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Adm. Grace Hopper’s 1982 NSA Lecture Has Been Published
The “long lost lecture” by Adm. Grace Hopper has been published by the NSA. (Note that there are two parts.)
It’s a wonderful talk: funny, engaging, wise, prescient. Remember that talk was given in 1982, less than a year before the ARPANET switched to TCP/IP and the internet went operational. She was a remarkable person.
Listening to it, and thinking about the audience of NSA engineers, I wonder how much of what she’s talking about as the future of computing—miniaturization, parallelization—was being done in the present and in secret.
Matthew Green on Telegram’s Encryption
Matthew Green wrote a really good blog post on what Telegram’s encryption is and is not.
EDITED TO ADD (8/28): Another good explainer from Kaspersky.
The Present and Future of TV Surveillance
Ars Technica has a good article on what’s happening in the world of television surveillance. More than even I realized.
US Federal Court Rules Against Geofence Warrants
This is a big deal. A US Appeals Court ruled that geofence warrants—these are general warrants demanding information about all people within a geographical boundary—are unconstitutional.
The decision seems obvious to me, but you can’t take anything for granted.
Friday Squid Blogging: Self-Healing Materials from Squid Teeth
Making self-healing materials based on the teeth in squid suckers.
Take a Selfie Using a NY Surveillance Camera
This site will let you take a selfie with a New York City traffic surveillance camera.
EDITED TO ADD: BoingBoing post.
Surveillance Watch
This is a fantastic project mapping the global surveillance industry.
Story of an Undercover CIA Officer who Penetrated Al Qaeda
Rolling Stone has a long investigative story (non-paywalled version here) about a CIA officer who spent years posing as an Islamic radical.
Unrelated, but also in the “real life spies” file: a fake Sudanese diving resort run by Mossad.
Hacking Wireless Bicycle Shifters
This is yet another insecure Internet-of-things story, this one about wireless gear shifters for bicycles. These gear shifters are used in big-money professional bicycle races like the Tour de France, which provides an incentive to actually implement this attack.
Research paper. Another news story.
Slashdot thread.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.