Monthly Archives: December 2015

CFP: Learning from Authoritative Security Experiment Results (LASER 2016)

This year, I’m on the PC for LASER 2016: the Oakland-attached workshop on Learning from Authoritative Security Experiment Results. The LASER 2016 CFP is now online, with a focus on methodologies for computer security experimentation, new experimental approaches, unexpected results or failed experiments, and, more generally, consideration of how to standardise scientific approaches to security research. Please consider submitting a paper — especially if you are pushing the boundaries on how we conduct experiments in the field of computer-security research!

The deadline is 29 January 2016. A limited number of student scholarships will be available to attend.

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Snoopers’ Charter 2.0

This afternoon at 4.30 I have been invited to give evidence in Parliament to the Joint Select Committee on the Investigatory Powers Bill.

This follows evidence I gave on the technical aspects of the bill to the Science and Technology Committee on November 10th; see video and documents. Of particular interest may be comments by my Cambridge colleague Richard Clayton; an analysis by my UCL colleague George Danezis; the ORG wiki; and finally the text of the bill itself.

While the USA has reacted to the Snowden revelations by restraining the NSA in various ways, the UK reaction appears to be the opposite. Do we really want to follow countries like China, Russia and Kazakhstan, and take the risk that we’ll tip countries like Brazil and India into following our lead? If the Internet fragments into national islands, that will not only do grave harm to the world economy, but make life a lot harder for GCHQ too.