Does anyone actually read privacy policies? What's in them, and why can't we usually understand them? On our second season finale, we’ll talk with Professor Lorrie Cranor, director of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory at Carnegie-Mellon University. The lab brings together more than 100 faculty from across campus to study security and…

Annette Zimmermann makes the provocative argument that there are times it might be better to take cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools and leave them unused. Annette is a political philosopher working on the ethics of artificial intelligence and machine learning. She’s a technology and human rights fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights P…

Kevin Lee recently co-wrote a fascinating study about how easy it is for an attacker to gain control of another person’s cell phone. From there, the attacker can use the phone’s multi-factor authentication tool – usually a security code provided over a text message -- to do all kinds of damage, including making unauthorized purchases. As part of th…

Are online learning platforms really secure? Mihir Kshirsagar co-wrote a paper that spells out in startling detail everything you’ve wondered about -- but didn’t want to know -- about how online platforms are allowing students to have their personal data exploited as the students use them for online learning. And he discusses the one mistake instru…

How can you can improve your privacy in your everyday use of web browsers, email, text messaging and other apps? Our guest is David Sherry, the chief information security officer here at Princeton. He’s responsible for shoring up security at this Ivy League campus of more than 15,000 people. He has 20 years of experience in information security man…

Today’s guests have written a study about the Google Search engine, and the subtle – and not-so-subtle – ways in which it shows its bias, and in many ways perpetuates tired old stereotypes. Orestis Papakyriakopoulos is a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy. His research showcases political issues …

As a chief computer architect at Hewlett-Packard in the 1980s, Ruby Lee was a leader in changing the way computers are built, simplifying their core instructions so they could do more. And she revolutionized the way computers use multimedia. If you’ve watched a video or streamed music on your computer or smart phone, Ruby had a lot to do with makin…

To kick off our second season, we’re honored to welcome Barton Gellman, Princeton Class of 1982. Bart has won multiple Pulitzer Prizes, including for his groundbreaking work with The Washington Post in 2013 to reveal widespread surveillance by the National Security Agency. The stories showed that even though they weren’t the targets, law-abiding Am…