Debugger

The IRS recently began asking taxpayers to upload selfies as a way to authenticate users.  it went over as well as you might expect.  Despite the controversy aroused by facial recognition and government vendors, today's Debugger in 10 guest thinks "we can't say no to everything." Something must be done to allow government services to enter the 21s Century, says Jeremy Grant, who works at...

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before a Senate Committee on Tuesday and really delivered some stark assessments of the social media giant and the way it does business. She said Facebook is buying its profits with our safety. On this episode of Debugger in 10, Duke professor Jolynn Dellinger, a privacy expert, is here to discuss options for Congress -- and for the rest of us. 

Facebook was again hauled before Congress this week, this time to answer for a set of stories published in the Wall Steet Journal saying the company has internal research showing its tools hurt kids -- Instagram exacerbates body image issues for teen girls, for example -- but it hasn't really done much about that.  So, what now? What next? Here to help untangle that is David Hoffman, professo...

Will a new Texas law require social media companies like Facebook and Twitter to host vaccine disinformation, or even hate speech? The law also makes it a crime to "de-boost" comments and other posts, forbidding firms from taking away algorithmic amplification that helps extreme posts go viral.  But are Facebook and Instagram users entitled to -- not just free speech, but also free reach? Duk...

You probably don't realize, or don't think about, the hundreds of small companies that attach themselves to name-brand websites like CNN.com which track you in the same way.  Then these billions of pieces of information about us is married to billions of dollars being spent trying to get our attention.  That idle Google search out anxiety medicine or sexual disfunction is auctioned off t...

What do you do if you think your friend is bugging you? I don't mean bothering you. I mean...bugging you...using a device to listen to you, maybe even recording your conversations, when you visit their home. Well, that's the world most of us live in now. Personal assistants, many modern TVs, smart doorbells...they all incorporate listening devices. What if you don't want to be surveilled like that...

The Colonial Pipeline cyberattack got the attention of U.S. consumers when gasoline stations started running out of fuel, but the ransomware crisis has been festering for a long time. What steps did the White House take to stop, or at least slow down, ransomware gangs? In this mini-episode, host Bob Sullivan discusses an executive order signed by President Biden -- what it says, and what it's miss...

The technologists who built the Internet were naive, and their failure of imagination led us all down a path to rampant fraud, abuse, and misinformation.  In part 2 of this episode, Jessica Rich, Ari Schwartz, and Tim Sparapani join me to discuss why things went so wrong.  

Is there an Original Sin of the Internet? The techlash is real: Did it have to be this way? In this launch episode of Debugger, Bob Sullivan talks with a set of researchers and technologists who were there at the beginning of the Digital Age and you'll hear: The Internet is in crisis. We could have fixed it long ago. It wasn't hard. We just failed.  In part 1, you'll hear from pioneers Richar...

What's the Original Sin of the Internet? Why is technology such a powerful tool for attacking democracy? How many data brokers stalk you every time you open a web page or use an app? And what can we do to domesticate the wild animal that is the Internet? These are the kinds of questions we'll be asking on Debugger, my new podcast -- brought to you by Duke Unversity's Sanford School of Public Polic...