Philip R. Zimmermann is an American computer scientist and cryptographer. He is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the most widely used email encryption software in the world. He is also known for his work in VoIP encryption protocols, notably ZRTP and Zfone. Zimmermann is co-founder and Chief Scientist of the global encrypted communications firm Silent Circle.
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively.
Spyware is any malware that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user by violating their privacy, endangering their device's security, or other means. This behavior may be present in other malware and in legitimate software. Websites may engage in spyware behaviors like web tracking. Hardware devices may also be affected.
Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing, or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as closed-circuit television (CCTV), or interception of electronically transmitted information like Internet traffic. Increasingly, governments may also obtain consumer data through the purchase of online information, effectively expanding surveillance capabilities through commercially available digital records. It can also include simple technical methods, such as human intelligence gathering and postal interception.
In product development, an end user is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ultimately use a product. The end user stands in contrast to users who support or maintain the product, such as sysops, system administrators, database administrators, information technology (IT) experts, software professionals, and computer technicians. End users typically do not possess the technical understanding or skill of the product designers, a fact easily overlooked and forgotten by designers: leading to features creating low customer satisfaction. In information technology, end users are not customers in the usual sense—they are typically employees of the customer. For example, if a large retail corporation buys a software package for its employees to use, even though the large retail corporation was the customer that purchased the software, the end users are the employees of the company, who will use the software at work.
The Clipper chip was a chipset that was developed and promoted by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) as an encryption device that secured "voice and data messages" with a built-in backdoor that was intended to "allow Federal, State, and local law enforcement officials the ability to decode intercepted voice and data transmissions." It was intended to be adopted by telecommunications companies for voice transmission. Introduced in 1993, it was entirely defunct by 1996.
The CueCat, styled :CueCat with a leading colon, is a cat-shaped handheld barcode reader designed to allow a user to open a link to an Internet URL by scanning a barcode. The devices were given away free to Internet users starting in 2000 by the now-defunct Digital Convergence Corporation.
Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storage, re-purposing, provision to third parties, and display of information pertaining to oneself via the Internet. Internet privacy is a subset of data privacy. Privacy concerns have been articulated from the beginnings of large-scale computer sharing and especially relate to mass surveillance.
ISACA is an international professional association focused on IT governance. On its IRS filings, it is known as the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, although ISACA now goes by its acronym only. ISACA currently offers 8 certification programs, as well as other micro-certificates.
ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3d 1447, was a court ruling at the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The case is a significant precedent on the matter of the applicability of American contract law to new types of shrinkwrap licenses that arose with home computing and the Internet in the 1990s, and whether such licenses are enforceable contracts.
Privacy-invasive software is a category of software that invades a user's privacy to gather information about the user and their device without prior knowledge or consent. Such software is sometimes loosely referred to as "spyware" but the information gathering can be malicious or non-malicious. The collected data is often used commercially such as being sold to advertisers or other third parties..
Cyberethics is "a branch of ethics concerned with behavior in an online environment". In another definition, it is the "exploration of the entire range of ethical and moral issues that arise in cyberspace" while cyberspace is understood to be "the electronic worlds made visible by the Internet." For years, various governments have enacted regulations while organizations have defined policies about cyberethics.
Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace is a 1999 book by Lawrence Lessig on the structure and nature of regulation of the Internet.
Information technology law, also known as information, communication and technology law or cyberlaw, concerns the juridical regulation of information technology, its possibilities and the consequences of its use, including computing, software coding, artificial intelligence, the internet and virtual worlds. The ICT field of law comprises elements of various branches of law, originating under various acts or statutes of parliaments, the common and continental law and international law. Some important areas it covers are information and data, communication, and information technology, both software and hardware and technical communications technology, including coding and protocols.
Robbins v. Lower Merion School District is a federal class action lawsuit, brought during February 2010 on behalf of students of two high schools in Lower Merion Township, a suburb of Philadelphia. In October 2010, the school district agreed to pay $610,000 to settle the Robbins and parallel Hasan lawsuits against it.
Lane vs. Facebook was a class-action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California regarding internet privacy and social media. In December 2007, Facebook launched Beacon, which resulted in users' private information being posted on Facebook without the users' consent. Facebook ended up terminating the Beacon program and created a $9.5 million fund for privacy and security. There was no monetary compensation awarded to Facebook users affected negatively by the Beacon program.
Internet and Technology Law Desk Reference is a non-fiction book about information technology law, written by Michael Dennis Scott. The book uses wording from legal cases to define information technology jargon, and gives citations to individual lawsuits. Scott received his B.S. degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated with a J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has taught as a law professor at Southwestern Law School. The book was published by Aspen Law and Business in 1999. Multiple subsequent editions were published under the imprint Aspen Publishers. Internet and Technology Law Desk Reference was recommended by the Cyberlaw Research Resources Guide at the James E. Rogers College of Law, and has been used as a reference in law journals including University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Economic Law, and Berkeley Technology Law Journal.
Atari Games Corp. v. Nintendo of America Inc., 975 F.2d 832, is a U.S. legal case in which Atari Games engaged in copyright infringement by copying Nintendo's lock-out system, the 10NES. The 10NES was designed to prevent Nintendo's video game console, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), from playing unauthorized game cartridges. Atari, after unsuccessful attempts to reverse engineer the lock-out system, obtained an unauthorized copy of the source code from the United States Copyright Office and used it to create its 10NES replica, the Rabbit. Atari then sued Nintendo for unfair competition and copyright misuse, and Nintendo responded that Atari had engaged in unfair competition, copyright infringement, and patent infringement.
GoGuardian is an educational software company founded in 2015 and based in Los Angeles, California. The company's services monitor student activity online, filter content, and alert school officials to possible suicidal or self-harm ideation. Concerns have been raised over these functions, claiming the software is spyware.
Julia Angwin is an American investigative journalist, author, and entrepreneur. She co-founded and was editor-in-chief of The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the impact of technology on society. She was a staff reporter at the New York bureau of The Wall Street Journal from 2000 to 2013, during which time she was on a team that won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. She worked as a senior reporter at ProPublica from 2014 to April 2018, during which time she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
