net.wars columns, published Fridays at News Wireless Net and at the net.wars blog, on Saturdays on CIX (join! discuss!), and on most Mondays at ORGzine, as well as other places such as Privacy Surgeon from time to time. If there's any column you'd like to republish/cross-post, just ask. net.wars also has a Pinboard for stories that come up between columns on the subject net.wars covers: the border wars between cyberspace and real life.

2013

• Facts are scared (3/22/13) - Ofcom and the Open Data User Group fight over the Royal Mail's postcode database. (also here)
• Can money compete with free? (3/15/13) - at this year's Tomorrow's Transactions conference, the Web's business model threatens payments. (also here)
• Cyberwhere? (3/8/13) - in defense of the concept of cyberspace. (also here)
• Information wants to be freed (3/1/13) - prospective revisions to the UK's Freedom of Information Act threaten its progress. (also here)
• Merchants of chaos (2/22/13) - the publication of John Sweeney's new book, Church of Fear, provides a chance to look back at Scientology vs. the Net. (also here and here)
• Frictional arithmetic (2/15/13) - in digital payments, complexity is friction. (also here and here)
• Bug-a-boo (2/8/13) - Matt Blaze, Susan Landau, Steve Bellovin, and Sandy Clark have a novel idea: give the FBI hackers instead of legally mandated back doors. (also here and here)
• Pwned (2/1/13) - trouble at the New York Times. (also here and here)
• Lock box (1/25/13) - why does copyright law mean it's illegal for US consumers to unlock their phones? (also here and here)
• First-mover disadvantage (1/18/13) - Amazon.com inaugurates a service just like the one that got MP3.com sued into bankruptcy in 1999. (also here and here)
• Symbiosis (1/11/13) - French ISPs and the advertising arms race. (also here and here)
• The antitrust timewarp - Google is exonerated by the FTC, but the case is five years too late. (also here and here)

2012

• Apocalypse interrupted (12/28/12) - the world survives the Mayan calendar, and the Internet has so far survived WCIT. (also here)
• The personal connection (12/21/12) - online education reaches the parts other types can't. (also here)
• Defending Facebook (12/14/12) - Chris Palow explains to Defcon London what it's like to guard Facebook from attacks. (also here)
• The fifth estate (12/7/12) - Lord Justice Leveson calls the Internet uncivilized. Excuse me? (also here)
• Robot wars (11/30/12) - We say global existential risks; the tabloids say "killer robots!". Thoughts after a discussion on Voice of Russia. (also here)
• Democracy theater (11/23/12) - Facebook announces plans to dump its user voting structure for privacy policy changes. (also here). Update (1/26/13): Facebook backed down after protests and the user vote went against the company's plan. We'd expect them to try again.
• Grabbing at governance (11/16/12) - Thoughts before the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), when the International Trade Union Congress steps into the fray. (also here and here)
• The billion-dollar spree (11/9/12) - the first trillion-dollar election in history winds to a close; where can we possibly go from here? (also here and here)
• Survival instincts (11/2/12) - New York's post-Hurricane Sandy digital divide. (also here and here)
• Lie to me (10/26/12) - the 2012 Parliament and Internet conference, where security advice clashes with those convinced that online anonymity must die. (also here and here)
• Finding the gorilla (10/19/12) - the 2012 Singularity Summit studies the brain. (also here and here)
• My identity, my self (10/12/12) - the UK government's real plans for identity service providers. (also here and at Privacy Surgeon)
• The doors of probability (10/5/12) - Mike Lynch, the former CEO of Autonomy, talks publicly about future plans. (also here and here). Update (1/26/13): this event took place a few weeks before Hewlett-Packard, which bought Autonomy in 2011 for $10 billion, took a write down of some $5.5 billion on that sale and alleged accounting improprieties.
• Don't take ballots from smiling strangers (9/28/12) - New York state makes a mess of electronic balloting. (also here and here)
• This is not (just) about Google (9/21/12) - studying Google's missteps with Do Not Track in Safari. (also here and here)
• What did you lwarn in school today? (9/14/12) - what does placing CCTV cameras in school toilets and changing rooms really teach kids? (also here and here)
• Robocops (9/7/12) - automated copyright enforcement kills legal streams. here and here)
• Remembering the moon (8/31/12) - R.I.P. Neil Armstrong and dreams of a future lived in space. (also here and here)
• Look and feel (8/24/12) - Apple vs Samsung, and copying in the software industry. (also here and here) Update (1/26/13): after this piece appeared, Philippe Kahn emailed to say that the precedential case of Borland vs Lotus would have supported Apple in this case.
• Bottom dwellers (8/17/12) - how much legal responsibility should Google bear for the ordering of its search results? (also here and here)
• Wiped out (8/10/12) - the cloud is not a backup; repeat 100 times. (also here and here)
• Social advertising (8/3/12) - sponsored stories and paid links. (also here)
• Retcons and reversals (7/27/12) - Paul Chambers is acquitted on appeal; Britain accommodates the Olympics; a boy boards a plane without bypassing security or collecting $200; the Wall Street Journal claims the government had nothing to do with inventing the Internet. (also here and here)
• In the country of the free (7/20/12) - taking apart Elizabeth Wurtzel, who says in The Atlantic, that "Only people who do lousy work do it for free". (also here and here)
• The ninth circle of HOPE (7/13/12) - a writeup of the 2012 Hacking on Planet Earth. (also here and here)
• The license, the judge, and the wardrobe (7/6/12) - the Court of Justice of the Euroopean Union rules that used software can be sold on. (also here and here)
• Artificial scarcity (6/29/12) - tennis reporters battle to keep interview transcripts offline. (also here and here)
• The numbers game (6/22/12) - low-tech bank theft and that £27 billion Detica claims cybercrime costs the UK every year. (also here and here)
• A license to print money (6/15/12) - the draft Communications Data Bill creates a heckuva a windfall for security vendors. (also here)
• Insecure at any speed (6/8/12) - bad enough that we choose bad passwords; so much worse that sites protect them badly. (also here)
• The pet rock manifesto (6/1/12) - is there some reason governments can't listen to experts about security? (also here)
• Camera obscura (5/25/12) - privacy, identity, and image at Digital Shoreditch. (also here and here)
• A thousand new millionaires (5/18/12) - Facebook goes public. (also here and here). Update (1/26/13): The market hadn't yet opened in Facebook stock when this piece was written. On the first day, famously, it dropped about 40 percent; as of this week the share price is hovering in the low 30s and anyone who bought the stock at the IPO price is still under water.
• Self-drive (5/11/12) - Google's self-driving car gets a license. (also here and here)
• A matter of degree (5/4/12) - economics and the modern university student. (also here and here)
• An interview with Lawrence Lessig (4/28/12) - money, corruption, and changing Congress. (also here)
• A really fancy hammer with a gun (4/24/12) - the first annual We Robot conference crosses law and robotics. (also here and here)
• A nation of suspects (4/20/12) - bad policies are like counterfeit money: they never quite go away and they ensnare the innocent. Yes, the Interception Modernisation Programme is back as the Communications Capabilities Development Programme. (also here and here)
• The people perimeter (4/13/12) - social media brings deperimeterization to Britain's civil servants. (also here
• I spy (4/6/12) - as wearable computing matures into Google Glass, who will control the information that reaches us? (also here
• The ghost of cash (3/30/12) - at this week's Digital Money Forum I lick banknotes to prove they're not spreading disease. (also here and here)
• The year of the future (3/23/12) - at NOminet's annual Internet policy conference everyone sees 2012 as a crossroads that might decide who runs the Internet. (also here and here) Update (1/27/13): I think it's clear now it wasn't.
• The end of the beginning (3/16/12) - is that a glimmer of reform to libel law and copyright? (also here and here)
• Private parts (3/9/12) - a Westminster eForum event studies the data protection reform package. (also here and here)
• Drive by wire (3/2/12) - the University of Nottingham's seminar on self-driving cars considers the benefits of automation. (also here and here)
• Copyright U (2/24/12) - universities are the canaries in the copyright mine, says Cornell's Tracy Mitrano. (also here)
• Foul play (2/17/12) - why is the Serious and Organised Crimes Agency like a hacker clan? (also here and here)
• Media cop (2/10/12) - the Leveson Inquiry gives the former NightJack ammunition to sue the Times for outing his identity. (also here)
• Beyond the soup kitchen (2/3/12) - this month's Tea Camp explores technology for the homeless. (also here and here)
• Principle failure (1/27/12) - Google consolidates its privacy policies. This can't be good, can it? (also here and here)
• Camping out (1/20/12) - this year's GovCamp recodes government. (also here and here)
• Pot pourri (1/13/12) - 2012 on a napkin. (also here and here)
• Only the paranoid (1/6/12) - Ramnit, the first Facebook worm. Time to cash out? (also here and here) Update (1/27/13): note that a later column ("Defending FAcebook") talks about Facebook's effort to defend itself and its users from such threats. Note also that Facebook's IPO ("A thousand new millionaires") was announced soon after this incident, and the company went public three months later, in April 2012, though I'm sure the IPO was already in the works when Ramnit happened.

2011

• Ignorance is no excuse (12/30/11) - adopt a politician and *make* them understand technology; no, you can't all take Tom Watson. (also here and here)
• Duck amuck (12/23/11) - an interview with Gabriel Weinberg, founder of the new(ish) search engine DuckDuckGo. (also here and here)
• Location, location, location (12/16/11) - this year's A Fine Balance focuses on location privacy and why it's so sensitive. (also here and here)
• Reversal of government fortunes (12/9/11) - all the people you wished would be hired by government to reinvent itself and its technology? Well, they're working for the UK's Government Digital Service. (also here and here)
• Debating the robocalypse (12/2/11) - I participate in a formal debate at Trinity College Dublin, "This house fears the rise of artificial intelligence". (also here and here)
• Paul Revere's printing press (11/25/11) - a Westminster eForum on cybersecurity produces the same tired ideas and agrees they aren't working. (also here and here)
• The write stuff (11/18/11) - the official tenth anniversary column covers my weekend at Ken Levine's Sitcom Room. (also here)
• The sentiment of crowds (11/11/11) - the Sentiment Analysis Symposium reveals that deriving trends from social media is all about the question. (also here and here)
• The identity layer (11/4/11) - the UK government ponders returning data to the people through Midata and managing identity for government services. (also here and here)
• Crypto: the revenge (10/28/11) - yes, PGP (or GPG) is easier to use than it was; no, it's still not easy enough. (also here and here)
• Printers on fire (10/21/11) - Columbia University's Ang Cui and Sal Stolfo use embedded software in printers and other devices to create holes in networks; the fire is just an entertaining sideshow. (also here and here)
• Think of the children (10/14/11) - do you want porn with that? Supersize me! (also here and here)
• In the club (10/7/11) - who would have thought the mobile Internet would change car ownership? (also here and here)
• Trust exercise (9/30/11) - a meeting at the Centre for Financial Innovation considers identity and its fundamental question: whom do we trust? (also here and here)
• Your grandmother's phone (9/23/11) - the second Senior Market Mobile considers assistive design that does not insult. (also here)
• The world at ten (9/16/11) - ten years on from 9/11, have "the terrorists" won? (also here)
• The final countdown (9/7/11) - in a last-minute reversal, copyright term extension is suddenly back on the EU's agenda. (also here) Update (1/27/13): five days later, on September 12, 2011, term extension passed the Council of the European Union and became law (PDF). Member states have two years to incorporate it into national law.
• White rabbits (9/2/11) - the first 44con is scary enough to make you go back to paper. (also here)
• Master of your domain (8/27/11) - new generic top-level domains, too late to make a difference. (also here)
• Back to school (8/19/11) - is a university education worth paying for? (also here)
• Phony concerns about human rights (8/12/11) - Britain's summer of riots tempts politicians to do their worst. (also here)
• Cheaters in Paradise (8/5/11) - why shouldn't kids cheat when they see that everyone else does? (also here)
• Name check (7/30/11) - Google demands real names for Google+. That is, names it recognizes as real. (also here)
Face to face (7/23/11) - facial recognition is certainly here, but does that mean we just have to accept it? (also here and here)
• Dirty digging (7/16/11) - the escalating phone hacking scandals and the culture of the press. (also here and here)
• The grey hour (7/9/11) - a workshop on online behavioral advertising asks: is this the last window to protect consumer privacy before it's a lost cause? (also < ahref="http://www.pelicancrossing.net/netwars/2011/07/the_grey_hour.html">here and here)
• Free speech, not data (7/1/11) - SCOTUS invokes the First Amendment to rule for data mining and against the state of Vermont. (also here and here)
• Bits of the realm (6/24/11) - So how cool are Bitcoins? (also here and here)
• If you build it... (6/20/11) - CFP: computers. (also here)
• The democracy divide (6/19/11) - CFP: freedom. (also here and here)
• Public private lives (6/18/11) - CFP: privacy. (also here and here)
• Untrusted systems (6/17/11) - The Health Privacy Summit: the record is not the patient. (also here and here)
• The creepiness factor (6/10/11) - Facial recognition comes to Facebook. (also here and here)
• A forgotten man and a bowl of Japanese goldfish (6/3/11) - The right to be forgotten: privacy, social networks, and free expression. (also here and here)
• Mixed media (5/27/11) - Technology, law, and open data: Big Tent UK and Opentech. (also here and here)
• The world we thought we lived in (5/20/11) - The Good Wife, TV's smartest technology show. (also here and here)
• Lay down the cookie (5/13/11) - New rules on the use of cookies confuse Web developers. (also here and here)
• Double exposure (5/6/11) - Wikileaks' cables expose US State Department copyright policy. (also here and here)
• Searching for reality (4/29/11) - A visit to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. (also here and here)
• Applesauce (4/22/11) - Is your iPhone spying on you? (also here and here)
• The open zone (4/15/11) - Somewhere between hobbyist kit and consumer appliance... (also here and here)
• Brought to ebook (4/8/11) - Is this finally the ebook moment? (also here and here)
• Equal access (4/1/11) - How much Web would a Web block block if a Web block could block Web? (also here and here)
• Return to the red page district (3/25/11) - Too little, too late; ICANN creates the .xxx top-level domain. (also here and here)
• Block party (3/18/11) - The IWF at 15. (also here and here)
• The ten-year count (3/11/11) - The census and government transparency. (also here and here)
• Tax returns (3/4/11) - State sales tax rules start shutting down Amazon affiliates programs. (also here and here)
• Wartime economy (2/25/11) - Is cybercrime really costing the UK £27 billion annually? Supersize me! (also here and here)
• What is hyperbole? (2/18/11) - What IBM's Jeopardy champion and Eben Moglen's Freedom box have in common. (also here and here)
• Question, explore, discover...action! (2/11/11) - Have a sugar pill. (also here)
• Blackout (2/4/11) - The Internet was built to withstand a bomb outage...but not government action. (also here)
• Stuffed (1/28/11) - Archivsts, not hoarders. Please. (also here and here)
• Fogged (1/21/11) - The privacy of Phileas Fogg. (also here and here)
• Face time (1/14/11) - Is Facebook's online party peaking? (also here and here)
• Scanning the TSA (1/7/11) - EPIC studies the TSA. (also here and here)

2010

• Good, bad, ugly...the 2010 that was (12/31/10) - Recap. (also here)
• Random acts of security (12/24/10) - Getting through the TSA's shiny new toy, airport scanners. (also here)
• Sharing values (12/17/10) - The British Phonographic Industry opens fire on Google. (also here and here)
• Payback (12/10/10) - Michael Chertoff visits London and promotes cyberwar doctrine. (also here)
• Open diplomacy (12/3/10) - Wikileaks tells us what diplomats really think. (also here)
• Like, unlike (11/26/10) - Look up impetigo, tell all your Facebook friends. (also here)
• Power to the people (11/19/10) - William Heath reinvents the data store, and this time it's personal. (also here)
• Just between ourselves (11/12/10) - The Twitter joke trial: security gone mad. (also here)
• Suicidal economics (11/5/10) - Update on the Times paywall. (also here)
• Wanted: less Sir Humphrey, more shark (10/29/10) - Robert Halfon, MP, convenes a Parliamentary discussion on privacy and the so far timid role of the Information Commissioner. (also here)
• An affair to remember (10/22/10) - Are the crypto wars coming back? (also here)
• The elected dictatorship (10/15/10) - Heather Brooke's silent state. (also here)
• The zero effect (10/8/10) - Thoughts in the aftermath of Stuxnet. (also here)
• Duty of care (9/30/10) - The new discipline of Web science. (also here)
• Lost in a Haystack (9/23/10) - First rule of crypto: release the source for cryptanalysis. (also here)
• Science is vital (9/17/10) - Budget cuts to damage the future. (also here)
• Google, I want a divorce (9/10/10) - The Wal-Martization of what used to be a fine research tool (also here)
• Beyond the zipline (9/3/10) - Aaron Sorkin's screenplay for The Social Network. (also here)
• Trust the data, not the database (8/27/10) - Opting out of the NHS spine. (also here)
• Naming conventions (8/20/10) - Eric Schmidt, Google's court jester, suggests overcoming teen social media indiscretions by an automatic change of name at 21. (also here)
• Pirate flags (8/13/10) - Game-changing the intellectual property industries. (also here)
• Bride of Clipper (8/6/10) - Is Howard Schmidt bringing back Clipper chip thinking? (also here)
• Three-legged race (7/30/10) - Not enough change from the new coalition government: the DEA in practice. (also here)
• Information Commissioner, where is thy sting? (7/23/10) - All baying for Google's blood over the sniffed wi-fi data...except for Britain's ICO. (also here) Nominated, BT Security Journalism Awards, "Best Generic Security Feature of the Year".
• Music tax (7/16/10) - Keep music live. Help live musicians. (also here)
• The big button caper (7/9/10) - The senior mobile conference: who wants the mobile phone equivalent of support stockings? (also here)
• Pay per view (7/2/10) - The Times goes paywall. (also here)
• New money (6/25/10) - The hidden costs of electronic money. (also here)
• Things I learned at this year's CFP (6/18/10) - Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2010. (also here)
• Bonfire of the last government's vanities (6/11/10) - Undoing the Labour government's database state, starting with the ID card. (also here)
• Return to the hacker crackdown (6/4/10) - What hacking was when Gary McKinnon was arrested. (also here)
• Privacy theater (5/29/10) - What else can you say about Facebook's new privacy controls? (also here)
• Trial by innocence (5/22/10) - Andre Agassi's autobiography makes life harder for innocent athletes. (also here)
• Bait and switch (5/14/10) - Seriously, Facebook? (also here) Nominated, BT Information Security Journalism awards, "Best Privacy Feature of the Year".
• Wish list (5/7/10) - Watching Labour lose on election night. (also here)
• Child's play (4/30/10) - The Byron report spreads some sanity about kids online. (also here)
• Death, where is thy password? (4/23/10) - There is no death in the Web world. (also here)
• Data-mining the data miners (4/16/10) - The PrivacyOS conference. (also here)
• Letter box (4/9/10) - App iMean turns the iPad into a letterpad to help an autistic child communicate. (also here)
• Not bogus! (4/2/10) - Simon Singh defeats the British Chiropractic Association on appeal and launches Libel law reform. (also here)
• Sung heroines (3/26/10) - Happy Ada Lovelace Day. (also here)
• Digital exclusion: the bill (3/19/10) - The Digital Economy bill wends towards passage while Privacy International turns 20. (also here)
• The cost of money (3/12/10) - The future of cash at the Digital Money Forum. (also here)
• The surveillance chronicles (3/5/10) - Review of the movie Erasing David. (also here)
• The community delusion (2/26/10) - The contrasting online communities supporting Simon Singh and Richard Dawkins. (also here
• Death doth make hackers of us all (2/19/10) - Friends don't die leaving uncrackable passwords. (also here)
• Light year (2/12/10) - Political bloggers and the upcoming election (Westminster Skeptics). (also here)
• Getting run down on the infobahn (2/5/10) - Ebooks: challenge or opportunity? (also here)
• Game night (1/29/10) - Tom Watson, MP, leads the quest for UK government support for the games industry. (also here)
• Music night (1/22/10) - The state of the digital music business, c 2010. (also here)
• The once and future late-night king (1/15/10) - Conan's spat with NBC is part of the changing business of television. (also here)
• Car talk (1/9/10) - Who'd have thought mobile telephony would disrupt the automobile industry? (also here)
• Privacy victims (1/1/10) - Airport security and the crotch bomber. (also here) Nominated, BT Security Journalism Awards, "Best Information Security Story of the Year".

2009

• Second acts (12/25/09) - What a difference a decade makes in the tech world. (also here)
• Little black Facebook (12/19/09) - "The only logical business model is the value of consumers' data," said Australian privacy advocate Roger Clarke in 2004. (also here)
• One ring to rule them all (12/12/09) - European copyright disharmony. (also here)
• Which lie did I tell? (12/4/09) - Fun with security questions in the era of publicly accessible personal information. (also here)
• Women and children first (11/27/09) - Ireland and the Church; the history of abuse and exploitation. (also here)
• Thou shalt not steal (11/20/09) - "Politicians seem increasingly to view due and accountable legal process as an unnecessary waste of time and try to avoid it." (also here)
• Cookie cutters (11/13/09) - A "masterfully stupid piece of legislation". (also here)
• Wigging (11/6/09) - Tennis and drugs tests. (also here)
• Kill switch (10/30/09) - How to keep the Net hard to kill. (also here)
• The power of Twitter (10/23/09) - Targets good, bad and bogus. (also here)
• Unsocial media (10/16/09) - "No one under 30 will use email". (also here)
• Phantom tollbooths (10/9/09) - Google Books, postcodes, and unforeseen uses. (also here)
• Free thought (10/5/09) - The Evening Standard drops its cover price to zero. (also here)
• Dead technology (9/26/09) - Obsolescence and unrepairable sewing machines. (also here)
• Renewal (9/19/09) - Crete, conferencing and privacy. (also here)
• Public broadcasting (9/12/09) - The BBC wants to implement DRM and evade free-to-air. (also here)
• Nothing ventured, nothing lost (9/4/09) - Hermann Hauser, venture capitalist. (also here)
• Develop in haste, lose the election at leisure (8/30/09) - More on last week's anti-filesharing. (also here)
• This means law (8/22/09) - UK Govt looks into anti-filesharing measures. (also here)
• We love the NHS (8/16/09) - Even though it would never let Stephen Hawking live. Hang on a second.... (also here)
• The 5 percent solution (8/7/09) - Watchdog International's net filtering method. (also here)
• Unsustainability (8/6/09) - Defcon/Black Hat in Las Vegas. (also here)
• Security for the rest of us (7/24/09) - Usable security. (also here)
• Human factors (7/17/09) - Security fatigue. (also here)
• Public interest (7/10/09) - Journalistic ethics and voicemail hacking. (also here)
• What's in an assigned name? (7/3/09) - ICANN - no change since 1998? (also here)
• Pass the policy (6/28/09) - Michael Geist tracks down where copyright policy comes from. Big surprise! (also here)
• Star system (6/19/09) - The knock-on effects of the loss of traditional media. (also here)
• Futures (6/15/09) - Futurology. And ducts. (also here)
• Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2009 - Day Four (6/13/09) - "Use online tools to build offline institutions." (also here)
• Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2009 - Day Three (6/4/09) - "Information asymmetry is how repressive regimes operate." (also here)
• Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2009 - Day Two (6/3/09) - "Secrecy makes people stupid." (also here)
• Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2009 - Day One (6/2/09) - How anonymous is anonymized data? (also here)
• Three blind governments (5/29/09) - DRM restricts blind people's access to information. (also here)
• InPhormed consent (5/23/09) - Phorm's hysterical response to anti-Phorm hysteria. (also here)
• Bogus (5/15/09) - The British Chiropractic Association v. Simon Singh. (also here)
• Automated systems all the way down (5/8/09) - Users see security as damage, and route around it. (also here)
• Twit crit (5/1/09) - Twitter: where the online party is this week. (also here)
• The way we were (4/24/09) - Roger Ebert's Film Festival. (also here)
• I think we're all pirates on this bus (4/17/09) - Pirate Bay and all who sail in her. (also here)
• Statebook of the art (4/10/09) - Databases and uncertain results. (also here)
• Copyright encounters of the third dimension (4/3/09) - 3-d printing and copyright issues. (also here)
• The view (3/27/09) - Google Street View, live in the UK. (also here)
• The untweetable Xeroxness of being (3/20/09) - On the Internet, no one knows you're a fictional Xerox machine. (also here)
• Threat model (3/13/09) - Phorm think it's all about them (it isn't). (also here)
• The camcorder conundrum (3/7/09) - What are the effects of file-sharing? (also here)
• Modern liberty (2/28/09) - The Modern Liberty Convention. (also here)
• Control freaks (2/20/09) - Facebook revises its TOS. (also here)
• The Gattaca in Gossip Girl (2/13/09) - The privacy-less society. (also here)
• Forty-five years (2/6/09) - EU: term extension in sound recordings. (also here)
• Looking backward (1/30/09) - Governments move slowly; technology moves fast. (also here)
• Will tweet for food (1/23/09) - What Twitter users want. (also here)
• Health watch (1/16/09) - Steve Jobs' health problems. (also here)
• All change (1/9/09) - Newspaper death watch. (also here)
• No rest for 2009 (1/2/09) - Digital rights issues for 2009. (also here)

2008

• Apologies not accepted (26/12/08) - Why should staff apologise for their management's mistakes? (also here)
• Backbone (12/19/08) - The British Chiropractic Association sues Simon Singh for libel. (also here)
• Watching the Net (12/12/08) - IWF vs. Wikipedia. (also here)
• Saving seeds (12/5/08) - The UK's DNA database violates the European Convention on Human Rights. (also here)
• Mother love (11/28/08) - The Lori Drew cyberbullying case. (also here)
• The art of the impossible (11/21/08) - From the Convergence (un)conference. (also here)
• The USB stick in the men's room (11/14/08) - Involving people in an experience to reduce piracy's impact. (also here)
• Reality TV (11/7/08) - Persuading people to watch live TV. (also here)
• Machine dreams (10/31/08) - Defining artificial intelligence. (also here)
• Living by numbers (10/24/08) - Mining your own personal data. (also here)
• Mind the gap (10/17/08) - "80 years is just about exactly the right length of time for a given culture to recreate its past mistakes". (also here)
• Data mining snake oil (10/10/08) - Dataveillance won't prevent terrorism. (also here)
• Deprave and corrupt (10/3/08) - The Darryn Walker case. (also here)
• Wimsey's whimsy (9/26/08) - GikIII asks quirky questions that illuminate serious issues. (also here)
• Going places (9/19/08) - Dopplr. (also here)
• Slow news (9/12/08) - How a 6-year-old news story knocked 75% off the price of United Airlines shares in under an hour. (also here)
• Return of the browser wars (9/5/08) - Google Chrome and software as a Net service. (also here)
• Bannedwidth (8/29/08) - "ISPs should be wary of signing onto the rightsholders' bandwagon when their concern is user demand for bandwidth". (also here)
• Intimate Exchanges (8/22/08) - Live performance is uncopiable, but DVDs would still be nice.... (also here)
• License to Kill (8/15/08) - Patent claims, free licences and model trains. (also here)
• Broadcast of the Rings (8/8/08) - "There's a certain irony in the International Olympic Committee's choice of YouTube as its broadcast platform for the Beijing Olympics". (also here)
• All paid up (8/1/08) - Amazon Checkout, Paypal and anti-fraud algorithms. (also here)
• Who? (7/25/08) - Un-anonymizing data can be surprisingly easy. (also here)
• Ninety-five (7/18/08) - The EC extends rights in sound recordings from 50 to 95 years. (also here)
• Voters for sale (7/11/08) - The DMA opposes the withdrawal of the edited electoral register. (also here)
• The new normal (7/4/08) - "'Our way of life' is a moving target". (also here)
• Mistakes were made (6/27/08) - How HMRC managed to lose 25 million households' personal data. (also here)
• Print rules (6/20/08) - Why electronic newsletters can't replace printed ones. (also here)
• Naked in plain sight (6/13/08) - How easy it is for moderately capable Windows users to leave themselves vulnerable. (also here)
• The Digital Revolution turns 15 (6/6/08) - The Internet is changing our world, and very few predictions of its effects have been anywhere near correct. (also here)
• Ten (5/30/08) - Happy 10th birthday, Foundation for Information Policy Research! (also here)
• The haystack conundrum (5/23/08) - The Home Office wants to create a giant database to store all UK comms. How will they identify the important stuff in it? (also here)
• Everything new is old again (5/16/08) - Why do we keep falling for sexy new technologies? (also here)
• Swings and roundabouts (5/10/08) - The Government wants us to love the ID card. (also here)
• Bet and sue (5/2/08) - Online gambling and the good name of tennis. (also here)
• The shape of the mushroom (4/25/08) - When the world's data outgrows its storage... (also here)
• Like a Virgin (4/18/08) - Will Virgin try to charge providers for faster streaming? (also here)
• My IP address, my self (4/11/08) - Has the EU become the world's data protection policeman? (also here)
• Million Dollar Baby (4/4/08) - James Randi and his Million Dollar Challenge. Get in quick, it ends in 2010! (also here)
• Leaving Las Vegas (3/28/08) - Technology and the gaming industry. (also here)
• Copywrongs (3/21/08) - Discussions about music copyright rarely include musicians. (also here)
• Uninformed consent (3/14/08) - Surveillance and secrecy. (also here)
• Techitics (3/7/08) - Can technology reform politics? (also here)
• Phormal ware (2/29/08) - Spyware or privacy-friendly advertising? (also here)
• Strikeout (2/22/08) - Filesharing isn't going away, and the latest proposals are badly thought-out and unfair. (also here)
• Greedbay? (2/16/08) - eBay's change to its rating system displeases some users. (also here)
• If you have ID cards, drink alcohol (2/8/08) - "ID cards, though the heavens fall!" (also here)
• Microhoo! (2/1/08) - Or should that be Yahsoft? (also here)
• Scientology: Xenu strikes again (1/25/08) - The DDOS attacks on Sceintology sites. (also here)
• Harmony, where is thy sting? (1/18/08) - The EU wants to harmonize the national laws that apply to online content. (also here)
• Beyond biology (1/11/08) - Cryonics and its possible consequences. (also here)
• If God had meant us to vote... (1/4/08) - Let the tallest man win! (also here)

2007

• 2007 by numbers (12/28/07) - Looking back.... (also here)
• Enter password (12/21/07) - By their typing pattern will you know them. Maybe. (also here)
• Nativity plays (12/14/07) - Is faith so fragile that without school nativity plays it will cease to exist? (also here)
• Data hogs (12/7/07) - That great sucking sound you hear is Facebook swallowing you whole. (also here)
• Spam today and spam tomorrow (11/30/07) - Unfortunately, always spam today. (also here)
• Road block (11/23/07) - Information wants to be free, but data wants to leak. (also here)
• Strike (11/16/07) - net.wars supports the Writer's Guild. (also here)
• Watching you watching me (11/9/07) - What is CCTV for? Somehow, that debate never happens. (also here)
• Amateur hour (11/2/07) - Amateur, shamateur, hey, it's all "user-generated content" these days. (also here)
• Tomorrow's world (10/26/07) - Party in today's virtual worlds like it's 1999. (also here
• Money talks (10/19/07) - eBay comes clean about how much it overpaid for Skype. (also here)
• The permission-based society (10/12/07 - The TSA proposes to require advance clearance for all travelers in, above, or through US airspace. (also here)
• Back to high skool (10/5/07) - Facebook's big mistake: listing friends instead of enemies. (also here)
• Anything worth having is worth cheating for (9/28/07) - Floyd Landis, Mariano Puerta, and kangaroo courts. (also here)
• The summer of lost hats (9/21/07) - Energy, virtual worlds, security, and nanotechnology. It was quite a summer. (also here)
• Nothing to hide, no one to trust (9/14/07) - Everybody into the DNA database! (also here)
• Was that private? (9/7/07) - Why leave it to large organizations to invade our privacy when we can do it so effectively ourselves? (here)
• Snouting for bandwidtch (8/31/07) - Can the Internet industry really afford file-sharing? (also here)
• Game gods (8/24/07) - Virtual worlds were created to set people free, but they are the most controlled and data-logged online services of all. (also here)
• Welcome to Singapore (8/17/07) - For the want of a tiny plug, the kingdom was lost... (also here)
• Wall of sheep (8/10/07) - Dateline ignores real criminals to go after Defcon. (also here)
• The house always wins (8/3/07) - No matter how much security we bring to the table, there are always new risks. (also here)
• There ain't no such thing as a free Benidorm (7/27/07) - Deforming cyberspace to suit physical laws that don't exist. (also here)
• The cookie monster (7/20/07) - Google puts a Bandaid on its cookies. (also here)
• Constitutional convention (7/13/07) - A written constitution for Britain? (also here)
• Born digital (7/6/07) - Microsoft helps preserve British national archives. (also here)
• In search of the very, very small (6/29/07) - Exploring nanotechnology in Basel. (also here)
• Many hidden returns (6/22/07) - Heard the one about Britain's e-voting electoral trials? (also here)
• Six degrees of defamation (6/15/07) - How many links away do you have to be before it's safe to mention Michael Geist and Wayne Crookes? (also here)
• Beating galahrose (6/8/07) - It's a fight to the death over there on eBay. (also here)
• Britney Spears has good news for you (6/1/07) - Thoughts on the Google Developer day. (also here)
• Bent copyright (5/25/07) - Uri Geller takes on the EFF. (also here)
• Home improvement (5/18/07) - Building a computer: just like Legos. (also here)
The Blair we left behind (5/11/07) - Blair brought more surveillance and chewed away at civil liberties. New Labour, eh? (also here)
• Cryptanalysis (5/4/07) - Did Whitfield Diffie's work inventing public key cryptography protect our privacy - or invade it? (also here)
• My so-called second life (4/27/07) - More than a toy, these virtual worlds. (also here)
• Green spies (4/20/07) - Is the green movement being hijacked to serve the interests of mass surveillance? (also here)
• Let's make rules (4/13/07) - A code of conduct for the blogosphere? Get a grip, people. (also here)
• What's in a 2.0? (4/6/07) - The Web with rounded corners. (also here)
• Re-emerging technology (3/30/07) - New tech at etech, just like old tech except with knitting. (also here)
• Double the networks, double the neutralities (3/23/07) - Why do we care so much about network neutrality on the Internet and so little about it on the wireless networks? (also here)
• Going non-linear (3/16/07) - The BBC and the future of media. (also here)
• Your cheating heart (3/9/07) - If people lie about their credentials for volunteer jobs as Wikipedia editors, cheating just ain't what it used to be. (also here)
• Fusion cuisine and the Chamber of Legislative Horrors (3/2/07) - Looking for the worst of privacy-invasive legislation. Start with the UK and "data fusion". (also here)
• Equal prizes (2/23/07) - Frances Allen becomes the first woman ever to win the Alan M. Turing Award, and Wimbledon declares - at last - equal prize money. (also here)
• Quick fix (2/16/07) - Upgrade Quicken or die. (also here>)
• Getting out the vote (2/9/07) - Not even paper audit trails can save electronic voting. (also here)
• One copyright does not fit all (2/2/07) - Photographers' legitimate complaints about Gowers. (also here)
• Vote early, vote often... (1/26/07) - Just when you thought electronic voting was dead. (also here)
• Spineless (1/19/07) - Replacing knowledge with information: the problems with the NHS data spine. (also here)
• iPhone, schmiPhone (1/12/07) - Saying first what the world now agrees: the iPhone is very pretty, but who could stand to be tied to AT&T Wireless? (also here)
• Stonewalling (1/5/07) - Joel Stein fights reader feedback. (also here)

2006

• Resolutions for 2007 (12/29/06) - WIBNI.... (Not on newswireless.net)
• Thinking time (12/23/06) - Proposals for Computers, Freedom and Privacy 2007. (also here)
• I hear dead people (12/15/06) - Dead musicians share their opinion. (also here)
• In praise of Gowers (12/8/06) - Hooray! Let's hope the Government takes good sense on board. (also here)
• A SWIFT kick (12/1/06) - "Hidden, systematic, massive, and long-term" leakage of personal financial data to the US. (also here)
• Hadrian's Firewall (11/24/06) - Content blocking to be used by all UK ISPs by the end of 2007. (also here)
• Waiting for Gowers (11/17/06) - The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property. (also here)
• ICANN dreams (11/10/06) - ICANN announces its three new board members. (also here)
• A fine and private place (11/3/06) - Which country to move to. (also here)
• Crossfire (10/27/06) - Freedom of speech does not mean condoning child abuse. (also here)
• Spam, spam, spam, and spam (10/20/06) - The Spamhaus court case. (also here)
• GoogTube (10/13/06) - Why Google bought YouTube. (also here)
• A different kind of poll tax (10/6/06) - A subtle way of controlling who votes. (also here)
• Doppelgangland (9/29/06) - Online impersonation. (also here)
• The last social mile (9/22/06) - Social entrepeneurism. (also here)
• Mobile key infrastructure (9/15/06) - Using mobile phones for authentication. (also here)
• Crossing the streams (9/8/06) - Streamed live tennis! (also here)
• The elephant in the dark (9/1/06) - Constructing common sense. (also here)
• Spamigation (8/25/06) - Litigation by webcrawler? (also here)
• Travel costs (8/18/06) - More thoughts on conspiracies and air travel restrictions. (also here)
• Any liquids discovered must be removed from the passenger (8/11/06) - Making air travel more unpleasant won't deter terrorists for long.... (also here)
• Hard times at the identity corral (8/4/06) - Amusing and unforeseen: the Government is having a hard time finding anyone willing to manufacture ID cards. (also here)
• Why I am standing for the ICANN board (7/28/06) - "Mr Kinnock, what do you say to people who accuse you of blatant electioneering?" "Vote for MEEE!" (also here)
• I blog, therefore I am (7/21/06) - Bloggers blog for many different reasons. (also here)
• Not too cheap to meter (7/14/06) - Bandwidth hogging could become ISPs' worst enemy. (also here)
• If it's Wimbledon it must be television (7/7/06) - Wimbledon's new video-on-demand service. (also here)
• Technical enough for government work (6/30/06) The future is sneaking up on us.... (also here)
• Survival of the piratest (6/23/06) - All the legal actions haven't even slowed down file-sharing. (also here)
• Security vs security, part II (6/16/06) - VoIP wiretapping - expensive, insecure and not likely to be much use. (also here)
• So long, and thanks for all the pink wishes (6/9/06) - The passing of a Usenet character. (also here)
• Boob job (6/2/06) - Livejournal bloggers turn their blogs off for a day in protest. (also here)
• Patent harmony (5/26/06) - European Community to ban software patents. (also here)
• Toll roads (5/19/06) - Will the telcos dominate the Internet? (also here)
• Map quest (5/12/06) - The future of GPS. (also here)
• Computers, Freedom, and Privacy XVI (5/5/06) - Conference zeitgeist. (also here)
• Who's afraid of the big, bad Google? (4/28/06) - Privacy concerns vs sheer usefulness. (also here)
• Adblogging (4/21/06) - Ads come to Livejournal. (also here)
• A question of balance (4/14/06) - The creators tend to be forgotten in the copyright business. (also here)
• Becoming virtual (4/7/06) - Dixons goes digital. (also here)
• Protect people, not data (3/31/06) - Finding the limits of the Information Commissioner's role. (also here)
• The IDs of March (3/24/06) - Ping-pong games...and the ID card wins. (also here)
• A fork in the code (3/17/06) - Which is harder, programming the code or reading the license? (also here)
• In search of clarity (3/10/06) - Is it clarity they want - or software patents? (also here)
• AOL's email tax (3/3/06) - Threat of AOL's introduction of fee-paid guaranteed email delivery probably exaggerated despite the EFF's fears. (also here)
• Digital magazines: still not ready for prime time (2/24/06) - You'd think Business Week would know better. (also here)
• Widows and orphans first (2/17/06) - Attributing copyrights. (also here)
• Security versus security (2/10/06) - Which security demand is more important: wiretapping VOIP or securing the Internet?(also here)
• Cubiclife (2/3/06) - Life in the office; unutterably anthropological. (also here)
• The revenge of the Digital Rights Manifesto (1/27/06) - Discussing the responses to last week's column. (also here)
• Digital Rights Manifesto (1/20/06) - the National Consumer Council has called for regulation of how DRM may be used. We present some handy suggestions for what that regulation should look like. (also here) Update (1/21/06): a lot of mail in response to this one. The most interesting one came from a games player who says that the copy protection embedded in some games renders his expensive debugging software inoperable. That's just nasty.
• How to be annoying and stay out of jail (1/13/06) - a new US law may (or may not) mean that anonymously posting annoying content is a crime (also here)
• A tempest in a Wikipedia (1/6/06) - Web contains inaccurate information; pictures at 11. (also here)

2005

• It's 2006: do you know where your data is? (12/30/05) - backups, the least-fixed problem in the computer industry. Even given the existence of things like Norton Ghost. (also here)
• Rumors of spam's death: greatly exaggerated (12/23/05) - the FTC says CAN-Spam is working. HA! (also here)
• Civil liberties got run over by a reindeer (12/16/05) - they finally passed data retention. But the fight continues... (also here)
• My TV (12/9/05) - Personal TV should be the killer app of IPTV. (also here)
• Pass the policy (12/2/05) - how about setting up a database to track policies as they are proposed around the world to keep track of policy laundering? (also here)
• Copyrighting data retention (11/25/05) - the new Open Rights Group discovers a rightsholder attempt to hijack the EU data retention directive. Final vote: December 13. Write your MEP. (also here)
• Governing the Internet (11/18/05) - WSIS ends, ICANN lives on, same time five years hence. (also here)
• Selling by the page (11/11/05) - unbundling the book. (also here)
• Fighting software patents (11/4/05) - Florian Mueller runs for EV50 European of the Year. (The Inquirer and Newswireless.net columns were different this week - the newswireless.net one is below.)
• Sony got root (11/4/05) - big Japanese companies that make consumer electronics and own studios can't be hackers. Can they, George?
• Does he take PINs with his chips? (10/28/05) - it's not enough to be disabled, you have to fight your bank, too. (here)
• Biometrics for babies (10/21/05) - can you really get a baby to give you a fingerprint? One for next year's Ig Nobel awards, we think. (also here)
• Dumber people can run Linux (10/14/05) - tried Ubuntu yet? (also here)
• Spot the terrorist (10/7/05) - find the terrorists in a haystack of data. (also here)
• The new Scopes Monkey trials (9/30/05) - what do Intelligent Design and the Flying Spaghetti Monster have in common? (also here)
• Life license (9/23/05) - watch out for counterfeit babies. (also here)
• Ecommerce talks (9/16/05) - eBay buys Skype, everybody's gotta have a VoIP. (also here)
• e-Ostriches (9/9/05) - yet another conference about fixing the Internet. (also here)
• Unconvergence (9/2/05) - who the hell invented the SCART plug, anyway? (also here)
• Patent pending (8/26/05) - the kind of patent the European Patent Office grants these days. (also here)
• For sale: conferencing system, slightly used (8/19/05) - the WELL is for sale by Salon. (also here)
• The big, black bin bag of data retention (8/12/05) - it's back, and this time it's European. (also here)
• Time bandits (8/5/05) - let no ITU delegation steal your precious leap seconds. (also here) For more on this, see the excellent Future of Leap Seconds Page.
• Fifteen years on the electronic frontier (7/29/05) - the EFF at fifteen: do we need one in the UK? (also here)
• Officially irrelevant (but we want the ID card anyway) (7/22/05) - British government in shockingly rational post-explosion moment (can it last?). (also here)
• Ten (7/15/05) - if you're a pioneering Internet business either you're ten or you've succumbed to the alternative. Let's party! (also here)
• Got root? (7/8/05) - the Internet keeps working despite the US's recent decision to retain control of ICANN, the next step in ten years of fighting over Internet governance. (also here)
• Through an animation, darkly (7/1/05) - it probably wasn't wise to check on the progress of the ID cards bill and the Grokster decision while watching Wimbledon. (also here)
• If you build it, they will come (6/24/05) - smut: Tom Lehrer loved it. (also here)
• Restaurant mathematics (6/17/05) - Martin Gardner on CD! (also here)
• A chip off the old Apple (6/10/05) - Intel, Motorola... innards don't matter any more (also here)
• Breaking the kneecaps of email (6/3/05) - five and a half months after Verizon's inept email blocking policy was complained about...it's still going on. Just because I'm complaining loudly DOESN'T MEAN I'M A SPAMMER. (also here)
• Ybat yvir pelcgb (5/27/05) - dance on the grave of crypto regulation. While you can. (also here) Update (5/28/05): A reader points out a slight inaccuracy, in that in fact the online VAT filing service doesn't *require* you to use a digital certificate. You may either sign up for a user ID and password *or* use a digital certificate. I must say, this wasn't plain to me from looking at the site. In any event, the main point stands - that is, who offers digital certificates and on how limited a basis they are used.
• The Internet calls 911 (5/20/05) - well, it would if it could. (also here)
• Bloggers don't lie (5/13/05) - no, really. Only journalists lie. (also here)
• The robot in your phone (5/6/05) - "I can help you with that! Transferring your call..." (also here)
• Tax the iPod! (4/29/05) - a tax on all your storage media! (also here)
• Microsoft dezhurnaya 2.0 (4/22/05) - you think Microsoft runs on software and high-tech computers? No. Behind that geeky exterior the company runs on a network of receptionists. (also here)
• Pass the e-port (4/15/05) - RFID chips in passports. It would be a good joke if it were April Fool's. But...they're serious. (also here)
• You own your own 20th anniversary (4/8/05) - the WELL turns 20, complete with parties, splinter parties, and faction parties. (also here) Reader complaints: I forgot to mention BIX, and I forgot to say that WELL stands for "Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link".
• The 4 Conspiracy (4/1/05) - mind the date. (also here) Thanks to dj Walker-Morgan for the original idea and many of the technical details, and to Ian Ridpath for general advice.
• Abort, RetrID, Fail? (3/25/05) - last chance for the ID card before Parliament disbands for the election? Or will it still be Out There? (also here) By the way, did you know you can watch the deliberations live over the Web?
• Are you now, or have you ever been...a journalist? (3/18/05) - well, have you? (also here) A day after this ran, I found out about Canadian blogger Jeremy Wright's run-in with a US immigration officer who was apparently unable to believe that a) blogging could be a real job or b) anyone would go to the US to meet people they'd never spoken to. Where *does* the US immigration service find staff who don't know about email and IM?
• Divided by a common television (3/11/05) - The BBC: the open source movement of the TV world? (also here)
• Protection management, copy control (3/4/05) - the DVB goes to copy-protect high-definition digital television. (also here)
• Shooting phish in a barrel (2/25/05) - Phishing gets smarter; consumers stay the same. (also here)
• Seven dirty indecencies (2/18/05) - Inflatable boob fines hit the FCC. Or maybe that's Fine inflatables hit the FCC boobs. We're still juggling. (also here)
• You can click, but you can't hide (2/14/05) - Torrent sites continue to disappear right and left. The latest: Lokitorrent, which had sworn to fight back in the courts.(also here)
• Verizon, heal thyself (2/4/05) - Yo, Verizon, I'm not just a non-person to your email system, I'm also a shareholder. (also here)
• The year September finally ended (1/28/05) - Of course, it never really will. But a person can dream. (also here)
• .net wars (1/21/05) - Meanwhile, back at ICANN they're redelegating .net. (also here)
• Speed traps (1/14/05) - Why is a raven like a writing desk? Why is file-sharing like speeding? (also here)
• A case of the torrents (1/7/05) - And then the MPAA came for BitTorrent... (also here)

2004

• The 2005 wish list (12/31/04) - If only, if only.... (also here)
• Let us now praise famous Blunketts (12/24/04) - Farewell, Blunkett; yet ID cards are still with us. (also here)
• Skeptics 48, Marc Wootton 0 (12/17/04) - Trying to fool skeptics: a losing game. (also here)
• Papers, please (12/10/04) - Total surveillance draws closer. Even though Blunkett resigned five days later. (also here)
• Ubiq (12/3/04) - Does Japan lead the way to ubiquitous computing? aka, "Not the Lost in Translation tour". (also here)
• Every cloud has a Verizon lining (11/26/04) - Why *shouldn't* Philadelphia have its municipal wireless? (also here)
• Remote control (11/19/04) - TiVo turns to the dark side. (also here)
• Bushed (11/12/04) - Is it real or is it Diebold? Only their voting technologists know for sure. (also here)
• Chad's revenge (11/5/04). Chad wants PC salespeople to stop treating him like he's an idiot. Lose the Windows 98, pal. (also here)
• The unbearable Internet Explorerness of configuration - Oct 29, 2004. Why - why? - does equipment running Linux inside make its Web-based configurator only fully usable by Internet Explorer? Shurely shome mishtake. (also here)
• Securing flight - October 22, 2004. Ah, the madness of what Bruce Schneier calls "security theater". (also here)
• The empires strike back (10/15/04) - Decentralized sites, distributed law enforcement. (also here)
• Carbon-dating the Internet (10/8/04) - Jeez, the thing's inventors are still alive and no one can decide how old it is. (also here)
• The ideal home show (10/1/04) - Actually, I just want a house that lets my friends in when I'm not home. (also here)
• Security must be seen to be done (9/24/04) - What do Cat Stevens and John Gilmore have in common? (also here)
• Flight risk (9/17/04) - ah, US Airways, we knew it well. (also here)
• Fame and the Strange story of Susanna M (9/10/04) - How fame came to live with Susanna Clarke. (also here)
• The herd instinct (9/3/04) - cue CNBC's picture of stampeding bulls. (also here)
• Distrusted systems (8/27/04) - The EC, Microsoft, and antitrust. No, it's not Windows, it's ContentGuard. And this time, it's Time-Warner.
(also here)
• Somebody else's spam (8/20/04) - LINX joins the fray. (also here as "Spam-sensitive sunglasses")
• Morality plays (8/13/04) - Those whom the gods seek to destroy they first make Olympic athletes. (also here)
• Worst PR sites of 2004 (8/6/04) - Ooops. Object Marketing got left out by mistake.(also here)
• Your domain name dollars at work (7/30/04) - ICANN-watching. (also here)
• Incitement to piracy (7/23/04) - Copy meee... cooopppy meee.... (also here)
• PIN the signature on the chip (7/16/04) - No need to sign here. (also here)
• Leaks from the top (7/9/04) - Fans, Friends and file-sharing. (also here)
• Video daze (7/2/04) - Video editing - don't try this at home, folks! (also here)
• Old enough to drink (6/25/04) - DNS is 21 years old. (also here)
• Never mind who I am, who are *you*? (6/18/04) - Authentication needs to be a two-way process. (also here)
• White hats, black hats, who's got the grey hat? (6/11/04) - Microsoft vs. Linux? Not really...more like "Five Guys Named Nick" (also here) Addendum (9/7/04): Microsoft's Nick McGrath (that would be the blue-flannel Nick) says about that "maybe our people" comment: "From the heart: our developers are the lifeblood of our company.")
• Think of the time you'll save (6/4/04) - Sometimes being a Luddite makes economic sense. (also here)
• The BBC's shagging marmots (5/28/04) - The BBC puts sex and violence online - its old wildlife documentaries, that is. (also here)
• Follow the database (5/21/04) - The draft ID card proposal is released. Comment while you can! (also here)
• Taxation with representation (5/14/04) - Encourage students to learn, not just consume. (also here)
• Buffetted by Google (5/7/04) - Financial punditry and the Google IPO. (also here)
• Can we? May we? Will we? (4/30/04) - The creator of the Internet Archive wants universal access to all of human knowledge. (also here)
• Scored: Who's watching the watchers (4/23/04) - From the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference 2004 (also here)
• Taking the stupidity out of "Stupid Patent Tricks" (4/16/04) - Time to revamp the patent system? (also here)
• Money makes the electrons go around (4/9/04) - So why *do* digital downloads cost as much as CDs? (also here)
• The message is the medium (4/2/04) - Dj, text home. (also here)
• A national database or 60,000 more policemen? (3/26/04) - Not that you're being *asked* which you'd prefer.... (also here)
• Ask not for whom the taxman tolls... (3/19/04) - The Inland Revenue turns its eye on non-resident tennis star Andre Agassi. (also here)
• A hundred lawyers at the bottom of a can of spam: a darn good start (3/12/04) - The big test for the CAN-SPAM legislation. (also here)
• Get thee behind me, Plaxo (3/5/04) - Just stop sending me those stupid messages. (also here) Update (2/7/05): A week or two ago Plaxo's new CEO, Ben Golub, called, saying he was interested in talking over with Plaxo's critics what could be done to make us less critical. In the course of the conversation, several ideas surfaced: 1) extend the company's privacy policy to its opt-out list, since one reason people keep getting annoyed is that they're reluctant to give their email addresses to a company that from their point of view is already violating their privacy; 2) (not a privacy issue per se, but an interesting feature idea) amending the software so that it can follow either the person whose details you have or that person's job - often what you're interested in is not the person but the role. It will be interesting to see if either of these ideas is adopted. Update 2 (5/1/05): Ben Golub tells me the service has now explicitly extended its privacy policy to those who sign up for the opt-out list, and has changed the defaults in the client software to discourage users from blanket-emailing their entire address book. Roger Clarke, whose concerns about social networking services of a variety of types were mentioned in this column, raised in his paper "Little Black Books" the question of what the business model of an outfit like Plaxo could be. Golub says the company makes its money from premium services, such as deduping and cleaning user address books, and also from commissions on products and offers relating to the information they already have - eg, you've entered someone's birthday into your contact book, and the service reminds you and offers you a link to send flowers. That kind of thing. Makes sense to me.
• eCrimes of the century (2/27/04) - Report from the eCrime 2004 congress. (also here)
• Broadcast quality, broadcast alienation (2/20/04) - Online ads promise to become even more intrusive and annoying. (also here)
• Everybody ought to have a Mouse (2/13/04) - Comcast casts its beady eye over Disney's charms. (also here)
• Identifying entitlement (2/6/04) - Finally: they admit it *is* a national ID card. It certainly quacks like one. (also here)
• The Deaning of America (1/30/04) - The Net as a political tool. (also here)
• Does he take electrons? (1/23/04) - The very difficult life of a blind Web surfer. (also here)
• The vanishing Post Office of Sandycombe Road, Kew (1/16/04) - If only the Royal Mail would get its act together.... (also here)
• The robot centurions (1/9/04) - Technology with a conscience? Or electronic snitches? (also here)
• The 2004 wish list (1/2/04) - What we *really* want for New Year's resolutions. (also here)

2003

• Only connect (12/26/03) - Comcast again: how to become a monopolist and lock down the Internet. (also here)
• Music roasting on an open fire (12/19/03) - Wal-Mart announces its own downloadable music store. (also here)
• Who's in charge of the Internet? (12/12/03) - The World Summit on the Information Society meets this week, achieving...what? (also here)
• Beware of geeks bearing gifts (12/5/03) - What Santa might bring if we're good little techies. (also here)
• Salute the flag (11/28/03) - The FCC allows broadcasters to insert a copy-blocking flag in HDD transmissions. (also here)
• This little light of mine (11/21/03) - Twinkle twinkle little LED. (also here)
• Cheaper by the exabyte (11/14/03) - The volume of information, on the Net and elsewhere, grows exponentially. (also here)
• Stealing bandwidth (11/7/03) - Free wireless broadband or a knotty moral problem? (also here)
• Two Martinas and one party-pooper (10/31/03) - Will the real Martina Navratilova please stand up? (also here)
• Yellow semen (10/24/03) - The glory motive treats athletic anti-doping programs as damage and routes around them. (also here)
• Who are you? (10/17/03) - ID cards. Blunkett still wants them. Blair sometimes wants them. Straw doesn't want them any more. We think. (also here)
• Eavesdropping (10/10/03) - From the Nielsen Norman User Experience event. And at last, some credit for me! (also here)
• Strangers on the Net (10/3/03) - Do you know who your computer's been talking to recently? (also here)
• Coming soon to a mobile phone near you (9/26/03) - Well, there's egg and bacon; egg, sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg, bacon and spam; egg, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon, and spam; spam, sausage, spam, spam, bacon, spam, tomato and spam. And then there's Direct Marketing. That's not got much spam in it. (also here)
• Deja-vu all over again (9/19/03) - Bad public policies never die. (also here)
• The mills of Xenu grind exceeding slow (9/12/03) - Scientology - still slugging it out with the 'Net, 10 years on. (Check out the awe-inspiringly inappropriate ads on the Inq page!) - . (also here)
• Who killed Operation Ore? (9/5/03) - The problems of evidence in computer-related crimes. (also here)
• Six degrees of virus infection (8/29/03) - The Grand Convergence of spam and viruses looms.... (also here)
• It is preferable that the ears be exposed (8/22/03) - The hoops you have to jump through to get a US visa. (also here)
• Trivia pursuits (8/15/03) - Playing really stupid games on IRC. (also here)
• There will come soft sprinklers (8/8/03) - Visiting IBM's Smart House. (also here)
• Suspected terrorist (8/1/03) - Of course he's a terrorist, it says so on John Gilmore's button. (also here)
• Viral marketing is dead: tell all your friends (7/25/03) - There is no escape. (also here)
• The War on Some Files (7/18/03) - Electron-pushers; the new scourge of our youth! (also here)
• A highly organised minority (that can be safely ignored) (7/11/03) - Not only does Blunkett think you want an ID card; he thinks you'll pay £40 for the privilege. Make that £100. (also here)
• Gosford Perl (7/4/03) - A descent into the Underworld brings wisdom and spam-filtering. (also here)
• Eat, drink, and enjoy your cheap DVDs, for tomorrow we tax (6/27/03) - VAT comes to the Net. (also here)
• The unbearable fan-friendliness that is tennis (6/20/03) - Disintermediate tennis now! (also here)
• The new Mrs Thing (6/13/03) - At last, your very own robotic household slave! Well, within limits.... (also here) (Addendum (2/7/05): In answer to a reader's query, no, I wasn't sent the Roomba as a PR freebie; I bought it. Also, after a few months it became clear that it really doesn't like long hair. The hair gets tangled in the rollers and the thing stops functioning every few minutes and hides in a corner emitting piteous beeps. But when it works, it's wonderful.)
• New math (6/6/03) - In 1984, 2+2=5. In 2003, approximately 6000=1. According to the British government, that is. (also here)
• Shotgun truce (5/30/03) - Microsoft gives AOL money; AOL gives Microsoft even more market penetration. Assume the position! (also here)
• Crossing the streams (5/23/03) - US media may be summarily deregulated. Murdoch licks his chops in anticipation. (also here)
• Better feuding through email (5/16/03) - "Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental." (also here)
• Data retainers unite! You have nothing to lose but your freedoms (5/9/03) - This may be your last chance to speak up... (also here)
• The big blue gap (5/2/03) - Bluetooth has conquered Europe, but not the USA. (also here)
• I ain't never seen no horses download it (4/25/03) - Will file-sharing destroy independent labels and artists? (also here)
• No deposit, no return (4/18/03) - The Legal Deposit Libraries Bill - how far should it go? (also here)
• By their numbers shall ye know them - not (4/11/03) - The ENUM proposals to migrate phone numbers onto the Internet. (also here)
• The land of the increasingly insecure (4/4/03) - Computers, Freedom & Privacy - 10 years on the frontlines. (also here)
• CFP special: US crime database doesn't have to be accurate. (4/2/03) - Life imitates Brazil. (also here)
• The museum-ready Internet (3/28/03) - How do you exhibit the Internet? The Tech Museum of Innovation is working on it.... (also here)
• What movie was that, anyway? (3/21/03) - The Conqueror, starring John Wayne, Susan Hayward and a blizzard of Nevada fallout? (also here)
• Disproportionate costs (3/14/03) - What are the costs of mismanaged Government IT projects? (also here)
• Surveillance by design (3/7/03) - Privacy - you don't know what you've got till it's gone. (also here)
• A snob's paradise (2/28/03) - Ignored by the bloggerati. (also here)
• Shoot the cryptographer (2/21/03) - What they don't want you to know... (also here)
• Don't mention the war (2/14/03) - A wish-list for aging techies. (also here)
• The alternative universe of stupid people (2/7/03) - Invading our reality with their pointless security measures! (also here)
• How to stop worrying and love data retention (1/31/03) - "I need to know everything! How else can I judge whether or not I need to know it?" (also here)
• The most dangerous hacks (1/24/03) - Hello Mitnick; goodbye Rosen. (also here)
• Of course, you know this means WAR (1/17/03) - Fight for your right to file-share! (also here)
• A resolution greatly to be wished (1/9/03) - A New Year wish-list. (also here)
• The view from afar (1/3/03) - Seeing cyberspace through others' eyes. (also here)

2002

• Defending your Net (12/27/02) - What is it we're really fighting to save? (also here)
• Let the Funk Brothers roll (12/20/02) - Session musicians; did the work, didn't get the royalties. (also here)
• Entitle that! (12/12/02) - UK identity cards "no threat to civil liberties". Ha. Ha. Ha. (also here)
• Doin' the DMCA rag (12/6/02) - Get creative with copyright law! (also here)
• How do you know it's me? (11/29/02) - Identity theft. (also here)
• Life in a double-wide (11/22/02) - The fun of dual monitors. (also here)
• The Poindexter-industrial complex (11/15/02) - The Homeland Security Act. Feel the fear. (also here)
• Reinvention of pens past (11/8/02) - The writing's already on the wall for the tablet PC. (also here)
• Out-of-print on demand (11/1/02) - In defence of us dead-tree collectors. (also here)
• Buy ten backhoes (10/25/02) - The attack on the root servers. (also here)
• Voters in, garbage out (10/18/02) - E-voting: why it's not a good idea. (also here)
• Playing God (10/11/02) - The convergence between games and movies. (also here)
• Freeing the Mouse (10/4/02) - More on the European Union Copyright Directive. Protest before it's too late! (also here)
• Satellite days (9/27/02) - A modest proposal - the tracked society. (also here)
• Weightlifting (9/20/02) - Travels with a laptop, a PDA, an MP3 player and such, plus all their associated batteries. (also here)
• Forbidden fruits (9/13/02) - Censorship on the Net, political and corporate. (also here)
• Pro-choice (9/6/02) - The gradual erosion of our privacy. (also here)
• The Undead (8/30/02) - Which medium is the perishable one? (also here)
• Stealing is stealing is stealing (8/23/02) - Hack Big Media! (also here)
• Remembrance of magazines past (8/16/02) - The death of print media? Not likely.... (also here)
• Sue...... this link (8/9/02) - Enforce this! (also here)
• By any other name the emperor would still be Monday (8/2/02) - Corporate rebranding and ICANN power struggles. (also here)
• Entitle this! (7/26/02) - The not-too-well-hidden costs of the "entitlement card". (also here)
• The me-ness of being (7/19/02) - Get your demented three-year-old here. My pictures. MY computer. MY NETWORK! (also here)
• Let them eat broadband (7/12/02) - Understanding (though not necessarily forgiving) BT. (also here)
• Disabling technologies (7/5/02) - Microsoft "gets security". In its own unique and much-loved way, no doubt. (also here)
• Get big fast, get small faster (6/28/02) - "I make an accounting error. You engage in creative accounting. They are WorldCom." (also here)
• Unwiring tennis (6/21/02) - Tennis journalists still in the pre-Information Age. (also here)
• Would you like spies with that? (6/14/02) - Privacy, retention, anti-circumvention and fun at NTK's Festival of Inappropriate Technology. (also here)
• The dataveillance society (6/7/02) - European Parliament decides to allow mass data retention. (also here)
• The tennis player that roared (5/31/02) - Steffi Graf vs Microsoft. Bizarrely, I'm in agreement with MS... here
• The gap (5/24/2002) - Like the generation gap, only with memory chips. (also here)
• A marker pen, tape, and a taste for Celine Dion (5/17/2002) - Copy protection technology plumbs new depths of stupidity. (also here)
• A money of our own (5/10/02) - Psst! Want to run your own monetary system? (also here)
• Geeks and bitches (5/3/02) - "Geek": offensive, or badge of honor? (also here)
• Computers, Freedom, Privacy, Mk XII (4/26/02) - CFP 2002. (also here)
• Fifty more sets of buggers (4/19/02) Extra! State survey of US wiretappers introduced.
• EFF awards Pioneer prizes (4/19/02) Extra! Electronic Frontier Foundation awards!
• The third estate (4/19/02) - Balancing digital rights among creators, distributors, and consumers. (also here)
• DTI off its shopping trolley (4/12/02) - DTI finally gets round to launching a consultation on the draft regulations to implement the EU ecommerce directive. Which was due to be fully implemented by Jan 17th. (also here)
• Dear Chairman Coble... (4/5/02) - Letter to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property. (also here)
• The death wish (3/29/02) - why AT&T Wireless seems to hate pre-pay. (also here)
Update: this was before AT&T Wireless was swallowed up by Cingular.
• Let a million censors bloom (3/22/02) - ICRA launches Internet rating scheme. (also here)
• Ten things I hate about Flash (3/15/02) - Designers: the curse of the Web. Readers' letters. (Column also here)
• You can't make money on the Internet (3/8/02) - Murdoch's president of operations says there's no valid business model. (also here)
• Navigating the ICANN way (3/1/02) - Proposed ICANN reforms: more money, more power, more staff. Can we say, "central point of failure"?
• European patent tricks (2/22/02) - European Commission announces its proposals for software patenting directive.
• Watching the Internet watchers (2/15/02) - Internet Watch Foundation goes into the censorship business.
• Big Brothers (2/8/02) - National ID cards: a courageous decision?
• The Sound of Money (2/1/02) - Ah, Napster, we hardly knew ye.
• Battle of the Titans (1/26/02) - AOL sues Microsoft.
• By any other name (1/18/02) - ICANN wranglings.
• Creative Accounting (1/11/02) - Sneaky accounting practices.
• Dumber people can run Windows (1/4/02) - Another leaked MS memo.

2001

• 2001 in review (12/28/01) - What the psychics didn't predict...
• Care in the community (12/21/01) - Online communities treated badly by their hosts.
• Remembrance of postings past (12/14/01) - The wonders of Usenet, now archived by Google.
• BT’s Stupid Patent Tricks (12/7/01) - BT still suing Prodigy over their infringement of alleged hyperlink patent.
• Preserving our freedoms (12/1/01) - Bad US and UK legislation in the wake of the WTC terrorist attack.
• It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... (11/23/01) - "the state of ecommerce: desperate, unresponsive, inaccessible, and badly trained."
• Net is the mother of re-invention (11/16/01) - P2P and the once and future decentralized Internet.
• Save the Cookie (11/9/01) - Banning cookies and other idiotic pieces of legislation.
• Digital rights and the new era of world terrorism (11/2/01) - Antiterrorism doesn't justify banning strong cryptography.

And...

The full text, online of the 1998 book - or buy net.wars (1998)

or From Anarchy to Power (2001)

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