This is going to be a short and sweet blog post. I was unfortunately too busy running through my own presentation over and over in my head to pay attention to most of the others. I learned a lot about carrier pigeons from Wren Glanville though.
I had no idea how far back carrier pigeon use went. Their use in Ancient Egypt to report the flooding of the Nile was fascinating. I also never knew there were war hero pigeons. I knew they were used in war, but I did not expect them to be commemorated.
The presentation that I was most concerned about was Catherine Crump’s on police surveillance technology. I knew it was a lot, but I had not realized quite how much we are being tracked in our day to day lives. That was back in 2014 too. It is just speculation, but one can only imagine how much more sophisticated tracking technology has become over the past ten years.
I think what to do about this situation from a policy perspective is tricky, though. There are obvious safety benefits in the intended uses of the technology they use to track us. The automatic plate scanner Crump talked about are really good for knowing when people run red lights, speed, or park in illegal places. They are also good for finding known criminals or stolen vehicles. Whatever policy is implemented would ideally retain those benefits while also preserving peoples’ privacy.
I would recommend a method like ones that I have read in the EULAs of many software products. Oftentimes if a company collects your data (and is not planning to use it maliciously), they have a policy that it will be deleted after a specified amount of time. For an example, I would propose a policy that the data collected by police agencies must be deleted within 30 days unless the subject of that data is under an active warrant, on a watch list, or similar. This would keep the criminal catching uses of the technology, while minimally sacrificing the privacy of normal civilians.
Unfortunately, there is not very much we can do to protect our privacy as civilians. Our smartphones report our data to corporations, cell towers, and routers constantly, so we are always willingly being tracked. Also unfortunately, smartphones are just too much of a necessity to give up in the modern world. We are always being watched, and that is the way we like it.
When people think of internet cookies, they often think of sneaky bits of spyware that track you all over the internet. While, yes, that is something they are used for, it is not the only thing they do. They come with major benefits too. For instance, if you have ever changed the language on a website, that was a cookie. If you have ever been automatically logged in, that was a cookie. And, perhaps most importantly to the field of communications, if you have ever used a shopping cart, that was a cookie.
The shopping cart was actually one of the original intended uses for cookies. Back in 1993 online shopping was not very popular, and while that was mostly due to the limited popularity of the internet at the time, it was also because it was very tedious. Without any extra features like cookies, websites cannot remember anything about your visit, whether that be between visits or even just between different pages in a single visit. There was no way for you to find an item you wanted and then go find a different item so you could buy multiple things at once. The website would simply forget.
Lou Montulli
That is where cookies come in. A man named Lou Montulli was working with the Mosaic Communications Corporation to develop the Netscape Navigator web browser, which would coincide with the launch of the World Wide Web. One of Mr. Montulli’s visions for the internet of the future was easy and efficient online shopping, and so he devised the cookie.
The Anatomy of a Cookie
The concept behind the cookie is very simple. It is a small packet of data that a website sends a visiting device so that it can store browsing data on that device. Even though the data packets are small, having thousands or millions of them stored on the host server would quickly get out of hand. If each user stored their own data though, the amount would be so miniscule that no one would even notice. When the user visits the website again or changes pages, the site simply requests the packet back from the user so they can resume right where they left off. The data was also encrypted so that only the rightful website could access it. Montulli reasoned that governments, corporations, advertising agencies, and hackers would be absolutely salivating over all that data, so it could not just be sitting around easy for them to access.
Montulli’s implementation of the cookie would be a flagship feature for Netscape Navigator, and when that web browser took over the internet, it set a cookie standard that is still held to this day. Thus, all of our favorite shopping websites like Amazon, Steam, and Ebay can exist and help people all over the world get the products they need.
Unfortunately, though, that is not the end of the story. It is common knowledge today that cookies are practically spyware that track your every movement. So, where did it all go wrong? The answer is Third Party Cookies. For an example, consider the targeted advertising industry:
Third Party Cookies
Website owners often want to make money, but website users often do not want to pay them. The most common compromise is for the website to have ads on it. However, that ad space can be tricky to sell to advertisers. That is where an advertising company steps in. They automatically connect website owners with advertisers, and in exchange receive a portion of the ad revenue. They also request that the site owner distribute the ad service’s cookie packaged with the site’s own cookies. This is a really sneaky way of bypassing Montulli’s encryption. Effectively, because the ad service now owns part of the cookie package, they can now rightfully access the rest of the cookie too. With thousands of sites all using their ad service, and millions of cookies being distributed, they now get a constant stream of data from users all over the internet which they can do with as they please. That is how they track you.
This was a flaw in the cookie’s design that was known even before the release of Netscape Navigator. It had already been exploited to lesser degrees in cruder cookie-like features in previous browsers. Montulli knew about this, but he included and standardized his flawed cookie design anyway. His reasoning was that it was a choice between standardizing his flawed, but still somewhat privacy respecting cookie, or wait and risk more malicious developers standardizing something even more invasive. It was a choice between the devil he knew and the devil he did not. He chose the one he knew.
Unfortunately, this story does not have a happy ending. The devil he did not know was eventually created. It is called Fingerprinting, and Montulli was right. It is far worse than his cookies. However, this marks the end of the cookie’s story, the story of how the hard work of a genius was corrupted into the tool of spies. Though they have attained the ire of the masses, maybe the next time you buy groceries online you will remember all the good cookies do for us, as well as all the bad that comes packaged with them.
Sources:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/history-of-cookies-and-effect-on-privacy/
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Cookies#security
https://allaboutcookies.org/what-is-a-cookie
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Privacy/Third-party_cookies
Which ones feel most important?
Marketplace of Ideas
The most important model of free speech to me is the Marketplace of Ideas. I think pitting different ideas against each other is the best way to make progress. Good ideas will defend themselves against evidence, bad ideas will be destroyed by it. In the marketplace of ideas there is no need for regulation because everything will sort itself out naturally. Some people worry about some bad ideas being dangerous, but society will ensure that ideas wrong enough to be dangerous will be ostracized. Even though ideas don’t need explicit regulatory defending though, what does need defending is that lack of defending. There are a lot of people in this world who would like to impose their political, religious, or other ideological philosophies upon others via legal means, bypassing the Marketplace to achieve hegemony. This needs to be defended against at all costs.
Which ones feel most personal to you?
Protect Dissent
Protection of Dissent feels very personal to me because I personally hold a lot of ideas that might go against the majority standpoint. If I was not allowed to have these ideas, I honestly don’t know what I would do. I expect there are a lot of people like that in this world, and if we all had our ideas censored for not aligning with the majority there would be a lot of unhappy people and a lot less ideas. Furthermore, it would be dangerous if the ones imposing those ideas were the government. It’s dangerous because unlike normal people, the government would have the ability to issue punishments for dissent, which would put anyone who criticizes them in danger. That doesn’t stop the government from making the occasional bid to seize control of thought, though. This must be guarded against to the best of our ability.
Which one do you see in action today?
Promote Innovation
The Promotion of Innovation has been particularly apparent over the past few decades. Our rapidly increasing ability to communicate with each other has coincided with a rapidly increase in technological innovation and improvements to the human condition. The better technology leads to better communication, and it all snowballs over time. Because of our freedom of speech our ideas about technology and science have been able to spread all around the world, ensuring that they reach the people who can use them best. Our unprecedented level of communication is perhaps the greatest achievement of human history, and it’s all made possible by the snowball of innovation.
Perhaps the technology we are all the most reliant on nowadays is the internet. It fuels our modern existence. Even if you aren’t an avid internet user you still benefit from the good it does for humanity. It allowing us to communicate globally has massively increased education, its ability to tie technology together has improved our public services, and it’s lead to a new renaissance of art and culture. This, I think, is best reflected in the theory of Promotion of Innovation. Free speech is what allowed the visionaries who create and use the internet to operate with full effectiveness. Without their ideas being stifled, they can create whatever technology and art they want. This is the perfect representation of what free speech should be.
What did you learn about the Supreme Court that you didn't already know?
I wouldn’t say I learned much from this video specifically. Most of the content was either covered in class or I already knew. There was one thing I hadn’t really thought about before, and that is the role of the litigants in a Supreme Court case. I feel like we often think of the litigants are arguing with each other in court and the judge presides over them and determines an outcome. I suppose once a case gets all the way to the Supreme Court though, the matter is more a question of interpretation of law rather than interpretation of facts. With that in mind, the litigants almost serve more as proxies for the judges to argue with each other as to how the law should be interpreted, because as far as the Supreme Court is concerned that interpretation is far more important in the long run that whatever particular case they happen to be arguing.
What is the most important take-away point about the Supreme Court?
I think the most important takeaway is that the judges are
people just like the rest of us, and they make decisions just like the rest of
us. Sometimes those decisions are good, sometimes their bad. Either way I don’t
think their decisions should be held up as gospel never to be challenged.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
Again, I didn’t really learn much. It is interesting to consider how presidents have been packing the courts since the very beginning though. In the video one of the judges insisted that must judges aren’t afraid to assert their independence pretty quickly. I wonder if that’s actually the case?
How did the video change the way you thought of the
Supreme Court?
I think it brought a further aspect of humanity to the justices. It’s really easy to put them up on a pedestal like they’re entities of law that are above us all. They’re not really though. They’re just people. They feel happy and sad like the rest of us. They eat and sleep like the rest of us. They get stressed out like the rest of us. I think it’s important to remember that no matter how important a person may be, they’re still a person at their core.
I’m not really a big fan of national or world news. It makes me sad and angry to a degree that I don’t think staying informed in worth. I would be happy to share my favorite sources of news for tech though.
The Hacker News
Not to be confused with “Hacker News” (by Y Combinator), The Hacker News provides countless articles on all the latest goings on in the cyber security world. They’ll tell you all about the latest hacks and malware, and well as any potentially disruptive events or inventions. It’s really good to pay attention to if you want to be very scared of computers.
Techquickie
https://www.youtube.com/@techquickie
Techquickie is a Youtube channel that gives a high-level overview of all the current affairs in tech. They talk about hardware releases, high profile hacks, operating system updates, and just about everything else. They are a part of the Linus Media Group, which has been known to have some issues with information integrity in the past. But Techquickie is so broad and surface level that they don’t get many opportunities to get things wrong.
Gamers Nexus
https://www.youtube.com/@GamersNexus/
Gamers Nexus is another Youtube channel. They are particularly focused on testing the latest hardware to determine how well it performs with gaming. They are particularly good at catching when companies like Nvidia and Intel are lying about their hardware specs (and when other tech channels/sites are too). They are a good channel to watch if you’re in the market to buy or upgrade your pc and want to make sure you’re getting the best bang for your buck.
The Stack Overflow Blog
This is more of an ironic inclusion. Every programmer worth their salt will swear by the Stack Overflow forums until the day they die, so it’s ironic how the company that runs those forums consistently has some of the worst opinions in all of programming. Normally their blog posts are pretty bland and tame, but every once in a while, they post some whacky sh*t and it’s fun to watch the dumpster fire when that happens.
The Primeagen
https://www.twitch.tv/theprimeagen
The Primeagen is a Twitch streamer and former Netflix engineer. He’s technically more of a reaction channel than a news site since he often reacts to and talk abouts articles from other sites. I’m including him though because his experience in the industry gives him a level of insight that significantly adds to the overall experience. He likes to cover the latest developments in programming languages, software products, and programming architecture. He also often hosts guests from all around the programming industry to share their insights too.
This is going to be a short and sweet blog post. I was unfortunately too busy running through my own presentation over an...
