Sunday, March 1, 2015

The End of Privacy: special issue of Science

Privacy: use it or lose it. Likely to be important both for market design and for civil rights...

I haven't yet read this special issue of Science on privacy, but it looks like fun.

The End of Privacy

  • THE END OF PRIVACY

    The end of privacy

    • Martin Enserink and
      •  
    • Gilbert Chin
    Science 30 January 2015: 490-491.
    From big data to ubiquitous Internet connections, technology empowers researchers and the public—but makes traditional notions of privacy obsolete

News

  • PRIVACY

    Credit card study blows holes in anonymity

    • John Bohannon
    Science 30 January 2015: 468.
    Attack suggests need for new data safeguards.
  • THE END OF PRIVACY

    Unmasked

    • John Bohannon
    Science 30 January 2015: 492-494.
    Facial recognition software could soon ID you in any photo.
  • THE PRIVACY ARMS RACE

    When your voice betrays you

    • David Shultz
    Science 30 January 2015: 494.
    "Voiceprints" offer convenience and security, but they may pose privacy issues.
  • THE END OF PRIVACY

    Breach of trust

    • John Bohannon
    Science 30 January 2015: 495-497.
    After the Snowden revelations, U.S. mathematicians are questioning their long-standing ties with the secretive National Security Agency.
  • THE PRIVACY ARMS RACE

    Game of drones

    • David Shultz
    Science 30 January 2015: 497.
    Unmanned aircraft may soon be everywhere; how they will affect privacy is still unclear.
  • THE END OF PRIVACY

    Risk of exposure

    • Martin Enserink
    Science 30 January 2015: 498-500.
    When new or dangerous infectious diseases strike, public health often trumps personal privacy.
  • THE PRIVACY ARMS RACE

    Could your pacemaker be hackable?

    • Daniel Clery
    Science 30 January 2015: 499.
    Medical devices connected to the Internet are vulnerable to sabotage or data theft.
  • THE PRIVACY ARMS RACE

    Hiding in plain sight

    • Jia You
    Science 30 January 2015: 500.
    Software lets you use location-based apps without revealing where you are.
  • THE END OF PRIVACY

    Trust me, I'm a medical researcher

    • Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
    Science 30 January 2015: 501-503.
    Scientists can no longer guarantee patients' privacy. They're looking for new ways to build trust.
  • THE PRIVACY ARMS RACE

    Camouflaging searches in a sea of fake queries

    • Jia You
    Science 30 January 2015: 502.
    A browser extension masks your true interests with customized decoy questions.

Perspectives

  • Control use of data to protect privacy

    • Susan Landau
    Science 30 January 2015: 504-506.

  • What the “right to be forgotten” means for privacy in a digital age

    • Abraham L. Newman
    Science 30 January 2015: 507-508.

Review

  • Privacy and human behavior in the age of information

    • Alessandro Acquisti, 
    • Laura Brandimarte, 
    • and George Loewenstein
    Science 30 January 2015: 509-514.

Report

  • Unique in the shopping mall: On the reidentifiability of credit card metadata

    • Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, 
    • Laura Radaelli, 
    • Vivek Kumar Singh, 
    • and Alex “Sandy” Pentland
    Science 30 January 2015: 536-539.
Posted by Al Roth at 10:36 AM 0 comments
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Performance enhancing drugs in universities

The Guardian has the story:
Students used to take drugs to get high. Now they take them to get higher grades

"The use of so-called ‘smart drugs’, bought on the internet, to boost mental performance is rife in British universities. So can we all benefit from ‘having an edge’, or is it just a form of cheating that should be banned?"

"Modafinil: a prescription-only medication for narcolepsy that the NHS’s website describes as “a central nervous system stimulant” that prevents “excessive sleepiness during daytime hours”. Or, used off-label, bought via some off-shore pharmaceutical retailer, it’s what’s known as a “smart drug”. I hadn’t even heard of it a week ago, but it turns out they’re all on it, the students. They’ve all taken it on at least a couple of occasions, all five of the female final-year students who live in this particular flat, and all five of the male final-year students they’ve invited over to dinner.

“It’s not that it makes you more intelligent,” says Phoebe, a history student. “It’s just that it helps you work. You can study for longer. You don’t get distracted. You’re actually happy to go to the library and you don’t even want to stop for lunch. And then it’s like 7pm, and you’re still, ‘Actually, you know what? I could do another hour.’”
...
"Anjan Chatterjee, a professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, who has published several influential papers on the ethics of smart drugs, tells me that he sometimes makes jokes about it. “When I was young, students would use drugs to check out. Now they’re using them to check in.”

He’s witnessed the rise, in the last 10 years, of a generation of American students doping themselves up on various medications they believe will give them a competitive edge. “It’s even in high schools now, especially in the more affluent suburbs. Students call them ‘study aids’; they don’t even think of them as drugs. There’s an entire grey market on campuses. But then, the current estimate is that a third of all students have a prescription for some sort of psychoactive medication anyway: antidepressants, or medication for ADHD, or for anxiety, so the availability is quite high. Often, they’ll just sell on the medication in the library.”

He believes that cognitive enhancement – or cosmetic neurology, as he calls it – is likely to become viewed as normal over time, in much the same way as cosmetic surgery has been."
Posted by Al Roth at 4:54 AM 0 comments
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