Work in a group of 2-4 people.
Need help finding a group? Let me know as soon as possible. You can also post your availability
on the spreadsheet linked below.
Throughout the text below, I pretend that you know how to make a website. If your group does not have
this knowledge and you want some help, please tell me right away, and we can arrange a
time to get together for a getting-started session on web development.
What's this project about?
For this assignment, you will
- Choose a security-related topic that fascinates you.
- Enter your topic and team on this Google spreadsheet.
- Produce a website introducing your audience (i.e. the other students in this class) to the topic.
- As appropriate for your topic, include historical background, technical explanations,
implications for people (e.g. legal/privacy/practical/ethical/financial implications),
etc. Whatever subtopics are relevant for your topic, you should favor digging deep into
one or two subtopics over providing a shallow, broad overview.
- Be prepared to share your website at a computer in our classroom on Monday, Nov 14.
What to hand in
Just a link to your website. Post your link on the
same spreadsheet.
Mike Tie has arranged for you to have space on a web server. You can login to your usual
account on any of the CS lab machines (including spectra.mathcs.carleton.edu and thacker.mathcs.carleton.edu,
both of which are always on and ssh-able), and place your website's files in
/Accounts/courses/cs231/web-directories/yourusername/. You can then access those files using a browser
by going to http://thacker.mathcs.carleton.edu/cs231/yourusername/.
If you have ambitions to do something fancier than static web content, Mike has set
aside a port number on thacker for you. Those of you who happened to be in my CS257 last
spring will know how this goes, and you may certainly make use of flask if you wish to do so.
You do not need to get fancy in this way, but I wanted to make it possible in case
your topic lends itself particularly to a dynamic web page of some kind. If you take
advantage of this, then your URL will be http://thacker.mathcs.carleton.edu:yourportnumber/.
Notes
- Pick your topic carefully so you can really provide something valuable for your audience.
- Is there something you just don't understand and you think other people would
like to understand it too? Explain it better. (e.g. how the heck does bitcoin work?)
- Does your topic have serious legal implications? Dig into that, find the
relevant court cases, help us understand what's going on. (e.g. if a police officer forces
you to put your thumb on your iPhone's home button to unlock your phone, does that violate
your 4th Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure or your 5th Amendment
rights against self-incrimination? what if you're not a US citizen?)
- Does your topic have implications for international politics and government?
What are the relevant issues and how do they connect? (e.g. what does mobile strong encryption
like in WhatsApp mean for fighting terrorism? what does it mean for people sharing
information internationally about repressive governmental behavior? what US laws
or bills are relevant, and who is making what arguments about encryption?)
- Does your topic affect individual privacy? (e.g. how exactly did my Facebook feed
just present me with a book that I looked at briefly on amazon a couple days ago? how
else are Facebook and amazon using that data?)
- Does your topic affect individual financial/physical/data security? In what ways,
and what can people do about it? (e.g. what danger,
if any, do I add to my life when I install an Internet of Things thermostat?)
- Is your subject historically significant? How does it connect to present-day
security concerns? What modern security practices and tools depend on your subject?
(e.g. early cryptography can go way back; Stuxnet is a more recent topic that's still
historically momentous)
- Et cetera. Be creative. Follow your interests, and dig deep into something cool.
- In addition to giving your audience a substantial treatment of an interesting thing, make
your website a good place to start for people hoping to study the topic more deeply themselves.
A helpfully annotated "References and Further Reading" kind of section, for example, would be good
way to both cite your sources and guide your audience to opportunities to learn more about the topic.
- Think of this like an 8-10 page paper. It's a website, so we don't need ten pages of text
(which would be a deadly web-reading experience). But you should do that level of depth and
research and thinking and refining of your message, argument, presentation, etc. This implies,
of course, that you need to narrow your topic down. You only have ten days.
- How do you make an effective and informative website? I recommend spending some time thinking
about one-topic websites (specifically, ones dedicated to informing rather than selling) that you find effective.
For example, here's one about the US-Dakota war of 1862
that is heavy on information, with easy navigation, information doled out in manageably sized pieces,
and appropriate and helpful visual aids (videos, maps, photos, etc.). There are many
excellent informative websites out there, but there are even more that are sloppy, ugly, hard
to navigate, or badly written.
The port numbers
Here are the port numbers assigned to you. As I said above, this is only if you have
a particular need to run your own web application instead of a collection of static web pages.
| Adkisson, Joe | 5102 |
| Bindal, Nupur | 5103 |
| Cassel-Mace, Ethan A. | 5104 |
| Emery, Jamie | 5105 |
| Forbes, Dylan | 5106 |
| Garfinkle, Isaac H. | 5107 |
| Green, Martin R. | 5108 |
| Hallstrom, Reilly W. | 5109 |
| Hieshima, Makala B. | 5110 |
| Imhoff, Charlie | 5111 |
| Johnson, Anna S. | 5112 |
| Jones, Hailey R. | 5113 |
| Kar, Ritvik | 5114 |
| Kowalewski, Kevin E. | 5115 |
| Kuo, Brennan B. | 5116 |
| Leal, Danny | 5117 |
| Lu, Lucy | 5118 |
| Ma, Shilin | 5119 |
| Mathson, Alex B. | 5120 |
| Mawby, Elliot C. | 5121 |
| Mering, Brynna B. | 5122 |
| Oliveira Caracol, Barbara D. | 5123 |
| Shang, Da | 5124 |
| Shoemaker, Chris | 5125 |
| Stone, Ben | 5126 |
| Stoneman, Michael J. | 5127 |
| Tigar, Adam A. | 5128 |
| Tran, Kiet J. | 5129 |
| Vue, Michael | 5130 |
| Woosnam, Andrew T. | 5131 |
| Wu, Kaixing | 5132 |
| Wu, Renzhi | 5133 |