Child Exploitation and the Crypto Wars

Susan Landau published an excellent essay on the current justification for the government breaking end-to-end-encryption: child sexual abuse and exploitation CSAE. She puts the debate into historical context, discusses the problem of CSAE, and explains why breaking encryption isnt the solution...

Security Risks of Client-Side Scanning

Even before Apple made its announcement, law enforcement shifted their battle for backdoors to client-side scanning. The idea is that they wouldnt touch the cryptography, but instead eavesdrop on communications and systems before encryption or after decryption. Its not a cryptographic backdoor, b...

Designing Contact-Tracing Apps

Susan Landau wrote an essay on the privacy, efficacy, and equity of contract-tracing smartphone apps. Also see her excellent book on the topic...

Susan Landau's New Book: Listening In

Susan Landau has written a terrific book on cybersecurity threats and why we need strong crypto. Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age. It's based in part on her 2016 Congressional testimony in the Apple/FBI case; it examines how the Digital Revolution has transformed society, and how la...

Do the Police Need a Search Warrant to Access Cell Phone Location Data?

The US Supreme Court is deciding a case that will establish whether the police need a warrant to access cell phone location data. This week I signed on to an amicus brief from a wide array of security technologists outlining the technical arguments as why the answer should be yes. Susan Landau...

Short list emerges for cybersecurity czar job

The first reports of the short list for the job of federal cybersecurity coordinator are beginning to trickle out, and while some of the names are all too familiar, many others are quite new to the national scene. The most well-known name on the list, as reported by Reuters, is that of Scott...