Oral history interviews

Persistent link for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/11299/59493

CBI holds one of the world's largest collections of research-grade oral history interviews relating to the history of computers, software, and networking. Most of the 300-plus oral histories have been developed in conjunction with grant-funded research projects on topics such as the development of the software industry, the influence of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the early history of computer science departments.

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An Oral History Interview with Daniel J. Solove
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2025-07-14) Solove, Daniel J.
This oral history interview is sponsored by NSF 2202484, “Mining a Usable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. The interview is with Daniel J. Solove, Eugene L. and Barbara Bernard Professor of Intellectual Property and Technology Law at the George Washington University Law School. Solove reflects on his early life in Pennsylvania, his education at Washington University in St. Louis and Yale Law School, and his career trajectory from judicial clerkship to legal academia. He discusses the origins and evolution of his scholarship on privacy, including his taxonomy of privacy harms, his work on data protection, and his interest in bridging legal theory and practical policy. The interview covers his role in shaping privacy law as a discipline, his efforts to influence public and institutional understanding through writing, teaching, and consulting, and his perspectives on regulatory frameworks in the U.S. and Europe. He concludes with reflections on academic impact, interdisciplinary engagement, and the future of privacy scholarship.
An Oral History Interview with Daniel J. Bernstein
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2025-07-14) Bernstein , Daniel J.
This oral history interview is sponsored by NSF 2202484, “Mining a Usable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. The interview is with Daniel J. Bernstein, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Bernstein reflects on his early life in New York, his formative exposure to mathematics and computer science, and his long-standing interest in cryptographic security. He discusses his work in algorithm design, the development of crypto-graphic tools, and his legal challenge to U.S. export controls on encryption. The interview explores his views on academic freedom, adversarial design, and the relationship between crypto-graphic practice and public interest.
An Oral History Interview with Joan Feigenbaum
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2025-07-14) Feigenbaum, Joan
This oral history interview is sponsored by NSF 2202484, “Mining a Usable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. The interview is with Joan Feigenbaum, Grace Murray Hopper Professor of Computer Science at Yale University. Feigenbaum recounts her upbringing in Brooklyn, her early interest in mathematics, and her education at Harvard and Stanford. She reflects on her work in theoretical computer science, including cryptography, algorithmic mechanism design, and accountable systems. She discusses her role in shaping interdisciplinary conversations about computer security and privacy, her experiences in research leadership at AT&T Bell Labs and Yale, and her perspectives on institutional change and mentorship in computing.
An Oral History Interview with Meg Leta Jones
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2025-07-14) Leta Jones, Meg
This oral history interview is sponsored by NSF 2202484, “Mining a Usable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. The interview is with Meg Leta Jones, Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor in the Communication, Culture, and Technology program at Georgetown University. Jones discusses her upbringing in rural Illinois, her education in engineering, law, and communication studies, and her path to interdisciplinary privacy scholarship. She reflects on her work on the right to be forgotten, data deletion, and comparative privacy regimes. Then she discusses her engagement with design, infrastructure, and information ethics, as well as her roles as author, mentor, and public scholar.
An Oral History Interview with Karen Levy
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2025-07-14) Levy, Karen
This oral history interview is sponsored by and a part of NSF 2202484, “Mining a Usable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. The interview is with Karen Levy, Associate Professor of Information Science at Cornell University. She begins by reflecting on her early life in Indiana and her academic trajectory from political science and law to sociology and information science. She recounts the development of her ethnographic research on truckers and digital surveillance. Then she reflects on transitions across disciplines, collaborations with computer scientists and legal scholars, and her efforts to write accessibly for both scholarly and public audiences.
An Oral History Interview with Yuval Ishai
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2025-07-14) Ishai, Yuval
This oral history interview is sponsored by NSF 2202484, “Mining a Usable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. The interview is with Yuval Ishai, Professor of Computer Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Ishai discusses his upbringing between the United States and Israel, his early academic interests in mathematics and theoretical computer science, and his graduate education at the Weizmann Institute. He reflects on his contributions to secure multiparty computation, his collaborations with U.S.-based researchers, and the evolution of cryptography as a scientific and practical field. He also discusses his perspectives on academic publishing, the structure of the cryptography community, and the long-term stakes of cryptographic research for privacy and security.
An Oral History Interview with Jules Polonetsky
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2025-07-15) Polonetsky, Jules
This oral history interview is sponsored by and a part of NSF 2202484, “Mining a Usable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. The interview is with Jules Polonetsky, CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum. He reflects on his upbringing in New York’s Brighton Beach, his early political career, and his transition from public service to corporate privacy roles at DoubleClick and AOL. Polonetsky discusses the founding and evolution of the Future of Privacy Forum, his perspectives on consumer data practices, and the relationship between self-regulation, policy development, and civil society. He offers reflections on privacy law in the U.S. and Europe, emerging technologies such as AI, and the institutional dynamics that shape privacy governance today.
Oral History Interview with Phillip Rogaway
(Charles Babbage Institute, 0007-11-25) Rogaway , Phillip
This oral history interview is sponsored by and a part of NSF 2202484, “Mining Usable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. The interview is with Phillip Rogaway, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University of California, Davis. Rogaway reflects on his early life in Los Angeles, his education at UC Berkeley and MIT, and his development as a cryptographer. He discusses his influential work on block cipher modes of operation, his collaborations with Mihir Bellare, and his broader contributions to theoretical and applied cryptography. The interview explores Rogaway’s critiques of NSA influence in academic cryptography, his call for ethically grounded technical research, and the political dimensions of privacy and security. He concludes with thoughts on teaching, activism, and the role of cryptographers in confronting authoritarianism and injustice.
Oral History Interview with Vipin Kumar
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2025-03-05) Kumar , Vipin
This interview was conducted by CBI for CS&E growing out of the 50th Anniversary of the University of Minnesota Computer Science Department (now Computer Science and Engineering, CS&E). The interview begins with a brief discussion of educational background and Prof. Kumar’s early career at the University of Texas, Austin, while the bulk of the interview is on his time as a professor, now a Regents Prof. and William C. Norris Chair of Computer Science in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Prof. Kumar discusses his research, collaborations, leadership roles (Director of the Army HPC SCI at UMN, Dept. Chair of CS, etc.)—focusing on his research in pattern recognition, AI, machine learning, and data science. Increasingly at UMN (and globally), his work has pioneered in partnering with other researchers to advance scientific discovery and help to better understand and address societal problems in areas ranging from climate science, water resources to bio-medical research. He also discusses the importance and rewards of working with talented students throughout his career and seeing and helping them grow, many of them to prosper at the top of their fields.
Oral History Interview with Cynthia Irvine
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2025-03-04) Irvine, Cynthia
This oral history interview is sponsored by and a part of NSF 2202484 “Mining a Useable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute. Early in the interview Professor Irvine discusses early educational interests and work, and a focus on Astronomy as an undergraduate and in completing a Ph.D. at Case Western Reserve University. The bulk of the oral history focuses on her work in computer science and computer security, with introduction to the computer security specialty working at Naval Postgraduate initially, mentorship and collaboration with Roger Schell, and going to work for his startup company Gemini, a company launched to build high assurance certified access control systems for government and industry. She discusses gender in science, computer science, and computer security. In returning to Naval Postgraduate School to become a faculty and earning the honor of Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, her work has explored and advanced security models, security practices, and computer security education. An early pioneer in the latter area, she was lead organizer of an early computer security education annual conference in Monterey at NPS, work influential to the field and to the National Security Agency in launching a certification of schools as Centers of Academic Excellence in cybersecurity, which evolved to certifications in education and in research, CAE-CD, CAE-CO, and CAE-R. She discusses educational philosophy and mentorship and her partnering research//work in using gaming as an educational tool for cybersecurity. She also relates her work and education within the framework of the mission of NPS, as well the evolving and fast escalating risk landscape regarding critical infrastructure and other realms.
Oral History Interview with Dr. Arvind Narayanan
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2025-03-04) Narayanan, Arvind
This oral history interview is sponsored by and a part of NSF 2202484 “Mining a Useable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute. The interview begins with Princeton Professor of Computer Science Arvind Narayanan recounting how his interests developed from his pre-college days, transitioning from mathematics to computer science. He majored in the latter at Indian Institute of Technology. Madras. He then went on to the University of Texas, Austin, to earn his Ph.D. in Computer Science. He discusses how his dissertation, broadly on deanonymization, was shaped by the mentorship of his advisor Vitaly Shmatikov. He relates his entrepreneurial efforts in Silicon Valley before returning to academia at Princeton in the Center for Information Technology Policy, which was then set up by Ed Felten. Narayanan comments on the state of technology policy broadly and how the topic was approached before the 2012 Menlo Reports. He discusses the privacy implications of the Fragile Families Challenge, a 2017 project partnering with Princeton’s Sociology Department. He explains how his approach as a cybersecurity researcher differed from the HCI community, by considering dark patterns deployed by adversaries. Amazon and Expedia were examples of e-commerce platforms utilizing these dark patterns. He also related experiences with Bitcoin, blockchain technology, and their communities. He shares his view of the past focus of computer security on malware and grayware as a possible future focus. He also offers his views on how enterprise systems differ from solely technical problems. Additionally, he discusses his approach to mentoring graduate students, his book project AI Snake Oil, and shares his perspectives on the open AI movement's similarity and differences from historical open-source software movements.
An Interview with Prof. JEFFREY R. YOST
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2025-02-26) YOST, JEFFREY R.
CBI Director and Research Professor Jeffrey Yost, who previously served as CBI Associate Director, discusses his educational background and evolving early research interests from his BA at Macalester College through his MA and PhD at Case Western Reserve University in the History of Technology and Science. He discusses the history of the Babbage Institute and working with past Directors, and his strategic repositioning of the Institute to make it interdisciplinary computing and software studies under the new sub-title CBI for Computing, Information and Culture (rather than for the History of IT). He discusses how these changes permeated across the institute with major events “Just Code” and “Automation by Design,” Interfaces, and other projects and initiatives, including CBI Archives collection development focal points shifting more toward social and cultural context to computing. The interview was originally conducted and translated the interviewer for publication in the Zhineng Shehui Yanjiu [Journal of Intelligent Society] in Mandarin, volume three: issue two March 2024 pp 196-215. The English version has been donated to CBI for its collections.
Oral History Interview with Dr. Alessandro Acquisti
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2024-03-06) Acquisti, Alessandro
This oral history interview is sponsored by and a part of NSF 2202484 “Mining a Useable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute. Alessandro Acquisti started with the journey of the development of interest in bridging digital privacy and economics through his study first at the University of Roma and then at Berkeley. He also shared his experiences studied with a number of influential scholars including but not limited to Mario Baldassarri, Hartmut Lehman, Hal Varian, Ross Anderson, and so on. In addition, he reflected on the experience of the interdisciplinary approach at the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University and how this approach has helped him with his research in bridging the discussion of privacy in the digital world and economics. He also discussed the goals and visions of two master’s programs at CMU, the Master of Information Systems Management (MISM) and the Master of Science in Information Security Policy and Management (MISPM), that train professionals with knowledge of both technical and policy knowledge of privacy. He also shared his experience acting as a member of the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine and his testimonies in the United States and in Europe. He shared his observations on privacy protection in these two areas. In terms of his academic work, in this interview, he shared the context of his dissertation titled Essays on privacy, anonymity, and tracking in computer-mediated economic transactions. Moreover, approaching privacy both as an economic phenomenon and as a process of boundary regulation, Acquisti shared his observations, derived from his research, on the effects of privacy technologies on market competition, and the economic consequences of digital privacy laws such as the GDPR. At the end of the interview, he commented on the progression of information technology and its infringement of the private sphere but expressed an ultimately optimistic attitude, seeing that it was in human nature to carve a space for one’s private sphere. Readers can also find his views on a number of issues, from the relationship between security and privacy, to the debate on the Clipper Chip.
Oral History Interview with L. Jean Camp
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2024-08-19) Camp, L. Jean
This oral history interview is sponsored by NSF 2202484 “Mining a Useable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” a project at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. At the start of the interview, Professor L. Jean Camp shares interests in her youth and life at college, and her work experience at the Catawba Nuclear plant. Then she turns to the course that led her to study engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon. She also describes and contextualizes her dissertation, titled “Privacy and Reliability in Internet Commerce.” She discusses her experience with the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, and her interaction with her mentors, Marvin Sirbu and Doug Tygar. Then she provides the context to co-authoring with Donna Riley on gender and women's justice advocacy work; and she relates her various research on security, communication, and privacy. Later in the interview, Camp talks about her early participation with the research group called Economics of Information Security during her time at Kennedy School, Harvard. Camp discusses joining the faculty in the School of Informatics at Indiana University. She also reflects on the human aspects of IPv4 and security. She shares her thoughts on a variety of topics, including, SOPA, the contexts of autonomic transactions, blockchain and cryptocurrency, relation between privacy and security, mental models and risk communication, crowdsourcing of security and peer production, privacy statements for websites, security of SDN and security, autonomy, and control. She also provides context of her two books, Economics of Medical and Financial Theft and the edited volume Economics of Information Security.
Oral History Interview with Steven M. Bellovin
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2023-06-14) Bellovin, Steven M.
This oral history interview is sponsored by and a part of NSF 2202484 “Mining a Useable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. It is an interview with Percy K. and Vida L. W. Hudson Professor of Computer Science, and affiliate faculty member of the Law School Steven M. Bellovin, Columbia University, a pioneer and expert in security as well as a leading scholar in technology and law. The interview starts with Bellovin’s recollections of his pre-college and college education and how he encountered programming. He then discusses his graduate education, his mentors and professors—Fred Brooks, David Parnas, and Brian Kernighan—and their influences on him. Bellovin briefly describes and summarizes contexts to his dissertation in formal methods, “Verifiable Correct Code Generation Using Predicate Transformers.” Then the interview shifts to focus on USENET during his graduate school days and beyond. This includes sharing his thoughts on the personal computer revolution, democratizing computing, important concepts growing out of USENET such as “flame,” “sock puppet,” “trolling,” “spam,” “FAQ.” Bellovin offers context to his joining AT&T Labs and his professional focus on computer security research. He shares the context of Morris Worm, as well as the origin of cryptographic authentication, the idea of firewalls, and his work serving on the Internet Engineering Task Force or the IETF. He discusses joining Columbia University and his research and teaching. The latter part of the interview focuses on his growing focus on technology and law.
Oral History Interview with Dr. Stephen Thomas Kent
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2024-06-12) Kent (Charles Babbage Institute), Steve
This oral history interview is sponsored by and a part of NSF 2202484 “Mining a Useable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute. The interview begins with Steve Kent recounting his time in high school, and telling of how he became interested in computer science and attended Loyola University and then MIT later as a graduate student. He related the influence of Jerome (Jerry) Saltzer and Mike Schroeder on his master thesis and his career. He also discussed the experience with Dave Clark as his mentor. He shared his experiences working at a number of prominent organizations such as RAND, BBN, MITRE, partnership with Trusted Information Systems, and later his work serving on the Internet Architecture Board, GTE Internet Working Security Practices Center, and BBN Communications. Kent discussed his involvement in various projects, including Black-Crypto-Red, a crypto module at FIPS 140-1 level 3, Privacy Enhanced Mail, and his work at the IEEE Security and Privacy Symposium. Moreover, he also offered context to various research projects, from his doctoral dissertation to the report on Flip Jack algorithm, reports in 2000 from the Committee for Authentication Technologies, the Privacy Implications for Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council and his Securing Border Gateway Protocol article. He provides his perspective on the Orange Book, security economics, certification authorities, the Clipper Chip issue, and the impact of AI on security.
Oral History Interview with Dr. Chuck Easttom
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2024-06-12) Easttom (Charles Babbage Institute) , Chuck
This oral history interview is sponsored by and a part of NSF 2202484 “Mining a Useable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute. The interview begins with Chuck Easttom recounting how he got interested in computers. His interest developed from reading magazines and gradually taking up part-time jobs repairing PCs. He describes his developing interest in cybersecurity alongside the wide range of experiences that inform his work. He describes how his consulting business at Chuck Easttom Consulting grew. Described how the Certification industry was like. His first court work from 2004 as patent cases, before a private investigator's license related to digital forensic work in Dallas, Texas. Describes experiences publishing textbooks. Discusses the education of next generation of cybersecurity professionals. He related his experiences mentoring in a firm as compared to the university, and the implications of newest quantum computing technology for security at Vanderbilt University. The interview ends with final reflections on generative AI and the meaning of being an engineer in contrast with simply using the word when being a programmer.
Oral History Interview with Dr. Paul van Oorschot
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2024-06-12) van Oorschot (Charles Babbage Institute), Paul
This oral history interview is sponsored by and a part of NSF 2202484 “Mining a Useable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute. The interview is with computer security and cryptography pioneer Paul van Oorschot. He begins by recounting his time in high school, and how he obtained both his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Waterloo, where he played on the basketball team. He tells of Wes Graham' influence and how working within the University of Waterloo's Computer Systems Group led him to develop interests in computer science which grew out of his longtime interest in mathematics. He began working at Bell-Northern Research (BNR) and discusses his research there. He transitioned into academe and a Professorship in Computer Science in 2002 with the Canada Research Chairs Program at Carleton University. He discusses public key infrastructure in industry and research in this area during the 1990s, and also how he and his students got into graphical password schemes. He shares briefly about his 20 patents, mostly in certificates and certificate management. He relates what the “crypto wars” were like from a political economy context in Canada. He moves on to offer context to the textbooks he has written. He relates his philosophy in teaching undergraduate and graduate students. And he also touches upon cryptocurrency from technical and societal perspective. Finally, he reflects on the implications of artificial intelligence, as well as on solving problems of interest to society and professional incentives.
Oral History with Paul Kocher
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2023-06-29) Kocher, Paul
This oral history interview is sponsored by and a part of NSF 2202484 “Mining a Useable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. It is an interview with Paul Kocher by videoconference. The interview begins with Kocher’s interest and experience programming prior to attending Stanford University, his interests in math and biology, and his goal to be a veterinarian. He relates summer jobs he had while at Stanford, first at software company Symantec and then at RSA Data Security. He discusses meeting Hellman at Stanford in his second year, support and encouragement from Hellman, and his participation as a student in a group at Stanford of Silicon Valley cryptographers. Hellman referred consulting opportunities to Kocher during the early the growth of the Internet and Web, which enabled to Kocher to pursue cryptography as an early career. Kocher formed Cryptography Research Inc. in 1995, initially with just him doing consulting but soon adding others and branching beyond consulting. Kocher discusses various projects, including his pathbreaking work with Taher Elgamal on Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 3.0/Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0, a protocol to protect communications over the Internet. He relates how his knowledge and exposure to many areas like statistics without a focus in one contributed to his discovery of timing channel attacks and power analysis attacks (both categories of side channel attacks). The interview also explores the growth of the company, the variety of technical projects it did for clients, and how consulting led to opportunities to also explore other security research. He recounts the context of the Spectre paper. He also reflects upon the field of computer security broadly in terms complexity adding to vulnerabilities/risks and the economics of computer security. He highlights that he was able to work with many great people who together achieved impactful new technologies, techniques, and understandings in the field of computer security. Kocher tells of how, as the company grew larger, it needed to internally expand more of the infrastructure typical of larger corporations, or be acquired by another corporation. The latter made more sense and Cryptography Research, Inc. merged with Rambus in 2011. Finally, he mentions how the success of the company and the merger allowed him to become more involved in philanthropy.
Oral history interview with Susan Landau
(Charles Babbage Institute, 2024-01-30) Landau, Susan
This oral history interview is sponsored by NSF 2202484 “Mining a Useable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute. Professor Susan Landau begins with her experience at Bronx Science High School, and its strong influence on her. She then moves on to her undergraduate days at Princeton. She relates how she shifted from Math to Computer Science during her graduate studies at Cornell and then went on to MIT to earn her Ph.D. in Theoretical Computer Science. Landau comments on the gendered environments and sexism at these schools. It is a theme in her later discussing her motivation for founding the ResearcHers email list. Landau became an Assistant Professor of Computer Science within the Math Department at Wesleyan. She discusses the evolution of her research during her early years as an academic—this includes the Landau’s Algorithm for “de-nesting” radicals. Landau provides context for her thought about mathematical applications to cryptography, the state of art of privacy with regard to cryptography in the mid-1970s, the book Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption co-authored with Whitfield Diffie, and her book People Count. Landau then turns to her years at Sun Microsystems in the 1990s, including the establishment of the principles for Digital Rights Management and DRM Project DReaM. Landau discusses her transition to Radcliffe Institute, Google, Worcester Polytech, and finally, her long tenure and current home at Tufts University. This includes her elaborating on founding a Master’s Program in Cybersecurity and Public Policy there. She highlights recollections of her encounter with famed physicist Joseph Rotblat and his influence on her life. She also relates her longtime collaboration with Steve Bellovin and Matt Blaze at the intersection of tech, security and privacy, policy, and law. She contextualizes her testimony before Congress with the Apple 2015, 2016 (Encryption Dispute—should Apple be forced to unlock its encryption to authorities/FBI) case. And she also comments on a variety of issues including state-sponsored hacking capabilities, the great importance of communicating with broader audiences, and her style and approach in mentoring graduate students.

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