Today the Committee to Protect Journalists published a very critical report on the Obama administration’s efforts to crack down on leakers and control the flow of secret information from government officials to the press.  “The administration’s war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post’s investigation of Watergate,” wrote Leonard Downie Jr., the author of the report.

Over at Security States

Over at Security States and The New Republic, I have another blog, entitled: "What Big Data Does, And Doesn't Know About Me."  It tells the story of how I went digging into the data holdings that one big data aggregator, Acxiom, collects about me.  It was amusing and, at the same time, almost quotidian.  Here's the opening:

The world of Big Data is a world of pervasive data collection and aggressive analytics.

As far as legal remedies go for software vulnerabilities, code might as well be crack cocaine. So I suggest in my piece today over at Lawfare's new feed at the New Republic: Security States. This is the first installment in a month-long series on whether and how to go about holding vendors liable for insecure software.

The government may be shut down, but as Paul noted earlier, Security States---our new project with the New Republic---is open for business.

We will make a practice, as Paul did this morning, of linking on Lawfare to all of the original content we post to Security States. The new project will also involve a fair bit of cross-posting from Lawfare, though that is largely for the benefit of New Republic readers.