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Very interesting article that begins with the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, and continues to speak about different techniques of encryption that are harder and harder to break. It also deals with the fact that Mary's messages were being intercepted and the article speaks about secure encryption using photons where you would know if your message was intercepted.

Apparently, if you use strong encryption, the NSA pays more attention to you.

The article makes a clear argument with supporting facts, all while being easily accessible to people that are unfamiliar with the field and remaining entertaining

This particular blog post caught my eye because of its funny, and somewhat goofy, title. Instead of simply listing the facts, the author describes a piece of history in a comedic and entertaining manner.

I found this interesting because it mentions the fact that there may have been a revision to the Beale cipher before it was published.

This resource is interesting in light of our discussing Babbage and Lovelace, as well as Ada Lovelace Day. This article is particularly interesting to me as it deals with women's contributions to significant advancements in history, many of which are often ignored or excused.

Riley, I mentioned in class that October 14th is Ada Lovelace Day, an international day for recognizing the contributions of women in science. Details: http://findingada.com/. I've wanted to organize an Ada Lovelace Day event here at Vanderbilt for a few years now, but never found the time. Let me know if you'd like to cook something up (an event? a blog series? a Wikipedia editing party?) for the 14th.

I found it really interesting that people took the fact that Lovelace made a few mistakes as an excuse to try to remove her contribution to computer programming. Male scientists and programmers also make mistakes, but we rarely see those used in an attempt to discredit them. Also, she literally designed a computer program before the computer even existed. I think we can excuse a few past mathematical errors.

This is a nice intro to public-key cryptography, and a bit of the math behind the "classic" public-key algorithms.

Discusses some of the points we brought up in class and provides statistics, but data is from 2013 and could potentially show the effects of events in the past two years when combined with Abbey's post

This is the results of a Pew Research survey in May (of 2015) regarding Americans' opinions of the NSA, surveillance, national security, etc. This could be useful in the security vs. privacy paper, to look at the public opinion on these issues.

Even when college students use computer or electronic devices that belong to the school, any websites they visit, links they download, and videos they watch can offer behavioral information and data that is directly tied to that student's profile, and thus them too. It's important to be aware of this fact, and realize that whatever privacy you think that Mac in the back of the library offers you is in reality nonexistent. That Mac is uploading your data to the Cloud every minute you use it, and it's important to track and understand that your online information is being sent, without your consent, to other entities. So, be careful with what you search up next time.

To any future college students: Be careful of what you type on the internet or reveal about yourself in an online forum. Despite the shocking revelations of the size and scope of the government's surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden, the majority of Americans don't understand the kind of information the government has on them, have taken few steps to protect their online data, and believe that such programs don't go far enough in tackling terrorism. Ironically, these same Americans also overwhelmingly believe that consumers have lost protection of their data to companies who have used their clients' privacy as a commodity. I would advise you to be careful of what you post online, and follow a few steps, such as passwords, encryption, and clearing your cookies, to help protect at least some of your data online and allow you to remain private. These programs continue to this day, and it's important that you protect what little privacy remains.

What are the mechanisms behind surveillance? How precisely are people surveilled in the US?