Communications of the ACM
An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
From ACM News
A Bull Market in Tech Patents
Google was willing on Monday to pay $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility in no small part because of its stockpile of 17,000 patents. The patent portfolio, some...
From ACM News
Sending the Police Before There's a Crime
The arrests were routine. Two women were taken into custody after they were discovered peering into cars in a downtown parking garage in Santa Cruz, Calif. One...
From ACM TechNews
On Its Own, Europe Backs Web Privacy Fights
European regulators are increasingly embracing the concept of giving people the right to be forgotten on the Web by providing them with greater control over their...
From ACM News
London Police Use Flickr to Identify Looters
As rioting continues to roil the streets of London, local police forces are turning to the Web to help unmask those involved in the torching and looting. On...
From ACM News
Mobilizing Help for People Accused of Hacking
When Senator Joseph R. McCarthy held hearings in the 1950s to question witnesses about their supposed ties to communism, critics accused him of fomenting a Red...
From ACM News
Costly Drone Is Poised to Replace -2 Spy Plane
Tucked away here in the Mojave Desert, the assembly plant for the high-flying Global Hawk jet resembles a giant hobby shop. Work tables surround a handful of...
From ACM News
Pentagon Seeks a Few Good Social Networkers
The Pentagon is developing plans to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter as both a resource and a weapon in future conflicts. Its research and...
From ACM News
Decoding Your Email Personality
Imagine, if you will, a young Mark Zuckerberg circa 2003, tapping out mail messages from his Harvard dorm room. It's a safe bet he never would have guessed that...
From ACM News
Social Media History Becomes a New Job Hurdle
Companies have long used criminal background checks, credit reports and even searches on Google and LinkedIn to probe the previous lives of prospective employees...
From ACM News
Google Looks For the Next Google
Google thinks it can be young and crazy again. And it is betting $200 million that it is right.
From ACM News
To Track Militants, U.s. Has System That Never Forgets a Face
When the Taliban dug an elaborate tunnel system beneath the largest prison in southern Afghanistan this spring, they set off a scramble to catch the 475 inmates...
From ACM News
Hackers Select a New Target: Other Hackers
The hackers, calling themselves the A-Team, assembled a trove of private information and put it online for all to see: names, aliases, addresses, phone numbers...
From ACM News
Robert Morris, Pioneer in Computer Security, Dies at 78
Robert Morris, a cryptographer who helped developed the Unix computer operating system, which controls an increasing number of the world's computers and touches...
From ACM News
Post-9/11 Security: A Rational Student Debate
The 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks is approaching, and you can count on the flow of remembrances and where-are-we-now updates swelling...
From ACM News
Tamper-Proof Internet Security System Begins
A small group of Internet security specialists gathered in Singapore last week to start up a global system to make email and e-commerce more secure, end the proliferation...
From ACM News
Upending Anonymity, These Days the Web Unmasks Everyone
Not too long ago, theorists fretted that the Internet was a place where anonymity thrived. Now, it seems, it is the place where anonymity dies.
From ACM News
War Evolves With Drones, Some Tiny as Bugs
Two miles from the cow pasture where the Wright Brothers learned to fly the first airplanes, military researchers are at work on another revolution in the air...
From ACM News
F.b.i. Agents Get Leeway to Push Privacy Bounds
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household...
From ACM News
Thieves Found Citigroup Site an Easy Entry
Think of it as a mansion with a high-tech security system—but the front door wasn’t locked tight.
From ACM News