Dear Readers,
The IEEE Computer Society's Security and Privacy Symposium was held last week in San Jose, California. It set a record for the number of papers presented and had a record number of attendees (60 and 587 respectively). The video recordings of the talks were up on YouTube with an hour of the presentation, coming ever closer to real-time coverage.
In addition to the excellent papers, there were three pieces of news. One was that the conference location will change yet again. After decades in Oakland, two years in San Francisco, and 4 years in San Jose, the conference will return to San Francisco for 4 years. The Hyatt Regency in the Embarcadero region is the new location. The second change concerns the schedule for reviewing and publishing papers. The attendees at the business meeting approved a year-round review process. Papers will be reviewed within 60 days of submission, and accepted papers will be available online in the Computer Society's Digital Library some weeks later. Finally, the incoming Technical Committee Vice Chair is Úlfar Erlingsson; his term and that of the new TC Chair Sean Peisert will begin in 2018.
Our current events news list includes several articles about the short path from NSA toolkit to worldwide ransomware attacks. No nightmare is too bizarre for our current reality.
Smothered by the Security Blanket of Surveillance,