Peter Eckersley
Author of eckersley-browser-uniqueness and the researcher who built Panopticlick, now cover-your-tracks. Australian computer scientist; at the electronic-frontier-foundation from 2006 to 2018, latterly as chief computer scientist, where he co-founded Let’s Encrypt. He died on 2 September 2022.
He matters to this spoke for one methodological reason beyond the numbers. The 2010 paper measures a capability by building the thing and running it on volunteers who consented, then publishes the algorithm, the entropy figures and the defences that work. Nothing else in this corpus does all four: nothing-private demonstrates without measuring, the vendor tools measure without publishing, and the berkeley-protocol sets standards without a capability behind them.
The other half is the pairing with Let’s Encrypt. The same person quantified how identifiable browsers are and built infrastructure that put TLS on most of the web — measuring a privacy loss and shipping a privacy gain, from the same organisation.
Connections
- author of eckersley-browser-uniqueness (PETS 2010)
- built Panopticlick, now cover-your-tracks
- electronic-frontier-foundation (2006–2018)