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FOI Topics and Links of the Week

August 10th, 2010  |  by Jennifer  |  Published in Android, cybersecurity, Future of the Internet, Generativity, privacy, wikipedia  |  2 Comments

Game on. A featureless update released recently by TI blocks a hack that allowed owners to write their own programs for the company’s Nspire calculator. It’s not immediately obvious what rationale TI used to justify the block. It isn’t under pressure to protect the commercial interests of a partner service provider. And worst case, a buggy calculator isn’t exactly as calamitous as a compromised cell phone. In any event, the competition illustrates what may become an increasingly common arms race between hardware companies trying to lock down their products and consumers who want to load the software of their choice on a device they own.

Disintegrating Droids. The Droid X comes pre-loaded with eFuse technology, which prevents it from booting with unapproved software. Motorola points out that triggering eFuse doesn’t permanently disable the phone — it can re-boot once approved software is reinstalled. Much better.

Neighborhood watch for software vulnerabilities. At the Black Hat security conference last week, Microsoft advocated for cooperation between software companies, researchers, and security vendors to share information on flaws and patches in order to keep users safe. Perhaps cross-pollination at the meeting will spread the idea of mutual aid to website owners as well.

Researcher remotely hacks ATMs. Also at Black Hat, a security researcher demonstrated that he could remotely order stand-alone ATMs to spew cash. While causing a remote ATM to dispense money at will is less appealing to the average thief than cracking open a proximate machine, an accomplice with a laptop in a van nearby could make it a profitable endeavor.

Apple rejects iPad magazine subscription app. Apple has nixed an app from Time, Inc. that would have allowed iPad owners to purchase a digital subscription to Sports Illustrated. Peter Kafka of Media Memo hypothesizes that Apple doesn’t want to give magazine publishers the access to personal user information they would have with an app. But publishers are likely salivating over the targeted advertising potential of mining that data. Plus, single-issue sales through iTunes are cumbersome and inefficient. There may be a confrontation brewing, unless publishers are willing to be satisfied with whatever options Apple grants them.

FBI challenges Wikipedia over logo. This week, the FBI accused Wikipedia of illegally displaying the agency’s official seal. Wikipedia has refused to remove the image from its FBI page. Wikipedians have a history of standing firm on controversial articles. It’s unclear whether a specific incident triggered agency action. The BBC notes that since the seal is published elsewhere on the Web, the FBI’s selective targeting of Wikipedia is also mysterious. And many reports on the story now include . . . images of the seal.
Zombie cookie revenge. A lawsuit filed in federal court alleges that several prominent websites used Flash or “zombie” cookies to surreptitiously collect personal user information. Flash cookies can re-create browser cookies deleted by users. They function as extra storage for websites and maintain user preferences, but can also be exploited to track users online.
—By Jennifer Halbleib

Responses

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  1. Seth Finkelstein says:

    August 10th, 2010 at 11:29 am (#)

    I actually talked with an FBI spokesperson. Regarding the reason they took action about Wikimedia, he said they act when they receive a specific complaint, and someone had made a complaint about them.

  2. Seth Johnson says:

    August 17th, 2010 at 12:07 pm (#)

    Re: Disintegrating Droids: It’s only better if it’s clear that these are not computers, and are owned by Motorola, whose encryption key is burned into the motherboard to control what you can do with information on the device.

Blog

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  • Help pioneer Casebook: The Next Generation
  • We at the H2O project are seeking a full-time Project Manager. H2O is an online platform for textbook development and distribution, currently in a pilot stage. H2O is based on the open source model – instead of locking down materials in formalized textbooks, we believe that course books can be free (as in free speech) for everyone to access and, equally important, build upon.

    Using H2O, professors can freely pull together materials for a course by selecting cases, editing those cases to the sections that are most relevant, and grouping them into readings. Once the materials are assembled, they can be copied in part or in whole by other interested faculty and then edited further.  H2O has been successfully piloted in JZ’s 1L Torts class, and will be rolling out further over the coming year.

    H2O’s project manager will play a leading role in shepherding H2O into its next phase, which will focus on developing new materials and incorporating additional features, in order to expand the platform beyond its law school roots.

    H2O is a  joint project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Harvard Law School library.  The Project Manager will be housed at the HLS Library and work in close collaboration with lead members of the Library Innovation Lab team; he/she will also work closely with the Berkman Center and current H2O teams. More info and job posting here.

  • Meme patrol: “When something online is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.”
  • I participated in the Berkman Center’s fascinating HyperPublic symposium in the summer of 2011.  When moderating a panel I invoked the aphorism that “When something online is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.”  It’s a way of encapsulating the idea that online free services usually make money by extracting lots of data from users — and then selling that data, or using it for targeted availability of those users for advertising, to advertisers.  In that sense, the advertisers are the clients, and the users enjoying free content are what’s being sold.  (Of course, sometimes that happens even when the user pays.)

    I didn’t coin the phrase, and since it was featured (and attributed to me!) in wordsmith.org’s wildly popular “word a day” as a thought for the day accompanying the word “enceinte” — I sought to nail down its provenance.

    The first use of the quote that we can find is as a comment within the famed MetaFilter community  in August 2010. The user’s name is blue_beetle, who might be someone named Andrew Lewis.  It’s entirely possible I saw it there, as MeFi is one of my five favorite sites on the Web.

    Similar sentiments (whether drawn from that source or independently invented) have been expressed by Bruce Schneier in October 2010 and by Douglas Rushkoff in September ’11.

    The phrase “you’re the product” also apparently appeared in a 1986 speech by President Reagan about the drug war.

    Just say know.

    –KA and JZ

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About Jonathan Zittrain

jonathan zittrain

Jonathan Zittrain is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School

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