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De-Muslimization
February 27, 2017
In Trump’s America, that “terrorist” label is cast in indelible ink. The previous precautions would not suffice, I realized. It was not just what was visible, but everything that was searchable that was now at play. A reversal had taken place. If before my possessions ...

#DeleteUber, Delete Everything
February 01, 2017
Like many billion-dollar startups, Uber is notorious for its self-regard. One nugget buried in this week’s news serves as a reminder: until a few days ago, Uber had no automated system to process users’ requests to delete their accounts. That meant that every time a user ...

Facebook’s ‘Injection Tools’
May 26, 2016
So it’s come to this. After half a century of right-wing invective targeting the alleged scourge of liberal media bias, conservative activists are up in arms over the (unverified) claim that social-media page designers are tweaking impartial news-feed algorithms—in a ...

The Grand Viziers of the VC Economy
March 06, 2015
If start-up founders are our new royalty—as Mark Zuckerberg is Silicon Valley’s prince—then perhaps venture capitalists are their grand viziers. Once advisers to the sultans of the Ottoman Empire, grand viziers wield power behind the scenes. They variously prop up, ...

Hacks, Backdoors, and Cyberwars
February 25, 2015
You could be forgiven for thinking that the Oscar win by Citizenfour, Laura Poitras’s documentary about Edward Snowden, represented a symbolic capstone to our country’s surveillance story. Perhaps the well of new revelations had run dry, and we were now in the realm of ...

Where Are Silicon Valley’s Surveillance Whistleblowers?
January 22, 2015
Last week, following the terrorist attacks in Paris, British Prime Minister David Cameron said—surprise!—that his government needed more power to monitor online communications. He went so far as to imply that encryption itself was a problem, and later said that American tech ...