Lex Cybernetica Podcast

The two active shooter terrorist attack in San Bernardino became into a high-tech case when the phone of one of the shooters was obtained by police, which couldn’t open it because of encryption. This turned into a legal battle between the state and Apple, the creator of the phone, who were asked - and refused - to give access to the phone and to the information on it. This has inspired a lot of research and discussion of what rights we have as users for encryption for password protection, and should it be circumvented in the case of criminal offenses, and how.   We talk about this and more in this episode of Lex Cybernetica, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Federmann Cyber Security Research Center’s podcast, with Jennifer Daskal, Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law; Stewart Baker, a lawyer with Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C., and host of the Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast; Amos Eytan, an attorney with the Israeli State Attorney’s Cybercrime Department; and Lex Cybernetica’s host, Ido Kenan.

Freedom of speech is almost a sacred thing in the US and revered in many democratic countries. But in recent years, there is talk of its abuse to propagate hate speech online, and the need to limit it as a result.   What is hate speech (or dangerous speech), what’s unique about it online, what are its real dangers, how should it be dealt with, and at what cost?   All this in this episode of the Lex Cybernetica, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Federmann Cyber Security Research Center’s podcast, with Susan Benesch, Executive Director of The Dangerous Speech Project, Faculty Associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University; Omri Abend, Hebrew University faculty member, researching NLP; Rotem Medzini, Research Fellow at the Federmann Cyber Security Research Center; and Lex Cybernetica’s host, Ido Kenan.

Legal accountability means that an unlawful act does not go with impunity. When a state carries out a cyber operation against another state, it’s accountable under international law towards the international community. However, international law doesn’t always have teeth to hold the rogue actor accountable. Additional challenges include attributing the act to a state, which might be using proxy groups and technology to conceal its identity and the actions themselves; and even the mere definition of a rogue act in cyberspace, using tools from the kinetic world.  We discuss all that in this episode of Lex Cybernetica, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Federmann Cyber Security Research Center’s podcast, with Yaël Ronen, Professor of International Law and a research associate at the Federmann Cyber Security Research Center; Isabella Brunner, researcher and lecturer in Public International Law at Bundeswehr University Munich; Rogier Bartels, an international criminal lawyer and a research fellow at Federmann Cyber Security Research Center ; and Lex Cybernetica’s host, Ido Kenan.

Can we trust decisions made by algorithms? Those are utilized by managers to choose employees, judges to give verdicts, and much more. While algorithms are often considered unbiased, or at least less biased than humans, they are in truth as biased as the data-sets that they were trained on, and as they were programmed to be - by oversight or design. The problems with AI decision making, and the right to have a human decision maker in the loop, are the subject of this episode of Lex Cybernetica, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Federmann Cyber Security Center’s podcast, with Prof. Helmut Aust, Senior Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany; Dafna Dror, legal counsel at the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, International Law Division, Human Rights Department And The Federmann Cyber Security Research Center Fellow; Prof. Alon Harel of the Hebrew University; and Lex Cybernetica’s host, Ido Kenan.

While cyber threats have been around for decades, cyber insurance is still a fledgling, mainly American, $4-6 bn industry, that's estimated to grow to $20 bn by 2025.  In Israel, only 13% of local companies have cyber insurance, according to a June 2019 survey of executives, decision makers and insurance companies by the Israel National Cyber Directorate (Hebrew press release). The main reasons for not having such insurance are lack of awareness to cyber threats and a lack of financial viability. Many executives in the industry, agriculture, construction and retail said they didn’t know cyber insurance even existed. What exactly is cyber insurance, what cyber attacks does it cover, and how is it affecting global cyber security? In this episode of the Lex Cybernetica, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Federmann Cyber Security Center’s podcast, we talk cyber insurance with Ariel Levite from the Cyber Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace; Sharon Shaham, Betach Toren Insurance Agency CEO; and Asaf Lubin, an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and a Visiting Scholar at the Federmann Center; and Lex Cybernetica’s host, Ido Kenan.