What Happens When Personal Information Gets Weaponized

The Government Needs Data to Protect Infrastructure, Without Imperiling Privacy

Michael Greenberger is a professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law and the founder and director of the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security. The following is an edited version of a phone interview with him about data collection in the age of cyberwarfare.

When you’re talking about information that can be used, or useful, in conducting cyberwarfare, that type of data is different from the conventional identification data, which when released is an invasion of a person’s privacy, or could be used in a …

How Big Data Replaced Don Draper

New Analytical Tools Are Making Ads More Effective—and Invasive—Than Ever

In the 1970s, I took a careful look at Oreos. Not the cookies themselves, mind you, but the way they were sold; I was an econometrics student at the University …

Do You Know Where Your Big Data Is?

Corporations are Constantly Gathering—and Selling—Your Personal Information, Says Adam Tanner. But You Don’t Have to Roll Over and Give it to Them.

The infamous East German secret police—the Stasi—have nothing on 21st century corporations when it comes to extracting personal information from individuals. Adam Tanner, author of What Stays in Vegas: The …

Will We Have Any Privacy After the Big Data Revolution?

Corporations Know More about Their Customers’ Lives Than Ever Before. But the Information Economy Doesn’t Have to Leave Us Exposed.

Does the rise of big data mean the downfall of privacy? Mobile technologies now allow companies to map our every physical move, while our online activity is tracked click by …

He’s No Whistle-Blower … For Now

It’s Not Yet Clear Whether Edward Snowden Revealed Illegal Behavior

Edward Snowden is many things to many people, and in recent days The New York Times and The Guardian have favorably editorialized about the overdue debate he has initiated. Rightly …

An Open (Of Course) Letter to My Friend, the NSA

Sorry, But It’s Really Tough Nowadays To Hire a Non-Leaking Hacker

Dear NSA,

We need to have a chat, so I trust you’re reading this.

Of course you are; good. Now, let’s see … how should I put this? Look, you’ve done a …