The Berkman Buzz is a weekly collection of work, conversations, and news from around the Berkman community. Subscribe A note about the Buzz:In the coming weeks we'll be migrating the Berkman Buzz to MailChimp, a platform used across Harvard University that will allow us more editorial flexibility and improved list management. This change will help us create an even better newsletter experience for our community, one that includes multimedia, a mobile interface, and makes it easier to subscribe and unsubscribe. As people who live and breathe the Internet and privacy issues, we've looked at MailChimp's policies, and they pass our muster. Mailchimp promises not to independently do anything with your email address. Both now and after the transition you'll be able to unsubscribe at any time, as always. We know that the Berkman Center's greatest strength is its diverse, vibrant community. The Berkman Buzz is just one of the ways we try to stay connected and keep the lines of communication open across our broader network. It's our hope and expectation that this transition will empower us to do this better. As always, we welcome your feedback and ideas at buzz@cyber.harvard.edu.  |  The month after my grandmother died, I received several emails from her. Not from her, of course, but from an old AOL email account of hers that had been taken over by spammers. My mother and other family members called to ask me - the granddaughter who studies computer security - to make the emails stop. We were all strangely unsettled by these messages from beyond the grave, by my grandmother's sudden appearance in our inboxes so soon after we'd lost her. More than just spam, this felt like a ghost in the machine. |
From her New York Times piece "The Ghost in the Machine".
About Josephine | @josephinecwolff |  [I]f fiber-optic lines ran to every business and residence in the country, we'd have a cloud of unlimited WiFi connectivity everywhere we work, live and play. Only fiber can handle the tsunami of data uploaded by all the devices and sensors Americans are going to use.
Last month, the F.C.C. took a major step in the direction of this vision by voting to open up a wide swath of frequencies for WiFi use that had been previously controlled by the Department of Defense. But this will make little difference for consumers if the wires needed to facilitate WiFi access in America are second-rate and controlled by the cable industry, and there is no plan for the country to upgrade to fiber. |
From her New York Times piece, "We Need Better Infrastructure for Better WiFi"
About Susan | @scrawford |  RE "DAN Conley warns Congress over Apple, Google encryption" (April 29): Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley's call for a ban on digital devices with encryption that law enforcement can’t break is dangerously misguided. Just as with physical locks, weak digital locks put us at risk because online predators can pick them just as easily as the police.
If Apple and Google weaken their encryption for law enforcement, they'd be undermining the protections that keep foreign governments from spying on a Cabinet member's smartphone, or cybercriminals from stealing health records from a doctor's iPad. |
From his letter to the editor in the Boston Globe, "DA's bid for law enforcement to bypass encryption raises concern"
About Vivek | @vivekdotca |  When the Net was born, its code was its norms. Its architecture enabled sharing. Its users shared wildly.
Many celebrated this freedom. Some fought it fiercely. Shared creativity was also copyrighted creativity. And under the rules of copyright, to share is to require the permission of the copyright owner - unless (in America at least) that sharing is "fair use."
When this battle first exploded, it presented itself in binary terms. People were, the story went, either for copyright, or against it. And if you were for "sharing," that meant you were against copyright. The norms of the net, it followed for many, had to be changed if the rules of copyright were to be respected. |
From his post, "Why I'm excited for Medium's partnership with Creative Commons"
About Lawrence | @lessig |  A Thai worker in the Philippines was deported after he posted racist and anti-Filipino statements on Facebook. Many cheered the deportation but some also described it as an attack on free speech....
The Bureau of Immigration also reacted quickly by issuing a deportation charge against the Thai national for "undesirability" over his offensive posts on Facebook. Koko Narak surrendered and opted for voluntary deportation. He was included in the agency's blacklist, barring re-entry into the country. |
From Global Voices | @globalvoices |