Obama Brings On NSA-Bashing Hacker Professor As His New Tech guide

(may 12, 2015), the White home named Ed Felten, a Princeton computer science professor, as a deputy chief technology officer.

the current tech advisors staffing the White house administrative center of Science and expertise coverage got here from big tech firms: Megan Smith, chief expertise officer, was once a vp at Google, while Alexander Macgillivray, deputy chief expertise officer, was a normal information at Twitter.

Felten, in contrast, brings an educational viewpoint to coverage discussions. Over the path of his occupation, Felten has dug deep into a range of technical—and steadily controversial—problems. he’s a privacy and safety expert, with a particular interest in how these considerations play out in the media. In 2001, as an example, as Napster used to be being shut down, he wrote about the weaknesses in track security methods. This earned him the wrath of music businesses such as the Recording business affiliation of the us, who feared that his findings would best spur more track-stealing habits.

In 2006, he examined the safety of vote casting machines, ultimately proving how simple they have been to hack. (He even made a at hand video demonstrating tips on how to steal an election in exactly one minute.) more not too long ago, Felten has been parsing in the course of the complexities of bitcoin, offering insight into how cryptocurrencies work and making the case that they’re going to change into an important type of money in the years yet to come.

Felten is an interesting choice for President Obama on condition that he has been an outspoken critic of the nationwide safety agency over the previous few years. After Edward Snowden’s revelations about the government’s surveillance programs, he strongly argued that the NSA will have to cease spying on americans’ cellphone data without simply cause. He publicly supported a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in opposition to the federal government’s mass call-tracking insurance policies. In his personal research, he has established that it’s harmful for the NSA to collect metadata, considering the fact that even massive information units can provide perception into private conduct patterns.

it is doubtful how Felten’s robust views will influence the government’s surveillance programs going forward, however one thing is evidently—tech policy discussions on the White home are about to get a lot more heated.