Edward Felten facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Edward William Felten
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Official portrait with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board in 2019
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| Born | March 25, 1963 |
| Citizenship | American |
| Alma mater | California Institute of Technology (BS) University of Washington (MS, PhD) |
| Known for | Secure Digital Music Initiative |
| Awards | EFF Pioneer Award |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science; Public affairs |
| Institutions | Princeton University Federal Trade Commission |
| Thesis | Protocol compilation: High-performance communication for parallel programs (1993) |
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Edward William Felten (born March 25, 1963) is an American computer scientist. He is known for his important work in computer security. At Princeton University, he was a special professor of computer science and public affairs. He also led the Center for Information Technology Policy from 2007 to 2015 and again from 2017 to 2019.
During the Obama administration, he served in key government roles. From 2011 to 2012, he was the chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission. This agency helps protect consumers. Later, from 2015 to 2017, he was a high-level technology advisor for the United States government. Felten retired from Princeton University in July 2021.
Felten has done a lot of computer security research. This includes work on making sure computer programs are safe. He also worked on security for the Java computer language. He is perhaps most famous for his paper about the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) challenge.
In 2018, Felten became a board member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. His term on this board ended on January 29, 2025.
Contents
Edward Felten's Early Life and Education
Edward Felten went to the California Institute of Technology. He earned a degree in physics in 1985. After that, he worked at Caltech from 1986 to 1989. He helped with a big project on parallel supercomputers.
Later, he decided to study computer science. He became a graduate student at the University of Washington. He earned his Master of Science degree in 1991. Then, he received his Ph.D. in 1993. His Ph.D. research was about creating an automatic way for parallel processors to communicate.
Career at Princeton University and Government Roles
In 1993, Felten joined the computer science department at Princeton University. He started as an assistant professor. He became an associate professor in 1999 and a full professor in 2003. In 2006, he also joined the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. However, computer science remained his main department.
In 2005, he became the director of the Center for Information and Technology Policy at Princeton. He has also advised many different groups. These include law firms, companies, foundations, and government agencies. His research focuses on computer security and how technology affects public rules.
Felten lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his family. He was a board member for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) from 2006 to 2010. In 2007, he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
In November 2010, he was chosen as the Chief Technologist for the Federal Trade Commission. In 2013, Felten was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. This was for his work on computer system security and his influence on public policy. On May 11, 2015, he was named Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer for The White House.
The Microsoft Case
Edward Felten was an important witness for the United States government in a case called United States v. Microsoft. This case was about whether the software company Microsoft had acted unfairly in the market.
During the trial, Microsoft's lawyers said it was impossible to remove the Internet Explorer web browser from a Windows 98 computer without causing major problems. Felten, along with two of his former students, Christian Hicks and Peter Creath, had done research on this.
Felten testified that it was possible to remove Internet Explorer features without harming the computer. He showed his team's tool in court. He demonstrated how their tool made 19 different ways to access the web browser from Windows no longer work.
Microsoft argued that Felten's changes did not truly remove Internet Explorer. They said it only made its features hidden by removing icons and shortcuts. This led to a debate about what exactly counts as the "web browser." Many core parts of Internet Explorer are shared with other programs in Windows.
Microsoft also claimed that Felten's tool did not completely remove web browsing. They said it was still possible to access the web through other Windows programs.
The SDMI Music Challenge
In 2000, a group called SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) held a contest. They invited researchers to try and break their digital music protection technologies. These technologies used hidden "watermarks" in audio files. Participants were given music samples with these watermarks. If they could remove the watermark without losing too much sound quality, they would win.
Edward Felten was one of the first people to join the contest. He chose not to sign a special agreement that would have kept his work secret. This meant his team could not win the cash prize. Even with little information and only three weeks, Felten and his team managed to change the files. SDMI's automatic system then said the watermark was removed.
However, SDMI did not agree that Felten had truly won. They said there was a rule about not losing sound quality. SDMI claimed their automatic judging system was not perfect. They said a submission that just deleted all sound would also remove the watermark but would not meet the quality rule.
Legal Issues After the SDMI Challenge
Felten's team wrote a scientific paper explaining how they broke the SDMI watermarks. They planned to present this paper at a workshop in 2001. But Felten was threatened with legal action by SDMI, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and Verance Corporation. They said his work violated the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). This was because one of the technologies his team broke was being used in the market.
Felten decided not to present the paper at the workshop. Instead, he read a short statement about the threats. SDMI and other copyright holders later said they never threatened to sue Felten. However, a letter from SDMI warned Felten that sharing information from the challenge "could subject you and your research team to actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act." Some people called this an example of trying to stop research using copyright law.
With help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Felten sued these groups. He asked a court to rule that publishing his paper would be legal. The case was later dismissed because the court said he did not have the right to sue at that time.
Felten eventually presented his paper at a security conference in 2001. The United States Department of Justice later told Felten and other researchers that the DMCA did not threaten their work. They also stated that the legal threats against them were not valid.
Sony Music CD Problem
The 2005 Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal began when a security researcher named Mark Russinovich found a problem. On October 31, 2005, he revealed that Sony's "XCP" copy protection software on a music CD contained hidden files. These files could harm a computer and make it vulnerable to attacks. This happened when the CD was played on a Windows PC. Sony then released a software update to remove XCP.
On November 15, 2005, Felten and J. Alex Halderman showed another issue. They found that Sony's way of removing the XCP software actually made computers more vulnerable. It installed a hidden program, called a rootkit, on the user's machine. This program allowed any website the user visited to run harmful code on their computer.
Felten and Halderman explained the serious problem in a blog post:
The consequences of the flaw are severe, it allows any Web page you visit to download, install, and run any code it likes on your computer. Any Web page can seize control of your computer; then it can do anything it likes. That's about as serious as a security flaw can get.
