Category Archives: privacy

a hopeful note about PRISM

Posted on June 7, 2013 by ben

You know what? I’m feeling optimistic suddenly. Mere hours ago, all of us tech/policy geeks lost our marbles over PRISM. And in the last hour, we’ve got two of the most strongly worded surveillance rebuttals I’ve ever seen from major … Continue reading →

Posted in cryptorealism, privacy | Leave a comment

what happens when we forget who should own the data: PRISM

Posted on June 7, 2013 by ben

Heard about PRISM? Supposedly, the NSA has direct access to servers at major Internet companies. This has happened before, e.g. when Sprint provided law enforcement a simple data portal they could use at any time. They used it 8 million … Continue reading →

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Firefox is the unlocked browser

Posted on March 19, 2013 by ben

Anil Dash is a man after my own heart in his latest post, The Case for User Agent Extremism. Please go read this awesome post: One of my favorite aspects of the infrastructure of the web is that the way … Continue reading →

Posted in identity, mozilla, privacy, web | 4 Comments

connect on your terms

Posted on August 23, 2012 by ben

I want to talk about what we, the Identity Team at Mozilla, are working on. Mozilla makes Firefox, the 2nd most popular browser in the world, and the only major browser built by a non-profit. Mozilla’s mission is to build … Continue reading →

Posted in identity, mozilla, privacy, security, web | Leave a comment

cookies don’t track people. people track people.

Posted on February 19, 2012 by ben

The news shows are in a tizzy: Google violated your privacy again [CBS, CNN] by circumventing Safari’s built-in tracking protection mechanism. It’s great to see a renewed public focus on privacy, but, in this case, I think this is the … Continue reading →

Posted in privacy, web | 4 Comments

encryption is (mostly) not magic

Posted on December 21, 2011 by ben

A few months ago, Sony’s Playstation Network got hacked. Millions of accounts were breached, leaking physical addresses and passwords. Sony admitted that their data was “not encrypted.” Around the same time, researchers discovered that Dropbox stores user files “unencrypted.” Dozens … Continue reading →

Posted in crypto, mozilla, privacy, security, web | 14 Comments

and the laws of physics changed

Posted on July 3, 2011 by ben

Google just introduced Google Plus, their take on social networking. Unsurprisingly, Arvind has one of the first great reviews of its most important feature, Circles. Google Circles effectively let you map all the complexities of real-world privacy into your online … Continue reading →

Posted in identity, privacy, web | 6 Comments

with great power…

Posted on June 12, 2011 by ben

When Arvind writes something, I tend to wait until I have a quiet moment to read it, because it usually packs a particularly high signal to noise ratio. His latest post In Silicon Valley, Great Power but No Responsibility, is … Continue reading →

Posted in policy, privacy | 7 Comments

(your) information wants to be free

Posted on April 28, 2011 by ben

A couple of weeks ago, Epsilon, an email marketing firm, was breached. If you are a customer of Tivo, Best Buy, Target, The College Board, Walgreens, etc., that means your name and email address were accessed by some attacker. You … Continue reading →

Posted in data, privacy, security | 9 Comments

grab the pitchforks!… again

Posted on April 19, 2011 by ben

I’m fascinated with how quickly people have reached for the pitchforks recently when the slightest whiff of a privacy/security violation occurs. Last week, a few interesting security tidbits came to light regarding Dropbox, the increasingly popular cloud-based file storage and … Continue reading →

Posted in crypto, data, privacy, web | 10 Comments