R. Miles
McCain

I want to build systems that improve the world—and learn something along the way. My interests include digital freedom, cybersecurity, government accountability, political science, artificial intelligence, and human-centered design.1 And OSINT.

My projects, research, and commentary have appeared in several major news outlets including the Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC News, Foreign Affairs, and the Nightly News with Lester Holt.2 My research with Dr. Sarah Kreps has been presented at Yale, Oxford, Columbia, and Cornell, among other institutions.

I graduated from high school in June 2019. I decided to take a gap year, and will head to Stanford in September 2020.

1. Some of these fields may seem disparate. I try my best to make them overlap.
2. For more information and links to each media reference, please see my portfolio.

Currently

From February 17th to May 4th, I'm in New York City to participate in the Recurse Center. I'm mostly focusing on lossless compression and cryptography, but what I do on any given day at RC varies widely.

Portfolio

The work I'm most proud of is PrivacySpy, everything by Politiwatch,3 and these articles. More granular information about these projects and my other work is available in the portfolio below.


Research
disinformation, oversight, censorship

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disinformation, oversight, censorship
Projects
PolitiTweet, PrivacySpy, and more

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PolitiTweet, PrivacySpy, and more
Academics
classes, prizes, organizations

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classes, prizes, organizations
Professional
News Catalyst, First Look Media, Torch

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News Catalyst, First Look Media, Torch
Miscellaneous
competitions, skills, ham radio

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competitions, skills, ham radio
3. Especially PolitiTweet, though its servers are currently overloaded by people trying to scrape it (so if it doesn't load the first time, consider trying again).

Contact

You can email me at [email protected]. If you'd like, you can also encrypt your message to F3C7 8280 DDBF 52A1 using PGP.4

When I have a physical institutional address—like a school mailroom—I will display it here.

On GitHub, I am milesmcc; this is where most of my projects live. On Twitter, I am @MilesMcCain, but I don't post frequently.5 You can also find me on HN, Reddit, Keybase, and Lobsters.

4. Beware: if you PGP encrypt your message, I won't be able to respond as quickly. It'd probably be better to just send a message on Keybase.
5. Take my Twitter—and all of Twitter, for that matter—with a grain of salt.