A nice way to protect your and your guests' privacy with a red led that flashes when the door is closed!

During World War II the Dutch resistance set fire to the Amsterdam municipal register to destroy the personal records of the city's inhabitants in an attempt to prevent Nazi occupiers from using that information to identify Jews. In commemoration, sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow examined the parallels between WWII and the dark side of information technology during the Godwin lecture held each year on Liberation Day. The lecture was held on the premises of Natura Artis Magistra where once the munic...

The fourth Global Conference on Cyberspace is currently taking place in The Netherlands. Hosted by a different government each year the conference aims to promote international collaboration on all things internet. One of the issues on the agenda, the emergence of algorithms, was extensively explored during the panel discussion The Ethics of Algorithms [working paper PDF]. Awareness about the power of algorithms reached a wider audience last summer when researchers published a study about the...

Modern day Trojan horses is what Curtis Wallen calls mobile phones, giving away their owners' locations and connections. Even CIA operatives have been betrayed by their own phones because their closed network raised a red flag. So Wallen set himself the laborious task to make a private phone call using only ubiquitous technology. Curtis Wallen is a photographer who explores the concepts of identity and privacy in the digital age. In the wake of the prosecution of hacktivist Aaron Swartz, he be...

Unless a geomagnetic storm throws us back into the pre-electronic age, communication networks will play an ever larger role in humanity's development. Yet too few people posses knowledge about how information technology works and the political impact these technological systems have on our societies, eroding one of the primary conditions for a good working democracy: a well-informed people. The Chaos Communication Congress, the annual hacker get-together in Germany organized by the Chaos Com...

Since Snowden's revelations about NSA spying, more and more people are concerned about online privacy and freedom. Current discussions about possible solutions divide people who think computers users should be educated in code from those seeking solutions in policy and law. But how can good policy decisions and legal frameworks be made if legislators, politicians and citizens don't even know the inner workings of the information networks they rely on? Mug shot business Last October at the Dutc...

Ubiquitous sensors, tell-tale WiFi signals, smart meter information, always-on wearable technologies and the roll-out of networked Internet of Things devices have created a world in which keeping control over your personal data borders the impossible, concludes a White House report exploring the benefits and challenges of Big Data. The report Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving Values concludes with a set of recommendations to protect privacy by policy measures such as passing nationa...

CyanogenMod, a community built distribution of Android, has teamed up with Open WhisperSystems to provide user friendly cross-platform encrypted text messaging. Usability and security do not play well together. Securing one's communications asks time and dedication of the user, an investment the majority is unwilling or unable to make. Because of this perceived lack of interest on the user side developers often favor usability over privacy and security features. Or so the story goes. But the...

Lavabit and Silent Circle, two secure email providers, launched the Dark Mail Alliance with the aim to provide private and secure email. Centered around a new email protocol which encrypts both content and metadata, they invite all mail providers to join the Alliance and make secure communications available on the web. The Dark Mail Alliance was announced on Inbox Love conference last week in an interview with Lavabit founder Ladar Levison and Silent Circle founder Mike Janke. [See video below....

The disclosures of ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden reveal vast data collection activities of Internet traffic. American, German, British and other secret services have been exposed to partake in large scale surveillance programs devoid of transparency or democratic oversight. Democracy can’t function properly if voters are kept in the dark, therefore whistleblowing plays a pivotal role in the democratic process by providing the public with information. Despite their importance there are very fe...