January 22, 2016

Toys That Listen and the Internet of Things

Hello Barbie, Amazon Echo, and the home robot Jibo are part of a new wave of connected toys and gadgets for the home that listen. Different than the smartphone, these devices are always on, blending into the background until needed by the adult or child user. We do not yet know all the information our new toys are collecting, storing, or disclosing. With an intended audience of designers and regulators, this project brings an interdisciplinary group of experts together to build a set of consumer protection best practices for design and user control of connected devices in the home.

October 13, 2015

Augmented Reality: A Technology and Policy Primer

This whitepaper is aimed at identifying some of the major legal and policy issues augmented reality (AR) may present as a novel technology, and outlines some conditional recommendations to help address those issues. Our key findings include: AR exists in a variety of configurations, but in general, AR is a mobile or embedded technology that […]

July 16, 2015

How Information Asymmetry Helped Find Abducted Kids

Washington Post

Lab Co-Director Ryan Calo is featured in a Washington Post article describing how police used Spotify and other streaming services to located abducted kids in Mexico.

July 15, 2015

Understanding Journalists Information Security Choices

This blog post, cross-posted from the Tow Center, describes recent work studying computer security in journalist-source communications, a collaboration between Susan McGregor at the Columbia Journalism School, UW HCI+D Masters students Polina Charters and Tobin Holliday, and TPL affiliated faculty member Franziska Roesner. Understanding Journalists Information Security Choices by Susan McGregor In the roughly two years since the Snowden revelations, information security […]

May 15, 2015

Lab members research on Teleoperated Robots Featured by MIT Tech Review

MIT Tech Review

Lab members Tamara Bonaci and Howard Chizeck's work on the security of Teleoperated robots has recently been featured in a number of science news reports including MIT Tech, Popular Science, and Ars Technica. "Tamara Bonaci and pals at the University of Washington in Seattle examine the special pitfalls associated with the communications technology involved in telesurgery. In particular, they show how a malicious attacker can disrupt the behavior of a telerobot during surgery and even take over such a robot, the first time a medical robot has been hacked in this way."

May 1, 2015

How Technology Impacts Civil Liberties with Co-Director Ryan Calo

Newly-emerging technologies affect us all in a multitude of ways and today’s turned-on, always-connected world has reached an all-time high. O’Connor, president of the Center for Democracy & Technology, will discuss how the internet and interconnected world shape our lives, impact our civil liberties, and inform our daily decisions. Other panelists include Ryan Calo, faculty […]

April 20, 2015

Watch We Robot 2015

Not able to make it to We Robot 2015? Want to watch your favorite panel again? Below are links to all of the talks that made We Robot 2015 great.

February 16, 2015

Roundtable: Cyber Civil Rights and Effective Responses to ‘Revenge Porn’

Tuesday, March 3 4:00-6:00 pm Reception to follow K&L Gates 925 Fourth Avenue Seattle, WA 98104 On Tuesday, March 3, K&L Gates and the University of Washington’s Tech Policy Lab will be co-sponsoring a roundtable on cyber civil rights and revenge porn. We have assembled a fantastic panel with speakers from K&L Gates, the Federal […]

February 15, 2015

Cryptographic Currencies from a Tech-Policy Perspective: Policy Issues and Technical Directions

Tech Policy Lab members Emily McReynolds, Ada Lerner, Will Scott, Franziska Roesner, and Tadayoshi Kohno, recently presented a paper at the 2015 Financial Cryptography and Data Security Conference.

December 12, 2014

Guest Post: UW Law School’s Technology Law and Policy Clinic: Autonomous-Vehicle Regulation – What Can and Should the States Regulate?

by Ashleigh Rhodes, Brooks Lindsay, Don Wang As autonomous vehicles drive from fantasy to reality (and they’ve almost arrived), rules and regulations are needed to ensure this new technology is safely integrated into the country’s current transportation infrastructure. States have been wondering what they can regulate and what the federal government will preemptively regulate. In […]