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."

September 21, 2014

Co-Director Batya Friedman Discusses “Can We Build A Safer Internet?” in The New York Times

The New York Times

In a recent article the New York Times asked "Can We Build a Safer Internet?" They examined whether the harassment and hateful internet of today could one day change for the better and discussed the issue with Co-Director Batya Friedman: "The question for designers of online communities, she said, is 'how do we either create virtual norms that are comparable, or how do we represent those things so that people are getting those cues, so they modulate their behavior?'"

September 12, 2014

EFF Thanks Franzi Roesner for Her Help With “Privacy Badger”

Recently, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released a new browser add-on that prevents ads, social widgets, and hidden trackers. Tech Policy Lab alum Franzi Roesner was thanked by the EFF “for exceptional work in enhancing Privacy Badger’s widget-handling algorithms.”

July 17, 2014

Moral Hazards and Legal Conundrums of Our Robot Filled-Future – Director Calo in Wired

Wired

Lab Director Ryan Calo was recently on a robotics panel at UC Berkeley that has been featured on Wired.

Could Jibo Developer Cynthia Breazeal Be The Steve Wozniak of Robots? (Forbes Cross-post)

Bill Gates once predicted we would have a robot in every home to go with our personal computer. James Temple of is calling Jibo—a new personal robot to be sold commercially in 2015—“one of the most ambitious and affordable robots for the home that [he has] seen.” I agree. Developed by social robotics pioneer and […]

July 7, 2014

Consumer Subject Review Boards: Co-Director Ryan Calo on NPR Marketplace

NPR

Following the news about a Facebook study on the effects of changing the positive or negative comments on a user's News Feed, many articles have taken Facebook to task for experimenting on their users. Others have pointed out that this study is in line with using algorithms to tailor content, and suggest new processes for companies to handle such research. Recently, Co-Director Ryan Calo was interviewed on NPR's Market Place Tech about his 2013 suggestion for Consumer Subject Review Boards.

July 5, 2014

Lab Member Tamara Bonaci talks with Geekwire about Brain-Computer Interfaces and Privacy

Geekwire

GeekWire talked to Tamara Bonaci and Howard Chizeck about Brain-Computer Interfaces and Privacy recently: "The past couple of years have brought a series of revelations about the lack of privacy online — all the ways that companies and the government can use our activity on the Internet and mobile devices to collect and capitalize on personal details about our lives. So what happens when we start hooking our brains up to these devices? That’s our topic on the GeekWire radio show and podcast this week, and it’s the focus of our two guests, who are conducting research into the privacy implications of brain-computer interfaces. We’re joined in the studio by Howard Chizeck, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington, and UW graduate student Tamara Bonaci."

July 3, 2014

Regulating Robots: Co-Director Ryan Calo’s Talk at Aspen Ideas Festival

Recently, Lab Co-Director Ryan Calo spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival and The Atlantic covered his talk and his latest article “Robotics and the New Cyberlaw“. “Law professor Ryan Calo believes that robots are soon going to constitute a more abrupt departure from the technologies that preceded them than did the Internet from personal computers […]

April 1, 2014

Security and Privacy for Augmented Reality Systems

Communications of the ACM

Augmented Reality (AR) technologies promise to enhance our perception of and interaction with the real world. Unlike virtual reality systems, which replace the real world with a simulated one, AR systems sense properties of the physical world and overlay computer-generated visual, audio, and haptic signals onto real-world feedback in real time. In this article, we consider the security and privacy concerns associated with AR systems themselves as well as those that arise from the supporting technologies.

March 21, 2014

Can You Sue a Robot for Defamation? – (Forbes Cross-Post)

(Image courtesy of Katy Tresedder) Life moves pretty fast.  Especially for journalists. When an earthquake aftershock shakes America’s second largest city, news outlets scramble to be the first to cover the story.  Today the news itself made news when various outlets picked up on a curious byline over at the Los Angeles Times: “this post […]