Letters Remain

Tag: freedom

  • Privacy and Identity on the Internet

    Jeffrey Rosen, law professor at George Washington University (GWU), has called the current incarnation of the Internet “a digital world that never forgets” in a recent piece on privacy for the The New York Times. It’s an astute article looking at the idea of segmented identities, the search for a way to safely control our…

  • Northern Ireland’s Segregated Peace

    Twelve years after the signing of the Belfast ‘Good Friday’ Agreement signalled an end to the Troubles, Northern Ireland is in a state of ‘segregated peace’, says Kevin Cullen, describing the situation. Not only is there an official ethos of separate but equal, but an infrastructure underpinning it. There are three times as many so-called…

  • The CCTV Trade-Off

    That CCTV doesn’t substantially help in reducing crime has been shown beyond reasonable doubt, proposes Bruce Schneier, so now the pressing question is whether or not the benefits security cameras do afford are worthwhile. There are exceptions, of course, and proponents of cameras can always cherry-pick examples to bolster their argument. These success stories are…

  • Terrorism and Our Responses

    Shortly after the Northwest Airlines Flight 253 incident, Bruce Schneier providedĀ links to a number of articles that published interviews, quotes or essays from him. As expected, Schneier calmly reiterates his old advice that is as valid now as it was pre-9/11. The one not to miss:Ā Is aviation security mostly for show? The best defenses against…

  • Ability to Inhibit Prejudices Diminishes with Age

    As we age we become less able to inhibit prejudiced inferences, relying more on ethnic and sexist stereotypes to interpret situations, research into the science of prejudice suggests. There are a lot of clichĆ©s thrown around about the elderly, but one that seems to be trueā€”or at least is backed up by researchā€”is the belief…

  • Privacy Salience and Social Networking Sites

    Privacy could become a competitive feature of social networking sites, suggests Bruce Schneier in an article that looks at the interesting topic of privacy salience: the suggestion that privacy reassurances make people more, not less, concerned. Privacy salience does a lot to explain social networking sites and their attitudes towards privacy. From a business perspective,…

  • Prosperity, Freedom, Fertility

    When it comes to reproduction, are individuals who strive only for personal gainā€”as Adam Smith stated in The Wealth of Nationsā€””led by an invisible hand [ā€¦] to promote the public interest”? In The Tragedy of the Commons, ecologist Garrett Hardin suggested not and called for further government intervention to help control rising populations. Recent studies,…

  • Education and Surveillance

    After a school here in the UK installed a CCTV system in a classroom used for the teaching of an A-level politics class the students revolted; walking out only to return once they were reassured that the monitoring system was inactive and to be used solely as a teaching aid. The students’ plight was eventually…

  • Talk to Strangers

    In an article discussing collaborative spam filtering and the Tor project, Bruce Schneier offers some refreshing advice: telling children not to talk to strangers isn’t strictly the best advice: When I was growing up, children were commonly taught: “don’t talk to strangers.” Strangers might be bad, we were told, so it’s prudent to steer clear…