sponsored by CITP and LAPA.

Policy Lunch: Prof. Beth Noveck on “Wiki- government” and Peer-to-Patent

2.28.08
Noon-1:30 in room 302 of the Computer Science Building: Food at noon. Discussion begins at 12:25 pm. Everyone invited.

Beth Noveck, Director of the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School, will join us for a discussion of her recent research exploring how digital technologies could enable new, mass forms of civic engagement. Participants are strongly urged to look at her Winter 2008 article on “Wiki-government”.

Beth has helped launch a pilot project to test these ideas: An open, online system for interested parties to identify prior art relevant to pending patent applications. This project aims to reduce the number of poorly-grounded patents issued (particularly in the high-tech area). The project is known as “peer to patent”, and is detailed in an article Beth wrote for the Harvard Journal of Law &Technology. You can also visit the Peer-to-Patent site itself.

This will be a moderated and empirically grounded discussion. We intend to focus on the specifics of Prof. Noveck’s exciting work.

Policy Lunch: The Surveillance Debate

2.21.08
Noon-1:30 in room 302 of the Computer Science Building: Food at noon. Discussion begins at 12:25 pm. Everyone invited.

In August 2007, Congress passed, at the urging of the Bush Administration, the Protect America Act to relax the authorization requirements and judicial oversight provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. Last week, the Protect America Act expired and now a bitter fight rages on in Congress over how to proceed in updating FISA. The Administration argues that permanant PAA-like reforms are necessary to better collect foreign intelligence to protect Americans from future terrorist threats. Civil libertarian opponents say that FISA, as it currently stands, provides ample opportunities to target domestic communications of overseas enemies while retaining independent procedural court review.

We will review the legislative history behind FISA and how we got to where we are today. Looking ahead, how should Congress proceed in updating our digital surveillance laws? How will changes in telecommunications technology impact the the surveillance debate on balancing national security with civil liberties?

Executive Summary

« Back

It is widely assumed that a computer’s memory is erased immediately when it loses power. Reality is not so simple: most ordinary computer memory (DRAM) chips lose their contents gradually over a period of seconds to minutes, even if the chips are removed from a motherboard; and data can be recovered after minutes or hours without power if the chips are kept at a low temperature.

In our research paper, we present security attacks that exploit DRAM remanance (the tendency of DRAM to retain data even after power loss) to recover cryptographic keys held in memory. These attacks are nondestructive; they require, at most, momentary physical access to the target machine; and they do not involve exotic hardware or cooling techniques. They pose a particular threat to laptop users who rely on disk encryption products, since an adversary who steals a laptop while an encrypted disk is mounted could employ our attacks to access the contents, even if the computer is screen-locked or suspended.

We demonstrate this risk by defeating several popular disk encryption systems, including BitLocker (which ships with Windows Vista), FileVault (which ships with MacOS), and dm-crypt (which is used with Linux), and we expect many similar products are also vulnerable.

We report experiments we conducted to characterize DRAM remanence in a variety of memory technologies. Contrary to the expectation that DRAM loses its state quickly unless it is powered and regularly refreshed, we found that most DRAM modules retain much of their state without refresh, and even without power, for periods lasting seconds to minutes. At normal operating temperatures, we generally observed a low rate of data decay for several seconds, followed by a period of rapid decay. Newer memory technologies, which use higher circuit densities, appeared to decay more quickly than older ones. In most cases, we found that almost all bits decayed to predictable “ground states” rather than to random values.

We also confirmed that decay rates vary dramatically with temperature. We obtained surface temperatures of approximately -50°C with a simple cooling technique: discharging inverted cans of “canned air” keyboard duster directly onto the chips. At these temperatures, we typically found that fewer than 1% of bits decayed even after 10 minutes without power. To test the limits of this effect, we submerged DRAM modules in liquid nitrogen (-196°C) and saw decay of only 0.17% after 60 minutes out of the computer.

We present several attacks that exploit DRAM remanence to acquire memory images from which keys and other sensitive data can be extracted. Our attacks come in three variants, of increasing resistance to countermeasures. The simplest is to reboot the machine and launch a custom operating system kernel with a small memory footprint that gives the adversary access to the retained memory. A more advanced attack cuts power to the machine, then restores power and boots a custom kernel; this deprives the operating system of any opportunity to scrub memory before shutting down. An even stronger attack cuts the power and then transplants the DRAM modules to a second PC prepared by the attacker, which extracts their state. This attack additionally deprives the original BIOS and PC hardware of any chance to clear the memory on boot. We have implemented imaging kernels for use with network booting or a USB drive.

When attacks that involve cutting power result in memory corruption, the attacker will need to correct any bit errors in the recovered keys. If the error rate is low enough, straightforward brute-force searching will suffice, but brute force is not feasible when errors are more common. We describe novel error correction algorithms that can recover the correct keys even with relatively high bit-error rates. Rather than attacking the key directly, our methods focus on values derived from it, such as key schedules, that have a higher degree of redundancy. For performance reasons, many applications precompute these values and keep them in memory for as long as the key itself. We have devised recovery techniques for AES, DES, and RSA keys, and we expect that similar approaches will be possible for other cryptosystems. We have correctly recovered keys from several popular disk encryption products.

Standard doctrine says that software should overwrite all copies of a key when it has finished using it, but there are important cases where this is impractical because the same key is used repeatedly. Two examples are an encrypted disk, where the root key must remain available to enable file access, and an SSL Web server, where an RSA private key must be kept available for establishing new sessions (if hardware offloading is not used). We present fully automatic techniques for extracting such keys from memory images, even in the presence of bit errors. We demonstrate the effectiveness of these tools by attacking several widely used disk encryption products, including BitLocker (which ships with Windows Vista), FileVault (which ships with MacOS), dm-crypt (which is often used with Linux), and TrueCrypt.

It may be difficult to prevent all the attacks that we describe even with significant changes to the way encryption products are designed and used, but in practice there are a number of safeguards that can provide partial resistance. We suggest a variety of mitigation strategies ranging from methods that average users can apply today to long-term software and hardware changes. Each remedy has limitations and trade-offs. We conclude that there is no simple fix for DRAM remanence vulnerabilities.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Q. Who was responsible for this research?
A. This project is joint work by J. Alex Halderman (Princeton), Seth D. Schoen (Electronic Frontier Foundation), Nadia Heninger (Princeton), William Clarkson (Princeton), William Paul (Wind River Systems), Joseph A. Calandrino (Princeton), Ariel J. Feldman (Princeton), Jacob Appelbaum, and Edward W. Felten (Princeton).

Q. What encryption software is vulnerable to these attacks?
A. We have demonstrated practical attacks against several popular disk encryption systems: BitLocker (a feature of Windows Vista), FileVault (a feature of Mac OS X), dm-crypt (a feature of Linux), and TrueCrypt (a third-party application for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X). Since these problems result from common design limitations of these systems rather than specific bugs, most similar disk encryption applications, including many running on servers, are probably also vulnerable.

Q. What can users do to protect themselves?
A. The most effective way for users to protect themselves is to fully shut down their computers several minutes before any situation in which the computers’ physical security could be compromised. On most systems, locking the screen or switching to “suspend” or “hibernate” mode does not provide adequate protection. (Exceptions exist; some systems may not be protected even when powered off. Check with the developer of your disk encryption software for further guidance.)

Q. Don’t we already know that someone with physical access to my computer can steal my data?
A. The main purpose of disk encryption is to prevent someone who has physical access to your computer from accessing your data without your key or password. People commonly use these tools with the assumption that they provide substantial protection should their computers be lost or stolen. Unfortunately, we demonstrate that existing disk encryption systems rely on assumptions about computer memory that make them vulnerable to attack under certain common circumstances.

Q. Isn’t this the same as burn-in effects noticed by Gutmann? Can’t encryption programs rotate keys to get around this?
A. Gutmann notes that data written to RAM for extended periods may become “burned in,” allowing it to be easily recovered later. We describe a different effect: data written even momentarily to RAM persists for a non-trivial period of time. We exclusively rely on the latter effect to recover data. This allows us to recover keys even if, following Gutmann’s advice, those keys are stored only briefly at any single location within RAM.

Q. Isn’t your attack difficult to carry out? Don’t you need materials like liquid nitrogen?
A. We found that information in most computers’ RAMs will persist from several seconds to a minute even at room temperature. We also found a cheap and widely available product — “canned air” spray dusters — can be used to produce temperatures cold enough to make RAM contents last for a long time even when the memory chips are physically removed from the computer. The other components of our attack are easy to automate and require nothing more unusual than a laptop and an Ethernet cable, or a USB Flash drive. With only these supplies, someone could carry out our attacks against a target computer in a matter of minutes.

Q. You show specific brands of computers in your video. Why did you pick these brands? Are these brands especially vulnerable?
A. We studied and filmed the computers we had available to us. They were available to us because we previously decided to buy them for our own use. There is no reason to think these brands of computers are more or less vulnerable than any other brand.

Q. What can vendors do to protect against these attacks?
A. We discuss several potential mitigation strategies in our research paper, though many of these would require hardware modifications or substantial changes to the way disk encryption software is designed and used. The best software-only solution would be to encrypt the disk key with a password whenever the computer enters an inactive state, so that it will not be useful to an attacker even if it is copied from RAM. Unfortunately, this means the computer itself would not be able to access the disk until the user enters the password, so this approach might not be practical when the computer is in certain states, such as at a locked screen saver. (Some disk encryption products, including Microsoft’s BitLocker in “advanced mode,” implement a form of this protection when the computer is powered off or hibernating.)

Q. Have you notified vendors about these problems?
A. We provided advance notice of our findings to several affected vendors.

Q. Where does the name “Lest We Remember” come from?
A. This is the name of a short story by Isaac Asimov published in The Winds of Change and Other Stories.

Q. I don’t use disk encryption. Why should I care?
A. Even if you don’t use disk encryption, various parties may possess your sensitive data and use disk encryption to protect that data. In addition, while disk encryption software is our primary focus, our techniques are useful for recovering other data from your computer, such as sensitive data used to perform online transactions.

Q. Why isn’t screen-locking, suspending, or hibernating the computer good enough?
A. Our attacks rely on the ability to learn the contents of RAM, which contains the key used to encrypt your data. When you lock, suspend, or hibernate your computer, the contents of RAM may be preserved–either in RAM itself or elsewhere–and, if necessary, be made accessible from RAM later without a password or other authentication. Therefore, none of these modes prevent us from recovering the desired contents of RAM. (Exceptions exist; check with the developer of your disk encryption software for further guidance.)

Videos and Images

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Videos

Video overview
Full-size WMV [211 MB]

A brief, accessible
introduction to our results

Memory remanence
Half-size WMV [33 MB]
Full-size WMV [230 MB]

This video illustrates how an image stored in memory gradually decays over the course of 5 minutes after the computer is turned off.

Images

We loaded an image into memory, then cut power for varying lengths of time. After 5 seconds (left), the image is indistinguishable from the original. It becomes gradually more degraded, as shown after 30 seconds, 60 seconds, and 5 minutes. The horizontal bars result from the design of this memory chip, which represents some “1″ bits by the presence of charge and some by the absence of charge.

Ph.D. student Will Clarkson experiments with memory in Princeton’s computer science department.
By spraying an upside-down canister of multi-purpose duster directly onto the computer’s memory chips, we can cool them to -50 °C, greatly slowing the rate at which data decays.
In the upside-down position, the duster spray discharges very cold liquid refrigerant instead of gas.
A combination of frost and refrigerant around the computer’s memory chips. At this temperature, memory contents last for several minutes with almost no loss of information.
If we cool the memory and keep it cold, the information stored there will last for several minutes, even if we remove the memory from the computer.
Ph.D. student Nadia Heninger holds a container of liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen boils at -196 °C; we used it to test the limits of cooling memory to low temperatures.
We stored data in these memory modules, then cooled them, removed them from the computer, and placed them in a container of liquid nitrogen for an hour. After returning them to the computer, we found practically no information had been lost. (Using liquid nitrogen would be overkill for most attacks, since cheap, widely-available duster spray would adequately cool the chips.)
Coauthors Seth Schoen and Jacob Appelbaum celebrate after the team submitted the paper for peer review.

Experimenting with Memory Remanence

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Advanced users can try to observe memory remanence effects on their own systems by performing this simple experiment. (These instructions are written for Linux machines, but they can be adapted for other operating systems.)

  1. Create a Python program with the following code:

    #!/usr/bin/env python

    # a pirate's favorite chemical element
    a = ""
    while 1: a += "ARGON"

    This program will fill memory with copies of the word “ARGON”.

  2. Run the sync command to flush any cached data to the hard disk.

  3. Start the Python program, and allow it to run for several minutes. It won’t display anything on the screen, but after a while you should see hard drive activity as the memory fills and data gets swapped to disk.

  4. Deliberately crash the system by turning the power off and on again or briefly removing the battery and power cord.

  5. After the system reboots, look for the “ARGON” pattern in memory. You can use the following command to print strings of text contained in RAM:

    sudo strings /dev/mem | less

    If you see copies of the string “ARGON”, some of the contents of memory survived the reboot. You’ll see many other strings that were loaded into memory when the system restarted, and possibly other data left over from before it rebooted.

If you don’t see any copies of the pattern, possible explanations include (1) you have ECC (error-correcting) RAM, which the BIOS clears at boot; (2) your BIOS clears RAM at boot for another reason (try disabling the memory test or enabling “Quick Boot” mode); (3) your RAM’s retention time is too short to be noticeable at normal temperatures. In any case, your computer might still be vulnerable — an attacker could cool the RAM so that the data takes longer to decay and/or transfer the memory modules to a computer that doesn’t clear RAM at boot and read them there.

CITP Announces New Associated Faculty

Spring 2008 — We’re pleased to announce 11 new faculty associates of the Center. These individuals come from a wide range of departments and subfields, and all do work that touches in some way on the intersection of digital technologies and public policy.

  • David Blei, Assistant Professor in Computer Science: David’s research is in developing machine learning algorithms for uncovering structure in large data sets. He has focused on text data, developing “topic modeling” algorithms for finding the latent thematic structure of large corpora such as scientific publications, web pages, and news articles. His other research interests include image processing, approximate inference in probabilistic graphical models, and nonparametric Bayesian statistics.
  • Michael J. Freedman, Assistant Professor in Computer Science: Michael’s research interests span distributed systems, security, networking, and cryptography. He developed and operates the Coral peer-to-peer content distribution network and OASIS anycast service, which serve more than a million users daily. Other research has focused on privacy-preserving dataset operations, secure enterprise networks, IP intelligence, and various anti-censorship, anti-spam, and anonymization systems.
  • Stan Katz, Lecturer with Rank of Professor, Woodrow Wilson School, and President Emeritus, American Council of Learned Societies: Stan’s many interests include the future of digitally-enabled scholarship, which was the topic of an online, multi-institution symposium hosted by the Center this past fall. He contributes to the group blog Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
  • Brian Kernighan, Professor of Computer Science: Brian, whose distinguished career at Bell Labs included key roles in the development of AT&T Unix and the C programming language, is a leader in explaining computers and computer science to the lay public. His popular undergraduate course, Computers in Our World, introduces humanists and social scientists to computing, providing them with the background and depth to understand digital issues that are of current policy interest. Brian also writes the “Hello, World” column in the Daily Princetonian.
  • Larry Peterson, Professor and Department Chair of Computer Science: Larry is Director of the Princeton-hosted PlanetLab consortium. He has chaired the planning effort behind the GENI Project, the Global Environment for Network Innovation. The GENI platform could allow researchers to test alternatives to the incumbent technological standards that make the Internet work.
  • Markus Prior, Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Affairs: Markus studies the ways that new communications technologies shape political behavior. He is the author of the book Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections.
  • Jennifer Rexford, Professor of Computer Science: Jennifer, who came to Princeton in 2005 after eight and a half years at AT&T Research, is interested in Internet policy and Internet governance, stemming from her longstanding work in the area of network virtualization, network management and routing. Working with a multi-institution group of colleagues, she recently published a paper on the risks of network surveillance in the journal IEEE Security and Privacy — Risking communications security: Potential hazards of the Protect America Act.
  • Matt Salganik, Assistant Professor of Sociology: Matt, who joined the Princeton faculty in September, uses the web as a tool to answer sociological questions we might not otherwise be able to ask. For his dissertation, he worked with a team to build and study MusicLab, an online cultural marketplace.
  • Paul Starr, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, and Stuart Professor of Communications and Public Affairs.
  • Ed Zschau, Visiting Lecturer with Rank of Professor, Electrical Engineering: Ed, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist, teaches the popular course ELE 491: High Tech Enterpeneurship. From 1983 to 1987, he represented California’s 12th district (part of Silicon Valley) in the U.S. House of Representatives. He has taught at both Harvard and Stanford business schools.

Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys

J. Alex Halderman, Seth D. Schoen, Nadia Heninger, William Clarkson, William Paul, Joseph A. Calandrino, Ariel J. Feldman, Jacob Appelbaum, and Edward W. Felten

Abstract Contrary to popular assumption, DRAMs used in most modern computers retain their contents for seconds to minutes after power is lost, even at operating temperatures and even if removed from a motherboard. Although DRAMs become less reliable when they are not refreshed, they are not immediately erased, and their contents persist sufficiently for malicious (or forensic) acquisition of usable full-system memory images. We show that this phenomenon limits the ability of an operating system to protect cryptographic key material from an attacker with physical access. We use cold reboots to mount attacks on popular disk encryption systems — BitLocker, FileVault, dm-crypt, and TrueCrypt — using no special devices or materials. We experimentally characterize the extent and predictability of memory remanence and report that remanence times can be increased dramatically with simple techniques. We offer new algorithms for finding cryptographic keys in memory images and for correcting errors caused by bit decay. Though we discuss several strategies for partially mitigating these risks, we know of no simple remedy that would eliminate them.

Full research paper [PDF]

Introductory blog post

Frequently asked questions

Experiment guide

Source code

Videos and images

Policy Lunch: Crowdsourcing Wireless Coverage

2.14.08
Noon-1:30 in room 302 of the Computer Science Building: Food at noon. Discussion begins at 12:25 pm. Everyone invited.

The idea of pervasive WiFi, allowing users to connect to the Internet from wherever they happen to be, holds substantial appeal. In urban areas, existing WiFi technologies make this goal technologically feasible. Several municipalities have considered subsidizing WiFi deployment, but rolling out a new network with dedicated nodes is expensive. Earthlink, which had hoped to offer such a service commercially, announced last week that it is exiting the business.

Meanwhile, private users are putting up their own access points (mostly for their individual, local use). In general, these access points are locked down out of security concerns. But it’s possible to imagine a future where people to agree to share existing wireless access points, unlocking the defacto saturation coverage that already exists in most downtown areas. Bruce Schneier argues that leaving WiFi open should be considered a matter of basic politeness, while an NYTimes column concludes that is ethical to “use, but not overuse” WiFi signal, whatever that may mean.

Is this a collective action problem — and if so, how could it be solved?

Walt Mossberg

Walt Mossberg, Personal Technology Columnist for the Wall Street Journal

Title: The Next Stage of the Net & The Future of the Cell Phone
When: Thursday, February 21, 2008 - 4:30PM
Where: McCosh 10

Cell phones could be the next PC — but their future, and that of the Internet, might depend on the actions of large wireless carriers. Join us as Mr. Mossberg, the nation’s leading observer of high-tech gadgets, takes a look at the future.

For more about Walt, see All Things D.

Invited Lunch Lecture: Marc Smith — Enhancing Social Cyberspaces

WHAT:      Special CITP lunch lecture by Marc Smith, a sociologist studying online communities.

WHEN:       Thursday, February 7th, 2008, 12:30 PM
                   Lunch:  12:00 PM

WHERE:      Friend Center Convocation Room (Room 113)
                   Olden Street between Nassau and Prospect

The Microsoft Research Community Technologies group focuses on the study and enhancement of computer mediated collective action systems, now sometimes called social media or Web 2.0.  In this talk I will present recent developments in projects that highlight and attempt to enhance computer mediated collective action: Netscan, S.N.A.R.F., S.L.A.M. and A.U.R.A.

Netscan (http://netscan.research.microsoft.com) is a set of tools and services for online communities. Netscan manufactures “social accounting metadata” about Usenet newsgroups and web boards, providing reports about discussion spaces and individuals that highlight patterns of activity and contribution in tabular and graphical forms.  We have recently developed faster data update models, new Web service interfaces, a custom community portal page, and a new information visualization application (”Usenet Views”) that makes it simple to map and chart newsgroup communities. New sources of community content, from web boards, forums, discussion boards, email lists, and related repositories of threaded conversation are being analyzed by the Netscan system.  The analysis of social roles in online communities show promise for enhancing search results drawn from community content indexes, or a move from “page rank” to “people rank”.

Sharing Location and Media (S.L.A.M.: http://www.msslam.com) explores mobile social networking and photo sharing among users of Windows Mobile devices.  S.L.A.M. allows users to create groups of other users with whom they can share selected pictures and messages.  With their permission, users can also publish their location to one another.  This system is being extended to integrate additional sensors and richer support for space-time trails.  S.L.A.M. XR (eXeRcise!) (http://www.msslam.com/slamxr/slamxr.htm) is a web application in which we are exploring the social uses of these novel documents of travel patterns and activity. This project explores changing social practices around place and space and highlights the emergence of “hyperties”, social traces of connection manufactured through sensors and computation.

S.N.A.R.F. (http://www.research.microsoft.com/communities/snarf) applies the concepts explored in the Netscan project to personal collections of email.  S.N.A.R.F. provides tools to implement “social sorting” - reordering email collections based on the strength of different dimensions of the relationship between sender and receiver.  For example, using S.N.A.R.F., unread email from people can be ranked higher if they are often replied to by the user.  A by-product of this tool is the generation of a high-dimensional dataset describing the structure and temporal patterns created through the exchange of email overtime.  This dataset offers useful insights into the nature of email-based communications.  Results from initial deployments of S.N.A.R.F. will be presented along with recent images generated by the S.N.A.R.F. Views extension to S.N.A.R.F..

The Advanced User Resource Annotation system (A.U.R.A.: http://aura.research.microsoft.com) is a platform for Pocket PCs, Smartphones and mobile PCs that have various kinds of sensors such as barcode readers, digital cameras, WiFi signal strength detection, radio frequency identification (RFID) tag readers, and GPS. Using A.U.R.A. today, users can scan the barcodes on everyday objects in the home, office, or store and gain access to related information and services such as competitive pricing and product reviews. Other kinds of tags, such as tags placed on art or equipment asset tags, can be easily linked to related data through Web sites or Web service interfaces. This talk covers several developments in the mobile annotation space and describes future directions for A.U.R.A. and related services.

References:

Welser, Howard T., Eric Gleave, Danyel Fisher, and Marc Smith.  2007.  Visualizing the Signatures of Social Roles in Online Discussion Groups.  The Journal of Social Structure.  8(2).
http://www.cmu.edu/joss/content/articles/volume8/Welser/

Tammara Turner, Marc Smith, Danyel Fisher and Howard Ted Welser, Picturing Usenet: Mapping computer-mediated collective action, Journal of Computer mediated Communication, September 2005.

Viégas, Fernanda B., Marc Smith. “Newsgroup Crowds and AuthorLines: Visualizing the Activity of Individuals in Conversational Cyberspaces“, Proceedings of Hawaii International Conference on Software and Systems (HICSS) 2004.

Bio:

Marc A. Smith
www.research.microsoft.com/~masmith
http://netscan.research.microsoft.com
http://aura.research.microsoft.com
http://www.research.microsoft.com/communities/snarf

Marc Smith is a senior research sociologist at Microsoft Research specializing in the social organization of online communities and computer mediated interaction. He founded the Community Technologies Group, part of the Internet Services Research Center at Microsoft Research.

He is the co-editor of Communities in Cyberspace (Routledge), a collection of essays exploring the ways identity; interaction and social order develop in online groups.

Smith’s research focuses on computer-mediated collective action: the ways group dynamics change when they take place in and through social cyberspaces. Many “groups” in cyberspace produce public goods and organize themselves in the form of a commons (for related papers see: http://www.research.microsoft.com/~masmith). Smith’s goal is to visualize these social cyberspaces, mapping and measuring their structure, dynamics and life cycles. He has developed a web interface http://netscan.research.microsoft.com) to the “Netscan” engine that allows researchers studying Usenet newsgroups to get reports on the rates of posting, posters, crossposting, thread length and frequency distributions of activity.

This research offers a means to gather historical data on the development of social cyberspaces and can be used to highlight the ways these groups differ from, or are similar to, face-to-face groups. Smith is applying this work to the development of a generalized community platform for Microsoft, providing a web based system for groups of all sizes to discuss and publish their material to the web.

Smith received a B.S. in International Area Studies from Drexel University in Philadelphia in 1988, an M.Phil. in social theory from Cambridge University in 1990, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from UCLA in 2001.

Traveling to Princeton

Newark is the closest major airport, about an hour from Princeton. Philadelphia will work in a pinch, though it’s a bit farther and transportation options are worse.

The closest hotel is the Nassau Inn, the only hotel within walking distance of the university. Other hotel options, about a ten-minute cab ride away, are the Hyatt, the Westin, and (generally the cheapest option) the Palmer Inn.

Getting to Princeton

From New York:Take a New Jersey Transit train to Princeton Junction, then it’s a ten-minute cab ride to the university or your hotel.

From Washington, DC: Take an Amtrak train from Union Station to Trenton, then it’s a twenty-minute (roughly $40) cab ride to the university or your hotel. If you can get a train to Princeton Junction, that’s closer, but few Amtrak trains stop there.

From Newark Airport: If money is no object, use a car service for $100+; or take a cab for $80 or so. Otherwise ride the airport’s “AirTrain” monorail to the RailLink station, then catch a New Jersey Transit (not Amtrak) train on the Northeast Corridor Line to Princeton Junction, followed by a ten-minute cab ride to the university or your hotel.

Joining the Center

December, 2007:

As of next fall (fall 2008) the Center will be moving into a new building. Starting when the new building opens, and over the next several years as resources become available, we hope to add students, collaborating researchers, and eventually jointly-supported faculty to our ranks.

For the 2008-2009 academic year, there are two options open:

Externally funded fellowships: We are looking for top-notch thinkers to join our community for the year. The community sits at the nexus of digital technology and public life, and we are happy to explore possible collaborations with academics from a wide range of fields, public policy professionals, or anyone else who thinks they have a good reason to join us. We currently have only limited seed funding, and are therefore looking for people who have external funding available to them. We can offer full membership in the Princeton community, including an office and full use of the University’s information technology resources and libraries.

Graduate study: Graduate study can be pursued at the Center two different ways:

For either of these programs, as with all graduate study, the match to a specific adviser or a group of advisers is very important, both in terms of admissions and in terms of ultimate success.

Ph.D. students in both programs are financially supported, including tuition, fees, and a stipend. Students must apply for the graduate program, by the annual deadline.

Anyone who wants to know more about any of the above should contact David Robinson, the Center’s Associate Director.

Understanding the Networked Audience

Part of the Center for Information Technology Policy lecture series.

Once viewed as passive consumers, media fans today are not just active, they are organized. Fans use the internet to form communities and networks, to produce their own artistic materials, to publicize what catches their fancies, to form personal alliances and friendships, to petition producers, and even to raise money for charities. They influence media producers in unprecedented ways, challenging old hierarchies. In a world of MySpace and YouTube, engaging fans is no longer a matter of mass communication, but of interpersonal relationship formation. This talk explores these changes and their implications for fans, producers, artists, analysts, and policy-makers.

Nancy Baym is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Kansas. She has written many widely-cited articles about online fan community and social aspects of online interaction and is the author of the book Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community (Sage Press, Inc.). Her work has been translated into several languages. She is a co-founder and Past-President of the Association of Internet Researchers, an international interdisciplinary association. She is an award-winning teacher whose courses address the use of new communication technologies in creating identities, relationships and communities, interpersonal communication, and qualitative research methods. She serves on the editorial boards of the premiere journals in the field, including New Media & Society, The Journal of Communication, The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and The Information Society. Her blog about fan activity on the internet can be found at http://www.onlinefandom.com.

Thursday, November 29 2007
4:30 PM
Computer Science 105

Workshop: Computing in the Cloud

Thanks to the UChannel, we’re pleased to offer a
complete video of this event.

Monday and Tuesday January 14-15, 2008

Sponsored by Microsoft

Location: Friend Center convocation room, Princeton University campus

Open to the public — Registration information

“Computing in the cloud” is one name for services that run in a Web browser and store information in a provider’s data center — ranging from adaptations of familiar tools such as email and personal finance to new offerings such as virtual worlds and social networks. This workshop will bring together experts from computer science, law, politics and industry to explore the social and policy implications of this trend.

Monday, January 14 2007

10:00 - 11:15 Registration
11:15 - 11:25 Introductory remarks by H. Vincent Poor
11:20 - 12:00 Survey talk by Ed Felten
12:00 - 1:30 Lunch, Convocation room
1:30 - 3:00 Panel 1: Possession and ownership of data
3:00 - 3:30 Break
3:30 - 5:00 Panel 2: Security and risk in the cloud
5:00 - 6:00 Social hour

Tuesday, January 15

8:00 - 9:00 Continental Breakfast
9:00 - 10:00 Princeton research presentation and discussion
10:00 - 10:30 Break
10:30 - 12:00 Panel 3: Civics in the cloud
12:00 - 1:30 Lunch, convocation room
1:30 - 3:00 Panel 4: What’s next?
3:00 - 3:15 Closing remarks

Panel 1: Possession and ownership of data
In cloud computing, a provider’s data center holds information that would more traditionally have been stored on the end user’s computer. How does this impact user privacy? To what extent do users “own” this data, and what obligations do the service providers have? What obligations should they have? Does moving the data to the provider’s data center improve security or endanger it?

Panel 2: Security and risk in the cloud
How does the move to centralized services affect the security and reliability of users’ interactions with technology? What new threats are likely to emerge? How might provider behavior, user behavior, or government policy need to change in response to those threats? How does the “open source” ethos work in a cloud computing environment?

Panel 3: Civics in the cloud How and where can cloud computing best improve public knowledge and engagement in political issues? What has been achieved so far? What is possible in the long run? What moves by private actors, and what policy changes, might do the most to harness the power of cloud computing for civic engagement?

Panel 4: What’s next?
What new services might develop, and how will today’s services evolve? How well will cloud computing be likely to serve users, companies, investors, government, and the public over the longer run? Which social and policy problems will get worse due to cloud computing, and which will get better?

Registration, which is free, carries two benefits: We’ll have a nametag waiting for you when you arrive, and — this is the important part — we’ll feed you lunch on both days. To register, please contact CITP’s program assistant, Laura Cummings-Abdo, at lcumming - at - princeton.edu. Include your name, affiliation and email address.

David Robinson

David RobinsonAssociate Director
Center for Information Technology Policy
Princeton University

C231A E-Quad
Olden St.
Princeton NJ 08540
609.258.2175
dgr@princeton.edu

David Robinson is Associate Director of the Center for Information Technology Policy. Before joining the Center, he was the founding managing editor of The American, a business magazine published by the American Enterprise Institute. He has covered the social impact of technology for The American, The Wall Street Journal, and TIME, among other venues.

His work at the Center includes research and writing, strategic planning, and management of the Center’s operations. Among other activities, he sometimes blogs at Freedom to Tinker, and often shares interesting material through his Google Reader page.

David earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Princeton, magna cum laude, in 2004. He went on to study philosophy and politics at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar.

Recent publications

Policy Lunch: “Unocking and Relocking the iPhone”

Part of the Center for IT Policy lunchtime discussion series.

Thursday, Oct. 2
302 Computer Science
Food available at noon, formal discussion starts 12:25
Everyone is welcome.

In this week’s infotech policy lunch, we’ll talk about the battle to unlock the iPhone, Apple’s attempts to relock it, and the implications for end users.

Here’s some background reading:

Invited Lecture: Daniel Solove

The Future of Reputation

Part of the Center for Information Technology Policy lecture series.

Daniel Solove, an expert on privacy and the law, will paint a picture of the world that may be coming as the Facebook generation grows up.

A member of the law faculty at George Washington University, Professor Solove blogs at Concurring Opinions. Q&A, and a brief reception, will follow the talk. For more information, contact David Robinson, Associate Director of the Center for Information Technology Policy.

Monday, October 8, 2007
4:30 PM
Computer Science 105

Invited Lecture: Cory Ondrejka

Communities of Creation

Part of the Center for Information Technology Policy lecture series.

Cory Ondrejka
Vice President of Product Development
Linden Lab

Second Life is a massively-multiplayer 3D virtual world, unique in that it is completely created by its residents. Via a mix of technology, ownership, markets, and community, Second Life has dispelled many myths about the quantity and quality of user-created content. In addition, with over 150,000 customers and 20% monthly growth, Second Life is exploring amateur-to-amateur creation and education on an increasingly large scale. The talk will provide a brief overview of Second Life and discuss several examples of commerce, play, education, and research. Finally, upcoming technical challenges will be discussed, with a focus on the need for further research.

Thursday, April 20, 2006
4:30 PM
Computer Science 104

Invited Lecture Series

Upcoming Lectures

  • Thursday, September 18, 2008 - Ronald Lee, Government Data Mining and Commercial Data Profiling
  • Thursday, September 25, 2008 - Martin Wattenberg, Details TBA
  • Wednesday, October 1, 2008 - James Grimmelmann, Details TBA
  • Wednesday, October 8, 2008 - Luis von Ahn, Human Computation
  • Thursday, November 13, 2008 - Ethan Zuckerman, Details TBA
  • Thursday, November 20, 2008 - Phil Weiser, Details TBA

    • Past Lectures

    04.30.08 James E. Katz, How Are Mobile Phones Changing Families?
    03.27.08 Garrett Graff, The First Campaign: Why Tech is Central to Politics in 2008
    03.26.08 Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet — and How to Stop It (video available)
    03.24.08 Shantanu Narayen Experience Matters - Computing Across the Cloud, Desktop, Mobile Device and TV
    02.21.08 Walt Mossberg, The Next Stage of the Net and the Future of the Cell Phone
    02.07.08 Marc Smith, Enhancing Social Cyberspaces
    11.28.07 Nancy Baym, Understanding the Networked Audience
    10.08.07 Daniel Solove, The Future of Reputation

    Policy Lunch: “State of the Art”? Staying up to date in the digital environment

    Part of the Center for IT Policy lunchtime discussion series.

    Thursday, Sept. 27
    302 Computer Science
    Food available at noon, formal discussion starts 12:25
    Everyone is welcome.

    The number of research scholars working simultaneously may arguably have reached some kind of a threshold. John von Neumann did work across computer science, mathematics, and economics, whereas today even (say) cryptogaphers and applied computer security people can live in largely seperate worlds. One reason this has gotten hard