wg on the Web...

Some recent stories

• Latest Friday's net.wars. (Also book reviews and more...)
• Letter to America column for Skeptical Inquirer (ongoing)
• Obituary for Susan Wojciscki, CEO of YouTube 2015-2023 (2024-08-14).
• Your Face Belongs to US (2023-10-04) - ($) Review of Kashmir Hill's book on facial recognition.
• Will L.A.’s Anti-Terrorist Subway Scanners Be Adopted Everywhere? (9/25/2018) - LA trials ThruVision's teraherz scanners, already in use to prevent theft from factories and attacks.
• alt.scientology.war, my best-known piece, which ran in Wired in 1995.

What follows are (or, sadly, in many cases were) links to as much of my work as I can find on the Web. All dates are American format, and articles under each publication heading appear in reverse chronological order. If a publication has only a few entries, that doesn't necessarily mean I wrote only those few articles for it; it may simply mean those articles aren't on the Net. My articles for the Guardian have their own page.

From Computer Weekly:

• National Archives races to convert millions of pages of EU law ahead of Brexit (8/17/2018).

From TechPresident:

• England's Care.data Fiasco: Open Government Data Done Wrong (4/21/2014) - how to alienate everyone, even the people who are on your side.
• Hadrian's Firewall: UK's New Internet Filter or Censor? (1/27/2014) - the UK's ISPs implement systems requiring subscribers to specify whether they want filtering.
• Teacamp: Where British Civil Servants Go to Brew Change from Within (9/3/2013) - read the article, come to teacamp.

From the Daily Telegraph:

Starting Out pieces have their own page.

• Will monitoring IT workers stop projects failing? (9/25/08) - Is it time for chartered professional status for IT people?
• IT steps up a gear to cope with the shift to services (2/15/08) - IT and the service industry.
• IT's still cool to be a computer expert (9/19/07) - Enrollment for advanced computer science degrees continues to drop while everywhere we are more and more reliant on highly skilled professionals. What's wrong with this picture?
• Networking for a brighter future (2/8/07) - Peter Gradwell talks about being the BCS's youngest-ever Fellow and BCS President Nigel Shadbolt talks about the future.
• How to get fit without leaving the boardroom (6/16/05) - Personal trainer Josh Selzmann works in offices, hotel rooms...
• Burst of spending that sits well in your office (5/9/05) - Getting good use out of important equipment.
• Inspector Gadget: Intervivo VOIP (12/13/04) - Product review.
*
• Ten years - but Susanna's book is worth the wait (10/7/04) - Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.
• Office technology: Act big to get the best returns (9/20/04).
• Ultimate challenge for personality profilers (5/6/04) - Am I really unemployable? Wendy gets tested by Career Psychology.
• It's party time with Warren Buffett (JPG) (5/5/04) - Woodstock for Capitalists, live..
  
• Investors dine out on Buffett's home-spun advice (4/24/04) - Preview of Warren Buffett's annual shareholders meeting.
• Inspector Gadget: Margi Presenter-to-Go (4/5/04) - Product review.
• Office technology: Careful planning the key to local area network (3/15/04) - Wireless and wired networks: what you need to know.
• Office technology: Lined up for the revolution (2/16/04) - Admin systems.
• Word has reached us of a revolution (1/21/04) - Voice over IP.
• Shielding yourself from hackers (1/7/04) - Advice to businesses.
• Inspector Gadget: Spam spam spam (7/21/03) - Review of anti-spam options.
• Inspector Gadget: SMC Barricade Router 7404BRA (6/23/03) - Product review.
• Inspector Gadget: Hewlett-Packard SB21 portable projector (11/11/02) - Product review.
• Inspector Gadget: Internet Relay Chat (10/21/02) - Review.
• Starting out: DVDsonTap (9/30/02) - Profile.
• Inspector Gadget: Pendrive (9/23/02) - Product review.
• Inspector Gadget: Twin-screen displays (9/9/02) - Product review.
• Inspector Gadget: HP Bluetooth printer 995c (8/29/02) - Product review.
• Inspector Gadget: Sony Clie NR-70V (7/1/02) - Product review.
• efile: Software is the key to a computer upgrade (5/26/02) - Whether to buy new kit or upgrade existing.
• Inspector Gadget: TDK Prodigital (5/20/02) - Product review.
• Inspector Gadget: Radio laptops for those on the move (4/8/02) - Product review; 802.11b wireless standard.
• Inspector Gadget: TiVo - it thinks outside the box (2/5/02) - Product review; TiVo.
• Welcome, readers of the Daily Telegraph Internet A-Z! (9/20/01) - A links page for readers of the book, also written by me.
• Coming soon to a monitor near you (9/6/01) - Major studios announce plans to distribute films over the Net.
• efile: It's money down for the web's Holy Grail (5/24/01) - Micropayments.
• efile: When your emails need to be anonymous (5/17/01) - How to anonymize email.
• efile: Protect your private lives, by appointing a more public face (4/12/01) - the rise of the CPO.
• Everybody can be Big Brother now (4/12/01) - gadgets that spy, heavily cribbed from the talk that Privacy Foundation's Richard Smith gave at CFP2001.
• Can Napster Change Its Tune? (3/8/01) - why filtering Napster won't work. (Update (5/6/01): it's clear that it's working better than I thought it would - but only if your goal was to get Napster traffic to move elsewhere. Webnoize reports that Napster traffic was down 22 percent in April. But traffic is ramping up elsewhere: Bearshare has made Gnutella a lot easier to use, and Aimster (now Madster, thanks to legal action from AOL) and Napigator let you use your familiar Napster software with an array of other servers. File-sharing is still growing, just in a different set of places.)  (Update2 (8/6/04): well, we all know what happened after that. Between the filtering requirement and the courts, Napster got shut down, and more decentralized P2P networks like KaZaA and Morpheus took over. The legal Napster 2.0 that exists now is nothing like the system that made file-sharing famous.)
• Bizarre world of online shopping (2/8/01) Snakes and two-headed teddy bears. Too late for inclusion, I found out you can even get a Klein bottle.
• On the lookout (10/19/00) - Report from the Privacy International "Scrambling for Safety" conference at the LSE.
• Drinking in the last chance saloon (10/5/00) - Napster's back in court, but Gnutella and Open Napster are waiting in the wings - if you can get them to work.
• Web browsing - for your eyes only (9/21/00) - metabrowsers.
• Olympics misses the Net (9/21/00)
• Why we want the snooping law to RIP (8/24/00)
• *Why Napster isn't music to recording firms' ears (8/3/00)
• Taking the bite from downloading bytes (7/27/00) - OK, OK, so I'm not the first person to get ADSL...
• Net call to protect top names (6/1/00) - Should celebrities own their own names online?
• Music business records a victory (5/11/00) - RIAA wins ruling against Napster.
• *Fool Britannia (5/4/00) - Britain: Not the best place to ecommerce.
• *What's the big idea? (4/27/00) - dumb ideas for online business. Or are they?
• *Interest free (4/20/00) - review of Making the Cisco Connection by David Bunnell with Adam Brate.
• Applauding lost millions (4/6/00) - review of Amazon.com: Get Big Fast by Robert Spector.
• Weather you like it or not (3/30/00) - the Met Office turns itself into the eighth most powerful supercomputing centre in Europe.
• *Law of the jumble (3/16/00) - review of e-topia, by William J. Mitchell.
• Our privacy endangered (3/9/00) - review of Database Nation, by Simson Garfinkel.
• How hackers can use your PC (3/2/00) - security risks online and the development of Trin00 for Windows.
• Bill revives attack on privacy (2/24/00) - UK government introduces the Regulation of Investigatory Powers bill, with provisions affecting the use of strong cryptography.
• Predators on the prowl 2/10/00 - the use and abuse of software patents.
• Credit when credit's due (2/10/00) - review of Paying With Plastic, by David Evans & Richard Schmalensee.
• Finish of a start-up (1/27/00) - review of Charles H. Ferguson's High Stakes, No Prisoners.
• Mammon, he's making eyes at me (1/20/00) - fantasy match-making for the online world after AOL announces its merger with Time-Warner. Letters
• Comfort in the obsolete (1/6/00) - computing by candlelight.
• *Ecommerce changes welcomed (11/25/99) - they've finally dropped cryptography regulation from the ecommerce bill (but see the RIP bill)..
• Hacker fears over fast net links (11/25/99) - if you can see them on the Net, they can see you.
• *Words and title deeds (11/25/99) - review of Owning the Future, by Seth Shulman.
• How to get Windows out of your system (10/28/99) - who uses Linux? Letters.
• Thank your lucky sums (10/28/99) - review of Taking Chances, by John Haigh.
• *Bubbles will always pop (10/21/99) - review of Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation, by Edward Chancellor.
• US to relax code barriers (9/23/99) - US plans to relax crypto regulations.
• Valley in the raw (9/23/99) - review of The Nudist on the Late Shift, by Po Bronson.
• Technology Information (9/2/99) Review of Who Gives a Gigabyte?, by Gary Stix and Miriam Lacob.
• Death of a language (8/19/99) - the last ASCII forum on CompuServe closes forever. Letters (8/26/99)
• Data bill draws a blank (8/19/99) - critique of the proposed electronic commerce bill.
• Useful additions (8/12/99) - Review of The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet, by Freeman Dyson.
• Home Office revises spy's charter (7/1/99) - planned revisions give British security services greater scope for wiretapping.
• It's just not tennis (7/1/99) - rant about the poor quality of tennis Web sites.
• Memes on the brain (7/1/99) - review of Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine.
• Wimbledon ticket boost (6/17/99) - wireless connections speed ticket resales at Wimbledon.
• How to shake off unwanted company (6/10/99) - guarding privacy online.
• New ways to play it safe (5/13/99) - safemakers go high-tech to keep ahead of safecrackers.
• Surf the Internet at escape velocity (5/13/99) - trying out Eutelsat's Convergence 1 high-speed service.
• Someone to watch over us all (4/15/99) - privacy issues raised at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference, held April 6-8, 1999 in Washington DC.
• Obituary too soon (4/8/99) Review of Infinite Loop: How Apple, the World's Most Insanely Great Computer Company, Went Insane, by Michael Malone.
• What's all the fuss about the king of the crackers? (4/1/99) - Kevin Mitnick pleads guilty.
• Furby hackers go for heart and soul (3/19/99) - Hardware hacking: warped Furbies and the dark side of Microsoft Barney.
• The limits of history (2/11/99) - Review of Wired Life by Charles Jonscher.
• *France to lift cryptography restrictions (1/28/99)
• Encryption proves a slithery beast to control (1/21/99) - RSA Data Security sets up an Australian subsidiary to get around the US export laws.
• Has CompuServe finally sold its soul? (1/14/99) - changes at CompuServe (including the closure of the Fleet Street Forum, which I run) mean the service's appeal to business and professional users is dying.
• Comfortable in Cambridge (1/7/99) - Microsoft's research lab settling in.
• Corporate con? (1/7/99) - what happens if/when big companies start masquerading as disinterested fans online?
• Internet pioneer sets sights on new worlds to conquer (12/24/98) - Interview with Vinton Cerf re developing deep-space protocols to extend the Internet into outer space. Text version here.
• Losing cash and all for a good cause (12/17/98) - the prospects for public online gambling.
• Baring the essentials (11/5/98) - review of Donald Norman's The Invisible Computer.
• *The new providers (10/22/98) - the impact of new services like Dixons 'Freeserve' on UK ISPs.
• Now, you didn't want to do that (10/15/98) - the hell-made marriage of technical support people and confused users.
• Trade-in bait for PC buyers (10/1/98) - Gateway launches YourWare.
• Gates ready for round two of monopoly powers suit (9/10/98) - Microsoft vs. the DoJ, part IV.
• On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple (7/30/98) - Review of the book by Gil Amelio.
• Signs of insecurity in cyberspace (7/2/98) - cryptography legislation is on its way.
• Old dials tell any number of tales (6/25/98) - where do phone numbers come from?
• The mutter with machines (6/25/98) - current progress in speech recognition at IBM.
• *Universities in chains (5/28/98) - the drive to put courses online.
• *What did you do in the Internet wars, Daddy? (5/21/98) - excerpt from net.wars.
• What should we do with all this cash? (4/23/98) - what to do with money intended to improve the intellectual infrastructure of the Net.
• Be old-fashioned - get it fixed (4/23/98) - when equipment breaks down.
• The End is Nigh (2/12/98) - predictions of doom and gloom at the Regent Conference, held in London January 29, 1998.
• *Microsoft avoids one court battle, but the war is still to be won (1/30/98) Microsoft vs. the DoJ III.
• Future work stations (1/8/98) - a somewhat Anglicized version of top ten new jobs for 2002 (original version appeared in Salon, see below)
• Millennium Meltdown (12/30/97) - so you think the Y2k bug won't affect you because you don't have a computer...
• Make or break-up for Microsoft...one day (with Tom Standage, 12/23/97) - Microsoft vs. the Department of Justice part II.
• Pretty Good Phil Bounces Back (12/16/97)
• Why the Internet won't deliver world peace (12/9/97) - arguing with Nicholas Negroponte's speech to the EC.
• Leading the spam to the slaughter (12/2/97) - more on junk email and the planned "Spamford" Wallace backbone.
• Not content with no good content (11/25/97) - computer animation at the London Entertainment and Animation Festival.
• The Net on trial (11/18/97) - why the Net is not TV.
• Lords of their domain set for identity crisis (11/11/97) - more on plans to change the domain name structure of the Internet.
• March of the telephone monoliths (11/4/97) - Worldcom's bid to become the world's largest ISP.
• Hauled up in the name of justice (10/28/97) - Department of Justice action against Microsoft.
• Ready to wear (10/21/97) - wearable computers at MIT's Media lab.Text version here.
• Talk is cheap, but not on the phone (10/8/97) - if Americans can have free local phone calls, why can't British people?
• Groceries Slipping Through the Net (9/30/97) - Tesco's home shopping service reassessed
• (Thin system could prove a heavyweight contender (9/23/97) - Data General introduces network appliances.
• Giving the Web back to the user (9/9/97) - reinventing the Web with metadata and XML.
• Into the swing of perfect timing (8/26/97) - Professor Emeritus Edward Hall's attempt to build the perfect pendulum clock.
• Raking muck from dirt in cyberspace (8/26/97) - Matt Drudge and online gossip
• The Truth is...redundant (8/12/97) - reality ends here (it was the science fiction issue)
• How to keep Net porn in check (8/5/97) - ratings on the Net. Readers sent some letters about this one.
• Wrestling with shadows (7/15/97) - 10 years of the Shadow Project's attempt to build a general-purpose robot.
• Pointing to a more direct response (7/8/97) - planning the future of electronic government.
• Net should show us those other matches (6/24/97) - a tennis fan writes as Wimbledon 1997 gets underway. Letter with correction by the BBC (7/1/97)
• What's the key to electronic commerce? (5/27/97) - report on the one-day conference Scrambling for Safety, organized by Privacy International and EPIC to debate British cryptography policy.
• If music be the food of love, play on - and pay up (5/20/97) - hi-fi nuts, people with more money than ears. (NB: in the original version of this article, the musician sitting on the coffee table was Yo-Yo Ma.)
• Pulling power of push is widening the net (5/6/97)
• Digital diplomacy a two-edged sword (4/22/97) - report on the Virtual Diplomacy conference, held April 1-2, 1997 in Washington, DC.
• DTI threatens privacy (4/1/97) - announcement of the DTI's proposals for a network of trusted third parties. Letters (4/15/97)
• Smartest dummy of them all (3/11/97) - interview with John Kilcullen, the man behind the Dummies books.
• *Controlling interests (2/25/97) - regulating the Net.
• How the PC becomes a supermarket trolley (12/24/96) - grocery shopping online (personal note: the service has not improved since then, as noted in a later piece. Update (2020-11-23): a few years after that, I discovered the shop around the corner would get me anything I wanted, pretty much. Haven't been near a supermarket since.
• Treaty may restrict access to statistics (12/3/96) - the database treaty under consideration by WIPO.
• *Trust no one (12/3/96) - conspiracy theories around the Net.
• Lining up against junk emailers (11/26/96) - more on junk email.
• Anger at junk sale (10/29/96) - the child pornography spam.
• *A grip on the net (10/1/96) - the setting up of the Internet Watch Foundation.
• Part of the picture (9/24/96) - review of Cybernation, by Neil Barrett.
• Is there a doctor anywhere in the online house? (9/17/96) - real medicine and quack cures on the Net. With Quacks and cures.
• A girl's best friend (9/17/96) - review of Wired Women, edited by Elizabeth Reba Weise & Lynn Cherny.
• The numbers game (8/27/96) - Internet demographics.
• New site rekindles privacy debate (8/13/96) - publication on the Net of Oregon DMV database. Text version is here
• *Admen test the water (8/6/96) - advertising on the Web.

From Scientific American:

• Will L.A.’s Anti-Terrorist Subway Scanners Be Adopted Everywhere? (9/25/2018) - LA trials ThruVision's teraherz scanners, already in use to prevent theft from factories and attacks.
• Why Hillary Clinton's E-Mail Server Is Less Odd Than You Think (3/11/2015).
• Heartbleed Software Snafu: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (4/16/2014). What we knew, a week later.
• The "Heartbleed" Internet Security Flaw: What You Need to Know (4/10/2014).
• Hidden "Signature" in Online Photos Could Help Nab Child Abusers (3/3/2014) - work by researchers Riccardo Satta and Pasquale Stirparo showing the unique sensor pattern noise deposited on images taken by digital cameras persists even after the alterations made in the process of uploading them to social media. (A cut-down version of this piece appeared in the May 2014 print issue.)
• Digital Activist's Suicide Casts Spotlight on Growth of Open-Access Movement (1/23/13) - Aaron Swartz's death shocked many, but can't derail the growing worldwide adoption of open access policies and journals. Update (2/16/13): Yesterday, the US Congress introduced FASTRA, a bill intended to reinforce and extend the open access policies already in force (and under fire from publishers) at the National Institutes of Health. Separately, there is a movement pushing for the passage of "Aaron's Law", which would decriminalize certain types of unauthorized access, to protect future cases like Aaron's from overzealous prosecution.
• Time Shift: Is Big Ben Falling Down? (7/19/12) - well, no, not really, despite the best efforts of Britain's tabloid press.
• Getting Voice: New Speech Synthesis Could Make Roger Ebert Sound More Like Himself (9/13/11) - Edinburgh-based CereProc works from Ebert's extensive back catalogue of recordings to build him a personal synthesizer.
• * Pending Reforms May Provide the Scientific Community Relief from the U.K.'s Far-Reaching Libel Law (1/24/11) - See Libel Reform for progress.
• * Down to the Wire (4/08) - A Grammy Award for restoring music through electrical hum.
• Jam Session (7/07) - RFID tags vs. personal privacy.
• Dial "I" for Internet (2/07) - BT to replace its entire network with one based on IP.
• Who pays? (6/06) - The battle over network neutrality.
• * Wait a second (11/05) - Time is precious. That's why we're spending years discussing seconds.
• Flagging Copy Rights (9/05) - DVB works on copy protection/content management.
• * Connection Blues (11/04). Bluesnarfing. You know you want to.
• Anonymous Trust (8/04). Making trusted computing work with privacy, at least partly.
• Missing movement (4/04). Finding better ways to track animals from farm to dinner plate.
• * Ballot Breakdown (2/04) - The flaws in e-voting. For updates on this topic, see Rebecca Mercuri's site on the subject.
• * Handicaps in CAPPS (9/03) - Problems with computerised passenger screening.
• A Man, A Plan, Spam (5/03) - Everyone's got a plan for dealing with spam. Including Lawrence Lessig.
  
• Connect the Pings (3/03) - You know all those mobile phone masts? They could be a radar system.
  
• Radio Space (9/02) - Easing radio spectrum scarcity with new technology.
• URLs in Urdu? (6/02) - Multilingual web addresses have homographic hacking possibilities.
• I Seek You (3/02) - new security technologies can't keep us as safe as we'd like, but they sure can invade privacy.
• Surveillance by Design (9/01) - European cybercrime treaty could end privacy on the Net.
• Wireless Wonder (8/01) - how 802.11b could become the wireless standard of choice.
• To Protect and Self-Serve (3/01) - will IBM and Intel embed copy protection into hard disks (it's sure a bad idea if they do)? On February 23, IBM announced it was abandoning the idea. The Industry Standard writeup cites the original source of the stories, The Register, and also my article.
• No E(asy) Cure (2/01) - why e-voting couldn't have fixed what happened in Florida.
• Bits of Radio (12/00) - in the field of digital audio broadcast, the US is out of step with the rest of the world AGAIN.
• Octothorpe Standard (10/00) - what possessed Microsoft to pick C# as a name for its new language when you can't search on such a term effectively?
• Circles of Trust (8/00) - "Have you ever seen me before?" Nasrudin asked the shopkeeper. "No." "Then how can you be sure it is me?"
• Cease and DeCSS (5/00) - DVD cracking for fun and necessity.
• Mobilizing the Internet (3/00) - with Internet uptake flattening out, is mobile/wireless the next big wave?
• Making Money the New-Fashioned Way (1/00) - online trading.
• No Way to Run a Network (11/99) - more on the efforts to revamp the domain name system.
• When Publishing Could Mean Perishing (9/99)
• On-line U (7/99) - two reports cast doubt on the efficacy of online learning.
• Putting the squeeze on music (5/99) - the recording industry declares war on the Net over MP3.
• $Private Parts (2/99) - the US and Europe fight over privacy legislation.
• Beating the Tempest (12/98) Work by Ross Anderson on anti-Tempest software.
• The End of the World As We Know It (10/98) - Y2K survivalism.
• Opaque Transparency (9/98) - computers are getting harder, not easier to use.
• Access Denied (8/98) - the falling numbers of women in computing.
• Bringing down the Internet (5/98) - ways to kill the Net. Taken from a panel presented by Matt Blaze and Steve Bellovin at CFP98.
• Downloading As a Crime (3/98) - the passage of the NET Act.
• Wearing Your Computer ($) (Cyberview, 1/98). Text version here
• Master of Your Domain (Cyberview, 10/97) - plans to change the domain name structure of the Internet. (2/98)

From Infosecurity Magazine:

• Accelerating Great British Cybersecurity Startups (7/6/2018) - several accelerators seek to boost British cyber security startups, including one from GCHQ.
• Are Humans the Weakest Link in the Security Chain? (11/17/2017) - the National Cyber Security Centre's shift to people-centred security, based on work done at RISCS.
• The Impact of a Breach: When the Fallout Means More than Money (8/21/2017).
• The UK Cyber Strategy: How It Measures Up (2/20/2017) - the government is on a track, but is it fit for purpose?
• Seconomics (10/11/2016) - the impact of economics on security; what spending makes sense?
• How Safe Behind the Privacy Shield? (6/24/2016) - Privacy Shield replaces Safe Harbor, to uncertain effect.
• Trust Who You Are Online With (4/1/2016) - the knotty problem of how to run a business without violating trust.
• Health, Safety, and Security (8/25/2015) - data breaches in the health sector damage more than patient confidentiality.
• The Cyber-Threat of Things (4/7/2015) - IoT brings new risks.
• A Troubled Marriage: Can Seecurity and Privacy Co-Exist in the Enterprise? (10/28/2014).
• Navigating the Potential Windows XP Apocalypse (9/11/2014) - Microsoft may have discontinued support, but XP lurks in all sorts of places. I followed up the research for this piece with net.wars: Software is forever.
• Bridging Information Security's Enablement Gap (7/15/2014) - users are not the enemy; build relationships across departmments; analyze risk.
• The Internet of Things: The Good, the Bad, and Everything in Between (6/23/2014). This piece was "highly commended" in the Best Overall Information Security Feature of the Year at the BT Information Security Journalism Awards 2014.
• Secure Giving: Information Security Challenges in the Third Sector (2/13/2014).
• Cracking the Computer on Wheels (8/20/2013) - car hacking, as seen a month or two before Defcon, when even fancier cracks were announced (by some of the same researchers).
• Arab Uprising: Information Security in the Middle East (5/28/2013).
• Auditors: Friend or Foe? (3/26/2013).
• Intelligent Design: the Evolution of Security Technology (November/December 2012) - is "intelligence" a genuinely new paradigm for security or just a marketing ploy?
• Data Breach insurance: underwriting your liabilities (10/22/12) - where there are fines, class action suits, and public scorn there is an insurance opportunity.
Security's Alleged Disappearing Act (8/2/12) - trends changing the future of security. The Anatomy of ID Theft (3/8/12) - be careful out there. Shortlisted for "Best cybercrime feature", BT Security Journalism awards 2012. A superior (infosec) education (1/31/12) - a brief guide to university degree courses.
• Researching the researchers (4/15/11) - Where does security innovation come from? [purchase required]
• The Dirty Secrets of Green IT (3/28/11) - ...or the insecurity secrets of green IT.
• Charitable misgivings (11/2/2010) - It's all about trust.
• How not to spend your infosec budget (9/1/10) - Understand your problem...or waste money solving the wrong one.
• The charmed life of cybercrime (3/8/10) - Criminals used to rob banks because that's where the money is; now they stay home and perpetrate electronic fraud instead because that's where the guns and the risk of getting caught and punished...aren't.
• The user is not the enemy: How to increase information security usability (8/3/09) - Overtighten security at your peril.
• Fasten your seatbelts: Information security and the travel industry (6/26/09) - Travel information is more private than you might at first think. (For more on this topic, see Edward Hasbrouck's blog.) Shortlisted for "Best Privacy Feature", BT Security Journalism Awards 2010.
• ID cards - protecting or endangering our privacy and security? (5/22/09) - Privacy is like a big yellow taxi: you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
• Complying to a false sense of security (10/1/08) - The penalties for non-compliance with the Data Protection Act.
• Politically speaking (5/1/08) - The UK government still doesn't seem to be taking information security seriously....
• Watch this congested space (Apr 08) - Road pricing systems reduce congestion, but increase privacy and security issues. Download in PDF form.

From New Statesman:

• On the side of neutrality (7/24/08) - A conflict of interest over traffic charges threatens the web's long-term potential.
• Selling out the little guy (7/21/08) - Has eBay forsaken the community values that made it such a success?

From the Independent:

• The last spin of the reel (4/11/05) - digital projection and its potential to change film culture. Sure miss those sprockets.
• Are we e-fficient? (11/23/04) - the state of egovernment.
• System alert: web meltdown (9/8/04) - the Internet is falling, the Internet is falling! Pictures at 11.
• Remote control (7/7/04) - WIPO considers "broadcasting rights".
• Friends like these (4/14/04) - Social networking sites. My friends are your friends. Aren't they? Define friend...
• Simple pleasures (9/3/03) - Making webpages accessible. (Update, 11/27/09: Ironically, this article has disappeared from the website.)
• Ever feel you're being watched? (5/14/03) - Biometric surveillance.
• You looking at me? (5/14/03) - Contextual advertising.
• Roger Needham: A very forward man (3/10/03) - Feature about the recently deceased dean of Cambridge computer science.
  
• Warning: system overload (2/10/03) - The Dalnet DDoS attacks. (Update, 8/6/04: the network has never really recovered.)
  
• The limits of freedom (11/11/02) - John Perry Barlow on the erosion of civil liberties.
• Online payment systems: Easy money? (9/9/02) - Should PayPal and other e-paymentschemes be regulated?
• The name game (6/10/02) - The fall of RealNames and the demand for non-Latin Web browsing.
• Electrical register (5/13/02) - Can technology fix voter apathy?
• All their own work (4/15/02) - Plagiarism in the schools: blame the Internet?
• What are you looking at? (3/25/02) - policy change at the Internet Watch Foundation.
• Piracy is a threat, but the Internet is the performer's best friend (5/28/98) Op-ed: music industry campaign to regulate the Net.
• Putting psychics to the test (12/9/96) Suits by Uri Geller against paranormal investigators James Randi and the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP)
• All you never knew about the Net (7/15/96) Profile of Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.
• Father to the ethernet (6/10/96) Profile of Bob Metcalfe, founder and former CEO of 3Com.
• The English hero (6/29/96) Profile of Michael Cowpland, founder and CEO of Corel.
• Still trying to make headlines (1/29/96) Rupert Murdoch revamps his online service.
• His PC should be proud of him (11/20/95) Profile of Peter Cochrane, head of R&D at BT.
• An unquiet Frenchman and his small software sidekick (7/24/95) Profile of Philippe Kahn.
• I'd like people to experience the thrill of hacking (7/17/95) - profile of Emmanuel Goldstein, editor of 2600: the Hacker Quarterly.
• He's the man they call the digital Nostradamus (6/5/95) Profile of Nicholas Negroponte.
• Recalling screen icons as time goes by (12/31/93) Computers. Review of Microsoft Cinemania 94.
• Collecting shiny objects on electronic impulse (9/10/93) Computers. Guide to shopping online.
• Telephone help with no axe to grind (6/25/93) Computers. Getting the best out of telephone technical support.
• Guinea-pigs running after a mouse (8/17/92) Science. What's wrong with computers.

From New Scientist:

• Your Face Belongs to US (2023-10-04) - ($) Review of Kashmir Hill's book on facial recognition.
• Why I've built a search engine that doesn't follow you (6/20/2013) - interview with Gabriel Weinberg, founder of DuckDuckGo.
• Why the world is arguing over who runs the Internet (12/10/12) - as government representatives convene at the ITU for the World Conference on International Telecommunications, how worried should we be?
• Remember this... (9/6/03) - Interview with Elizabeth Loftus, critic of recovered memory therapy.
• How do I know who you are? (7/21/03) - Interview with James L. Wayman, biometrics expert.
• Fear and grokking on the war crimes trail (3/29/03) - Interview with Patrick Ball, deputy director of the Science and Human Rights Program at the AAAS.
• * Bots: The Origin of a New Species (11/1/97) - review of the book by Andrew Leonard.
• * Collected works (5/31/97) - reviews of John McLaren's Press Send, Melanie McGrath's Hard, Soft, and Wet, Brian Loader's The Governance of Cyberspace, and Dave Carter's Web Works.
• * Computer (11/30/96) - review of Martin Campbell-Kelly's and William Aspray's book on the history of the information machine.
• * Safe in the digital playpen (2/24/96) - review of Sherry Turkle's Life on the Screen.
• * A fistful of fascinating facts (2/5/94) - review of James Trefil's 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Science.

From the Times Higher Education Supplement

Why hasn't everybody gone surfing in the USA? (2005-05-06) - Review of Digital Nation: Toward and Inclusive Information Society, by Anthony G. Wilhelm.

Is Linux the front line in the class war? (2004-10-08) - Review of A Hacker Manifesto, by McKenzie Wark.

Why I did not laugh at psychic Shirley (2005-01-07 - An explanation of my rather dour reaction to an incident in which a comedian posed as a psychic to wind up skeptics.

A refresher in basic Geek (2004-02-06) - Review of The Second Information Revolution, by Gerald Brock and Me++, by William Mitchell.

Bullied nerds seek financial revenge (2000-11-03 - Review of Cyberselfish, by Paulina Borsook.

Sell your house to elude barbarians(2000-03-31) - Review of The New Barbarian Manifesto, by Ian Angell.

A sound initiative (1999-08-13) - Profile of start-up Internet record label, Hanging Stone.

Reviews (1998-12-25) - White Noise: An A-Z of the Contradictions in Cyberculture, by Andrew Calcutt; The Advanced Internet Searcher's Handbook, by Phil Bradley; Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting Computer-Mediated Communication and Community, edited by Steven G. Jones.

Group review (1998-09-11): Wired Up: Young People and the Electronic Media, by Sue Howard; Managing Your Software Project: a Student's Guide, by Ian W. Ricketts; A Network Orange: Logic and Responsibility in the Computer Age, by Richard Crandall and Marvin Levich; DSM-IV Internet Companion, by M. Robert Morrison and Robert F. Stamps.

From The Register:

• So how will the new US prez handle IT issues? (5/29/08) - Representatives of the Obama and McCain campaigns answer.
• Internet censorship and mission creep (5/27/08) - Saving people from themselves.
• Voter-befuddling tricks moving online (5/27/08) - People are being tricked out of their right to vote.
• The Transparent Society revisited (5/26/08) - Another look at David Brin's 1998 book.
• Hacking for public health (3/10/08) - Open-sourcing brain scans and mapping the flu.
• DNA sequencing for the masses (3/7/08) - How far are we from Gattaca?
• Stamen punts new approach to data aggregation (3/6/08) - Let the data choose the questions.
• A private view of Phoenix and Mars (10/14/07) - Countdown to May 25, 2008, when the Phoenix Mars lander, made in Tucson, hits the dirt. Plus, a visit to Kitt Peak.
• US demands air passengers ask its permission to fly (10/12/07). The TSA's latest.
• Dismantling gas giants with nanotech (9/21/07) - The first annual conference of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.
• The great Passenger Name Record sellout (8/12/07) - The EU should be respecting its own data protection laws. Instead, "let's give the US everything".
• Blog: The romance and mystery of a good hack (8/6/07) - Defcon, days two and three.
• Blog: Hacking for hijinks (8/6/07) - Defcon, day one. When Dateline's careful preparation to infiltrate a hacker conference led them to send... a girl.
• Blog: Fun with passports and paperclips (8/3/07) - Black Hat, day two.
• Blog: Watching the watchers: high tech snooping (8/3/07) - Black Hat, day one.
• The hunt for water on Mars goes nanoscale (7/31/07) - using nanotechnology to expore space. Huh?
• Navigating the mysterious world of nano-medicine (6/27/07) - what can you say, but "Fantastic Voyage"?
• Blog: Who do you think you are? (5/8/07) - CFP, day four.
• Blog: Wiretaps, no-fly lists, and suing AT&T (5/4/07) - CFP, day three.
• Blog: Living on the wrong side of the technology tracks (5/3/07) - CFP, day two.
• Blog: The surveillance arms race (5/2/07) - CFP, day one.
• Boffins working on RFID super-shield (4/8/07) - RFID Guardian.
• Spam: it sucks like a tarpit (4/2/07) - Can 20 smart people in a room at MIT crack the spam problem?
• Why can't a computer be more3 like a brain? (3/29/07) - Jeff Hawkins explains his next big idea at etech.
• EFF's Pioneer Awards: And the winners are... Cory Doctorow, Bruce Schneier, and Yoachi Benkler. (03/28/07)
• Book review: Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World (03/23/07) - Canadian author Maureen Webb argues that the preemptive model of policing that has taken over since 9/11 makes us all feel less, not more, secure.
• Blindside to mull potholes in road to e-government (3/2/07) - An explanation of what Blindside was set up to do. Update: I did not know when I wrote this that later in the year I would become a paid contributor to Blindside's blog and wiki.
• YouTube rules tennis highlights 'out' (3/1/07) - How dumb can the tennis authorities get?
• IWF reforms could pave way for UK net censorship (12/29/06) - I am against child abuse. I am for ensuring that anyone filtering the nation's Internet feeds should be accountable for what they filter out.
• Europe's banks target payment upgrades (10/17/06)
• Guardian blushes red in tech quiz challenge (6/29/06) - Yeah, we lost, OK? If the rest of the team had told me they only used Macs...
• Museum unscrambles secret agency's past (5/9/06) - A visit to the NSA museum

From The Philosophers' Magazine:

• It had to happen... (5/16/11) - Will Wikileaks leak proof of alien spacecraft?
• Change... (6/30/10) - Skepticism broadended its range in the last ten years. My 50th column for The Philosopher's Magazine (but who's counting?)
• No offence, but you’re a loon (11/25/09)
• The dramatic dice are loaded against skeptics (9/24/09)
• Humourless spoilsport and proud of it (8/24/09)
• Not all bets are off on the paranormal (10/22/09)
• Psychics and the City (5/29/09)