Can An Israeli Tech Startup Outsmart Iran’s Internet Censors? – Business Insider, 27 January 2014

Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of law and computer science at Harvard, points out that “it’s very different, trying to watch the BBC iPlayer for the purposes of entertainment versus someone trying to get content which might be criminal for them to see in China or Saudi Arabia, so one has to be very careful about what kind of anonymity is being promised.”

via Can An Israeli Tech Startup Outsmart Iran’s Internet Censors? – Business Insider.

PlaceAvoider Software Limits Life-Logging Devices | MIT Technology Review, 28 January 2014

Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard Law School and cofounder of the school’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, says PlaceAvoider is a “promising approach” that could help avert some of the harmful by-products of life-streaming. Still, he adds, “It’s not just the person operating a recording device who will need help. There need to be ways for people in common environments—students in a class or workers at a meeting—to set default expectations about what levels of privacy they can expect.”

via PlaceAvoider Software Limits Life-Logging Devices | MIT Technology Review.

Read The Sonnet Co-Authored By Shakespeare, An MIT PhD Student & A Machine-Learning Algorithm | TechCrunch, 26 January 2014

The work has no single author. It’s a collaboration whose only living human agent, the aforementioned Matias, also now a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, at Harvard University – whose mind was responsible for the final word selections, and thus also for assembling (and dissembling) the poem’s core meaning — describes as requiring an acknowledged role for each of its different agents (i.e. both human and machine).

via Read The Sonnet Co-Authored By Shakespeare, An MIT PhD Student & A Machine-Learning Algorithm | TechCrunch.

The Paper Chase Post-Paper | Harvard Law Today, 01 January 2014

To many of us, libraries are where the past resides, not where the future is made. But these traditional realms of the book and the shelf are now more 21st than 12th century. For the strongest case study, look at Harvard Law School and its library, where digital experts are busy inventing the future of textbooks, the classroom and information access.

via The Paper Chase Post-Paper | Harvard Law Today.

In Papers and Talk, Researchers Say EdX Success Not Tied to Dropout Rate | News | The Harvard Crimson, 21 January 2014

Reich was one of several speakers at the event, entitled “The First Year of HarvardX: Research Findings to Inform the Future of Online Learning,” which was co-sponsored by HarvardX, the GSE, and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He was introduced by Vice Provost for Advances in Learning Peter K. Bol, who oversees HarvardX.

via In Papers and Talk, Researchers Say EdX Success Not Tied to Dropout Rate | News | The Harvard Crimson.

Intensifying Cyber Threats | Jonathan Zittrain, 22 January 2014

An oped by Jonathan Zittrain. Not too long ago, the phrase “electronic army” would have conjured up visions of a 1980s cyber-dystopian film — the kind featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and a lot of fog machines. But today the idea of an electronic army has been adopted outside the realm of entertainment, as a group called the Syrian Electronic Army, which supports Bashar al-Assad’s regime, has successfully managed to temporarily cripple the online operations of companies like Twitter and The New York Times.

via Intensifying Cyber Threats | Jonathan Zittrain.

Harvard Reports Examine K-12 Student Privacy — THE Journal, 22 January 2014

A Harvard University research center that studies the impact of cyberspace on life has turned its attention to student privacy, in both K-12 and higher ed. As a product of a student privacy initiative, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society has released three reports that touch on aspects of cloud computing and mobile device usage in the K-12 environment.

via Harvard Reports Examine K-12 Student Privacy — THE Journal.

‘The NSA Wasn’t Forthcoming,’ So A Computer Security Expert Briefed Congress Instead, 16 January 2014

In a brief post on his blog, Bruce Schneier said that he had held a roundtable discussion with six House members, organized by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), to discuss the NSA’s activities.

Schneier, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, co-authored a Guardian article with reporter Glenn Greenwald on the NSA’s attempts to hack an anonymizing web service and has taken a peek at many of the documents that Snowden leaked.

via ‘The NSA Wasn’t Forthcoming,’ So A Computer Security Expert Briefed Congress Instead.

How Corrections Would Help Avoid Twitter Libel Lawsuits, 16 January 2014

To address this, Zittrain has proposed that Twitter allow people not only to retract or correct a tweet, but to create a feature that relays that fix through all the people who retweeted it. “It seems to be an untaken opportunity to be able to spread correction or refinement so easily,” he says.

via How Corrections Would Help Avoid Twitter Libel Lawsuits.