Group items tagged

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?

I felt that this article was particularly well written because of how conversational the author was with the reader. The conversational aspect allows the scientific aspect of the article to be better understood, in a way. The use of a video was also allowed for a better understanding of the physics.

I was thinking about doing this one! I curled for a couple of winters, and always wondered about the weirdly illogical physics of curling stones. Unfortunately, the nearest curling club is 3 hours away in Knoxville...

Cryptology is a young science. Though it has been used for thousands of years to hide secret messages, systematic study of cryptology as a science (and perhaps an art) just started around one hundr...

Cryptology is a young science. Though it has been used for thousands of years to hide secret messages, systematic study of cryptology as a science (and perhaps an art) just started around one hundr...

"In the case of students who do bring devices to school, the policy allows the school to collect and examine any of the devices at any time for purposes of enforcing the policy, investigating student discipline issues, and "for any other school-related purpose," a term not clearly defined in the policy. This would essentially force students to submit to "suspicionless searches" of their property."

Oh, look, my kids' school is in the news.

The official website of the Code Talkers. It gives a description of the code used and stories of the remaining Navajos.

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.

Essentially, this paper goes through the types of gait recognition software that currently exist as well as the reliability of this software. There are a lot of different elements that influence a persons gait (like terrain, shoes, fatigue, etc.), which effects how well the software works. It's a pretty heavy read but it's really interesting if you want to just jump to a certain section and read in depth. This technology is very much out there and in development, and it is definitely being improved upon. Also, even though this paper is a little bit older, it is still being cited in a lot of more recent research papers and I thought it would give a good enough grasp on the science for our purposes.

This outlines the gronsfeld cipher, which is a modification of the vigenere cipher. I like and find this cipher interesting because of it using numbers instead of letters, and I like cryptography which uses numbers.

Interesting. Gronsfeld ciphers then form a subset of Vigenere ciphers. That is, there's a one-to-one correspondence between Gronsfeld ciphers and Vigenere ciphers where keywords are formed from the letters A through J.

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 cryptography blogger's translation of Kerckhoff's article about military cryptography. He denotes that secret methods of communication are limited to higher officers due to potential leakage; but by limiting cryptographic use, are they potentially putting at risk the safety of lesser positions in order to keep the secrecy of their cipher methods? Is this just the inevitable nature of cryptography in general?

The Journal of Theoretical Physics and Cryptography is devoted to the rapid publication of fundamental research papers on all fields of theoretical physics and cryptography. All contributions shall be rigorously refereed and selecting on the basis of quality and originality of the work as well as the breadth of interest to readers.

Discusses the growth and legal rights of video surveillance in schools. This article contains multiple instances where court cases ruled that there was not a reasonable expectation of privacy.

by Christy Hickman, staff counsel Members often ask whether a school district violates their right to privacy by using video camera surveillance or video recordings of evaluative observations. It is easy to understand the growth of video surveillance in schools, especially with the onslaught of on-campus criminal behavior and the horrendous episodes of violence that we hear of all too frequently.

This article concerning the science behind poker and its categorization as either skill or luck is particularly well written in that it draws its audience in by presenting a recent event that concerned poker, and then proceeding to present information on the history of poker as well as the statistics that support its argument.  Furthermore, the author establishes credibility throughout her post by referencing credible studies done. Her voice throughout the post continues to be entertaining, keeping the reader's attention for the entirety of her post.

The Babington plot, which was the undoing of Mary, Queen of Scots, was one of several conspiracies against Elizabeth I that were uncovered. The Ridolfi Plot In 1571 a plot was discovered involving Philip II of Spain, Pope Pius V and the Duke of Norfolk, as well as Mary's advisor, the Bishop of Ross, and Mary herself.

"Around sixty Bletchley Park veterans gathered again at the Home of the Codebreakers on Sunday 2nd September, for the annual Enigma Reunion. The event is timed each year to coincide with the anniversary of the arrival of the first codebreakers at Bletchley Park, after they received the coded message 'Auntie Flo is not so well', indicating they should report for top secret duties."

I found this article to be well written and interesting because of the conversational and casual way it was written. The idea that one needs to remove all pronouns from scientific writing is one that is hammered into students from high school science day 1, yet may not be true. This was not written in the way that I was taught to write about science, however, it was both easy to read and informative. The casual writing style of science blogs may influence other writing standards of other areas of science in the future.

I feel this article is well written for a few reasons. If has the feel of telling a story but remains formal and in the style of academic writing at the same time. The flow of the post is very well done also as each paragraph logically leads into the next. Lastly, the post concludes very well tying in everything the post discusses and how they relate to science in the world today.

Getty In an age of surveillance anxiety, the notion of leaving your Wi-Fi network open and unprotected seems dangerously naive. But one group of activists says it can help you open up your wireless internet and not only maintain your privacy, but actually increase it in the process. At the Hackers on Planet Earth conference…

Check out this article! It's about a recent security breach of heathcare.gov that was made possible due to a test server with a default password that hadn't been changed and a lack of regular security scans.

Security in-a-box is a collection of guides and free tools to secure your computer, protect your information or maintain the privacy of your Internet communication. It was created to meet the digital security and privacy needs of advocates and human rights defenders.