Dear Readers,
S&P and S&PW, and CSF are coming! Yes, the IEEE Computer Society's Technical Committee on Security and Privacy's annual flagship conferences are nearly upon us. The "Oakland" event moved to San Francisco's St Francis Hotel last year, and it will be there again in May. The Workshops of Security and Privacy are also at the St. Francis, on the two days following. Registration is available through the conference website. The list of papers for S&P is available now, over 40 papers showing the best of security research today.
In June, the Computer Security Foundations Symposium will be held in New Orleans. This gathering is has an orientation towards logic and design, and its co-location with the "Logic in Computer Science" conference will result in a logical concentration of some magnitude.
The US government's executive branch has embarked on a media blitz in its efforts to get legislation giving it more power to combat cyberattacks and cyberespionage. We count 14 major news articles related to to this subject alone. Privacy advocates do not support the broader powers, and some, notably Bruce Schneier in an opinion piece for CNN, feel that we are already living in an "Internet surveillance state."
Richard Austin, our widely read book reviewer, recommends a book about defense as deception in this issue.
Final note: You are walking around with a "phone" with two 1.2GHz processors, GPS, WiFi, a camera, and 50 random apps, and you ask if it is "secure"? There is probably a reality channel somewhere devoted just to you!