Podcast appearances and mentions of david kris

Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and Senior Editor at Lawfare, sits down with David Kris, founder of Culper Partners and the former Assistant Attorney General for National Security in the Obama administration, to talk about a new paper that David has published as part of Lawfare's ongoing Digital Social Contract series, entitled "A Data Proxy for Clients of Cloud Service Providers.”Kris argues that cloud storage offers significant benefits for security and efficiency, but many organizations may be hesitant to adopt it due to the risk of secret disclosure: the practice by which law enforcement can compel cloud service providers to turn over customer data while legally prohibiting them from notifying the customer. To address this concern, Kris proposes the appointment of a "data proxy," a highly trusted individual (like a retired federal judge) who would be contractually authorized to represent the organization's interests when it cannot represent itself due to a nondisclosure order.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is notable not just for cyberlaw commentary, but for its imminent disappearance from these pages and from podcast playlists everywhere.  Having promised to take stock of the podcast when it reached episode 500, I've decided that I, the podcast, and the listeners all deserve a break.  So I'll be taking one after the next episode.  No final decisions have been made, so don't delete your subscription, but don't expect a new episode any time soon.  It's been a great run, from the dawn of the podcast age, through the ad-fueled podcast boom, which I manfully resisted, to the market correction that's still under way.  It was a pleasure to engage with listeners from all over the world. Yes, even the EU!    As they say, in the podcast age, everyone is famous for fifteen people.  That's certainly been true for me, and I'll always be grateful for your support – not to mention for all the great contributors who've joined the podcast over the years   Back to cyberlaw, there are a surprising number of people arguing that there's no reason to worry about existential and catastrophic risks from proliferating or runaway AI risks.  Some of that is people seeking clever takes; a lot of it is ideological, driven by fear that worrying about the end of the world will distract attention from the dire but unidentified dangers of face recognition.  One useful antidote is the Gladstone Report, written for the State Department's export control agency. David Kris gives an overview of the report for this episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast. The report explains the dynamic, and some of the evidence, behind all the doom-saying, a discussion that is more persuasive than its prescriptions for regulation.   Speaking of the dire but unidentified dangers of face recognition, Paul Stephan and I unpack a New York Times piece saying that Israel is using face recognition in its Gaza conflict. Actually, we don't so much unpack it as turn it over and shake it, only to discover it's largely empty.  Apparently the editors of the NYT thought that tying face recognition to Israel and Gaza was all we needed to understand that the technology is evil.   More interesting is the story arguing that the National Security Agency, traditionally at the forefront of computers and national security, may have to sit out the AI revolution. The reason, David tells us, is that NSA's access to mass quantities of data for training is complicated by rules and traditions against intelligence agencies accessing data about Americans. And there are few training databases not contaminated with data about and by Americans.   While we're feeling sorry for the intelligence community as it struggles with new technology, Paul notes that Yahoo News has assembled a long analysis of all the ways that personalized technology is making undercover operations impossible for CIA and FBI alike.   Michael Ellis weighs in with a review of a report by the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies on the need for a US Cyber Force to man, train, and equip fighting nerds for Cyber Command.  It's a bit of an inside baseball solution, heavy on organizational boxology, but we're both persuaded that the current system for attracting and retaining cyberwarriors is not working. In the spirit of “Yes, Minister,” we must do something, and this is something.   In that same spirit, it's fair to say that the latest Senate Judiciary proposal for a “compromise” 702 renewal bill is nothing much – a largely phony compromise chock full of ideological baggage. David Kris and I are unimpressed, and surprised at how muted the Biden administration has been in trying to wrangle the Democratic Senate into producing a workable bill.   Paul and Michael review the latest trouble for TikTok – a likely FTC lawsuit over privacy. Michael and I puzzle over the stories claiming that Meta may have “wiretapped” Snapchat analytic data.  It comes from a trial lawyer suing Meta, and there are a lot of unanswered questions, such as whether users consented to the collection of the data.  In the end, we can't help thinking that if Meta had 41 of its lawyers review the project, they found a way to avoid wiretapping liability.   The most intriguing story of the week is the complex and surprising three- or four-cornered fight in northern Myanmar over hundreds of thousands of women trapped in call centers to run romance and pig-butchering scams.  Angry that many of the women and many victims are Chinese, China fostered a warlord's attack on the call centers that freed many women, and deeply embarrassed the current Myanmar ruling junta and its warlord allies, who'd been running the scams.  And we thought our southern border was a mess! And  in quick hits: ·         Elon Musk's X Corp has lost lawsuit against the left-wing smear artists at CCDH ·         AT&T has lost millions of customer records in a data breach ·         Utah has passed an:  AI regulation bill ·         The US is still in the cyber sanctions business, tagging several Russian fintech firms and a collection of  Chinese state hackers. ·         The SEC isn't done investigating SolarWinds; now it's investigating companies harmed by the supply chain attack. ·         Apple's reluctant compliance with EU law has attracted the expected EU investigation of its app store policies  App Store changes rejected: Apple could be fined 10% of global turnover ·         And in a story that will send chills through large parts of the financial and tech elite, it turns out that Jeffrey Epstein's visitor records didn't die with him.  Thanks to geolocation adtech, they can be reconstructed.  

This episode is notable not just for cyberlaw commentary, but for its imminent disappearance from these pages and from podcast playlists everywhere.  Having promised to take stock of the podcast when it reached episode 500, I've decided that I, the podcast, and the listeners all deserve a break.  So I'll be taking one after the next episode.  No final decisions have been made, so don't delete your subscription, but don't expect a new episode any time soon.  It's been a great run, from the dawn of the podcast age, through the ad-fueled podcast boom, which I manfully resisted, to the market correction that's still under way.  It was a pleasure to engage with listeners from all over the world. Yes, even the EU!    As they say, in the podcast age, everyone is famous for fifteen people.  That's certainly been true for me, and I'll always be grateful for your support – not to mention for all the great contributors who've joined the podcast over the years   Back to cyberlaw, there are a surprising number of people arguing that there's no reason to worry about existential and catastrophic risks from proliferating or runaway AI risks.  Some of that is people seeking clever takes; a lot of it is ideological, driven by fear that worrying about the end of the world will distract attention from the dire but unidentified dangers of face recognition.  One useful antidote is the Gladstone Report, written for the State Department's export control agency. David Kris gives an overview of the report for this episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast. The report explains the dynamic, and some of the evidence, behind all the doom-saying, a discussion that is more persuasive than its prescriptions for regulation.   Speaking of the dire but unidentified dangers of face recognition, Paul Stephan and I unpack a New York Times piece saying that Israel is using face recognition in its Gaza conflict. Actually, we don't so much unpack it as turn it over and shake it, only to discover it's largely empty.  Apparently the editors of the NYT thought that tying face recognition to Israel and Gaza was all we needed to understand that the technology is evil.   More interesting is the story arguing that the National Security Agency, traditionally at the forefront of computers and national security, may have to sit out the AI revolution. The reason, David tells us, is that NSA's access to mass quantities of data for training is complicated by rules and traditions against intelligence agencies accessing data about Americans. And there are few training databases not contaminated with data about and by Americans.   While we're feeling sorry for the intelligence community as it struggles with new technology, Paul notes that Yahoo News has assembled a long analysis of all the ways that personalized technology is making undercover operations impossible for CIA and FBI alike.   Michael Ellis weighs in with a review of a report by the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies on the need for a US Cyber Force to man, train, and equip fighting nerds for Cyber Command.  It's a bit of an inside baseball solution, heavy on organizational boxology, but we're both persuaded that the current system for attracting and retaining cyberwarriors is not working. In the spirit of “Yes, Minister,” we must do something, and this is something.   In that same spirit, it's fair to say that the latest Senate Judiciary proposal for a “compromise” 702 renewal bill is nothing much – a largely phony compromise chock full of ideological baggage. David Kris and I are unimpressed, and surprised at how muted the Biden administration has been in trying to wrangle the Democratic Senate into producing a workable bill.   Paul and Michael review the latest trouble for TikTok – a likely FTC lawsuit over privacy. Michael and I puzzle over the stories claiming that Meta may have “wiretapped” Snapchat analytic data.  It comes from a trial lawyer suing Meta, and there are a lot of unanswered questions, such as whether users consented to the collection of the data.  In the end, we can't help thinking that if Meta had 41 of its lawyers review the project, they found a way to avoid wiretapping liability.   The most intriguing story of the week is the complex and surprising three- or four-cornered fight in northern Myanmar over hundreds of thousands of women trapped in call centers to run romance and pig-butchering scams.  Angry that many of the women and many victims are Chinese, China fostered a warlord's attack on the call centers that freed many women, and deeply embarrassed the current Myanmar ruling junta and its warlord allies, who'd been running the scams.  And we thought our southern border was a mess! And  in quick hits: ·         Elon Musk's X Corp has lost lawsuit against the left-wing smear artists at CCDH ·         AT&T has lost millions of customer records in a data breach ·         Utah has passed an:  AI regulation bill ·         The US is still in the cyber sanctions business, tagging several Russian fintech firms and a collection of  Chinese state hackers. ·         The SEC isn't done investigating SolarWinds; now it's investigating companies harmed by the supply chain attack. ·         Apple's reluctant compliance with EU law has attracted the expected EU investigation of its app store policies  App Store changes rejected: Apple could be fined 10% of global turnover ·         And in a story that will send chills through large parts of the financial and tech elite, it turns out that Jeffrey Epstein's visitor records didn't die with him.  Thanks to geolocation adtech, they can be reconstructed.  

Bryan Vorndran is Assistant Director of the FBI's Cyber Division, a position he's held since around March 2021. Prior to that, he was the special agent in charge in New Orleans, and he's worked in Afghanistan and on the Joint Terrorism Task Force at the Washington Field Office.David Kris, Lawfare contributor and former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, and Bryan Cunningham, Lawfare contributor and Executive Director of the University of California, Irvine's Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute, sat down with Bryan to talk about his career trajectory, the FBI's top cyber challenges, the Bureau's relationships with other agencies and private sector entities, and the challenges posed by the People's Republic of China. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's the last and probably longest Cyberlaw Podcast episode of 2023. To lead off, Megan Stifel takes us through a batch of stories about ways that AI, and especially AI trust and safety, manage to look remarkably fallible. Anthropic released a paper showing that race, gender, and age discrimination by AI models was real but could be dramatically reduced by instructing The Model to “really, really, really” avoid such discrimination. (Buried in the paper was the fact that the original, severe AI bias disfavored older white men, as did the residual bias that asking nicely didn't eliminate.) Bottom line from Anthropic seems to be, “Our technology is a really cool toy, but don't use if for anything that matters.”) In keeping with that theme, Google's highly touted OpenAI competitor Gemini was release to mixed reviews when the model couldn't correctly identify recent Oscar winners or a French word with six letters (it offered “amour”). The good news was for people who hate AI's ham-handed political correctness; it turns out you can ask another AI model how to jailbreak your model, a request that can make the task go 25 times faster. This could be the week that determines the fate of FISA section 702, David Kris reports. It looks as though two bills will go to the House floor, and only one will survive. Judiciary's bill is a grudging renewal of 702 for a mere three years, full of procedures designed to cripple the program. The intelligence committee's bill beats the FBI around the head and shoulders but preserves the core of 702. David and I explore the “queen of the hill” procedure that will allow members to vote for either bill, both, or none, and will send to the Senate the version that gets the most votes.  Gus Hurwitz looks at the FTC's last-ditch appeal to stop the Microsoft-Activision merger. The best case, he suspects, is that the appeal will be rejected without actually repudiating the pet theories of the FTC's hipster antitrust lawyers. Megan and I examine the latest HHS proposal to impose new cybersecurity requirements on hospitals. David, meanwhile, looks for possible motivations behind the FBI's procedures for companies who want help in delaying SEC cyber incident disclosures. Then Megan and I consider the tough new UK rules for establishing the age of online porn consumers. I think they'll hurt Pornhub's litigation campaign against states trying to regulate children's access to porn sites.  The race to 5G is over, Gus notes, and it looks like even the winners lost. Faced with the threat of Chinese 5G domination and an industry sure that 5G was the key to the future, many companies and countries devoted massive investments to the technology, but it's now widely deployed and no one sees much benefit. There is more than one lesson here for industrial policy and the unpredictable way technologies disseminate. 23andme gets some time in the barrel, with Megan and I both dissing its “lawyerly” response to a history of data breaches – namely changing its terms of service it harder for customers to sue for data breaches. Gus reminds us that the Biden FCC only took office in that last month or two, and it is determined to catch up with the FTC in advancing foolish and doomed regulatory initiatives. This week's example, remarkably, isn't net neutrality. It's worse. The Commission is building a sweeping regulatory structure on an obscure section of the 2021 infrastructure act that calls for the FCC to “facilitate equal access to broadband internet access service...”: Think we're hyperventilating? Read Commissioner Brendan Carr's eloquent takedown of the whole initiative.  Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has a been in his bonnet over government access to smartphone notifications. Megan and I do our best to understand his concern and how seriously to take it.  Wrapping up, Gus offers a quick take on Meta's broadening attack on the constitutionality of the FTC's current structure. David takes satisfaction from the Justice Department's patient and successful pursuit of Russian Hacker Vladimir Dunaev for his role in creating TrickBot. Gus notes that South Korea's law imposing internet costs on content providers is no match for the law of supply and demand. Finally, in quick hits we cover:  The guilty plea of the founder of a cryptocurrency exchange accused of money laundering. Rumors that the ALPHV ransomware site has been taken down by law enforcement IBM's long-term quantum computing research milestones The UK's antitrust throat-clearing about the OpenAI-Microsoft tie-up And Europe's low-on-details announcement of a deal on the world's first comprehensive AI rules  Download 485th Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

It's the last and probably longest Cyberlaw Podcast episode of 2023. To lead off, Megan Stifel takes us through a batch of stories about ways that AI, and especially AI trust and safety, manage to look remarkably fallible. Anthropic released a paper showing that race, gender, and age discrimination by AI models was real but could be dramatically reduced by instructing The Model to “really, really, really” avoid such discrimination. (Buried in the paper was the fact that the original, severe AI bias disfavored older white men, as did the residual bias that asking nicely didn't eliminate.) Bottom line from Anthropic seems to be, “Our technology is a really cool toy, but don't use if for anything that matters.”) In keeping with that theme, Google's highly touted OpenAI competitor Gemini was release to mixed reviews when the model couldn't correctly identify recent Oscar winners or a French word with six letters (it offered “amour”). The good news was for people who hate AI's ham-handed political correctness; it turns out you can ask another AI model how to jailbreak your model, a request that can make the task go 25 times faster. This could be the week that determines the fate of FISA section 702, David Kris reports. It looks as though two bills will go to the House floor, and only one will survive. Judiciary's bill is a grudging renewal of 702 for a mere three years, full of procedures designed to cripple the program. The intelligence committee's bill beats the FBI around the head and shoulders but preserves the core of 702. David and I explore the “queen of the hill” procedure that will allow members to vote for either bill, both, or none, and will send to the Senate the version that gets the most votes.  Gus Hurwitz looks at the FTC's last-ditch appeal to stop the Microsoft-Activision merger. The best case, he suspects, is that the appeal will be rejected without actually repudiating the pet theories of the FTC's hipster antitrust lawyers. Megan and I examine the latest HHS proposal to impose new cybersecurity requirements on hospitals. David, meanwhile, looks for possible motivations behind the FBI's procedures for companies who want help in delaying SEC cyber incident disclosures. Then Megan and I consider the tough new UK rules for establishing the age of online porn consumers. I think they'll hurt Pornhub's litigation campaign against states trying to regulate children's access to porn sites.  The race to 5G is over, Gus notes, and it looks like even the winners lost. Faced with the threat of Chinese 5G domination and an industry sure that 5G was the key to the future, many companies and countries devoted massive investments to the technology, but it's now widely deployed and no one sees much benefit. There is more than one lesson here for industrial policy and the unpredictable way technologies disseminate. 23andme gets some time in the barrel, with Megan and I both dissing its “lawyerly” response to a history of data breaches – namely changing its terms of service it harder for customers to sue for data breaches. Gus reminds us that the Biden FCC only took office in that last month or two, and it is determined to catch up with the FTC in advancing foolish and doomed regulatory initiatives. This week's example, remarkably, isn't net neutrality. It's worse. The Commission is building a sweeping regulatory structure on an obscure section of the 2021 infrastructure act that calls for the FCC to “facilitate equal access to broadband internet access service...”: Think we're hyperventilating? Read Commissioner Brendan Carr's eloquent takedown of the whole initiative.  Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has a been in his bonnet over government access to smartphone notifications. Megan and I do our best to understand his concern and how seriously to take it.  Wrapping up, Gus offers a quick take on Meta's broadening attack on the constitutionality of the FTC's current structure. David takes satisfaction from the Justice Department's patient and successful pursuit of Russian Hacker Vladimir Dunaev for his role in creating TrickBot. Gus notes that South Korea's law imposing internet costs on content providers is no match for the law of supply and demand. Finally, in quick hits we cover:  The guilty plea of the founder of a cryptocurrency exchange accused of money laundering. Rumors that the ALPHV ransomware site has been taken down by law enforcement IBM's long-term quantum computing research milestones The UK's antitrust throat-clearing about the OpenAI-Microsoft tie-up And Europe's low-on-details announcement of a deal on the world's first comprehensive AI rules  Download 485th Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

In a law-packed Cyberlaw Podcast episode, Chris Conte walks us through the long, detailed, and justifiably controversial SEC enforcement action against SolarWinds and its top infosec officer, Tim Brown. It sounds to me as though the SEC's explanation for its action will (1) force companies to examine and update all of their public security documents, (2) transmit a lot more of their security engineers' concerns to top management, and (3) quite possibly lead to disclosures beyond those required by the SEC's new cyber disclosure rules that would alert network attackers to what security officials know about the attack in something close to real time.  Jim Dempsey does a deep dive into the administration's executive order on AI, adding details not available last week when we went live. It's surprisingly regulatory, while still trying to milk jawboning and public-private partnership for all they're worth. The order more or less guarantees a flood of detailed regulatory and quasiregulatory initiatives for the rest of the President's first term. Jim resists our efforts to mock the even more in-the-weeds OMB guidance, saying it will drive federal AI contracting in significant ways. He's a little more willing, though, to diss the Bletchley Park announcement on AI principles that was released by a large group of countries. It doesn't say all that much, and what it does say isn't binding.  David Kris covers the Supreme Court's foray into cyberlaw this week – oral argument in two cases about when politicians can curate the audience that interacts with their social media sites. This started as a Trump issue, David reminds us, but it has lost its predictable partisan valence, so now it's just a surprisingly hard constitutional controversy that, as Justice Elena Kagan almost said, left the Supreme Court building littered with first amendment rights. Finally, I drop in on Europe to see how that Brussels Effect is doing. Turns out that, after years of huffing and puffing, the privacy bureaucrats are dropping the hammer on Facebook's data-fueled advertising model. In a move that raises doubts about how far from Brussels the Brussels Effect can reach, Facebook is changing its business model, but just for Europe, where kids won't get ads and grownups will have the dubious option of paying about ten bucks a month for Facebook and Insta. Another straw in the wind: Ordered by the French government to drop Russian government news channels, YouTube competitor Rumble has decided to drop France instead. Download 480th Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

In a law-packed Cyberlaw Podcast episode, Chris Conte walks us through the long, detailed, and justifiably controversial SEC enforcement action against SolarWinds and its top infosec officer, Tim Brown. It sounds to me as though the SEC's explanation for its action will (1) force companies to examine and update all of their public security documents, (2) transmit a lot more of their security engineers' concerns to top management, and (3) quite possibly lead to disclosures beyond those required by the SEC's new cyber disclosure rules that would alert network attackers to what security officials know about the attack in something close to real time.  Jim Dempsey does a deep dive into the administration's executive order on AI, adding details not available last week when we went live. It's surprisingly regulatory, while still trying to milk jawboning and public-private partnership for all they're worth. The order more or less guarantees a flood of detailed regulatory and quasiregulatory initiatives for the rest of the President's first term. Jim resists our efforts to mock the even more in-the-weeds OMB guidance, saying it will drive federal AI contracting in significant ways. He's a little more willing, though, to diss the Bletchley Park announcement on AI principles that was released by a large group of countries. It doesn't say all that much, and what it does say isn't binding.  David Kris covers the Supreme Court's foray into cyberlaw this week – oral argument in two cases about when politicians can curate the audience that interacts with their social media sites. This started as a Trump issue, David reminds us, but it has lost its predictable partisan valence, so now it's just a surprisingly hard constitutional controversy that, as Justice Elena Kagan almost said, left the Supreme Court building littered with first amendment rights. Finally, I drop in on Europe to see how that Brussels Effect is doing. Turns out that, after years of huffing and puffing, the privacy bureaucrats are dropping the hammer on Facebook's data-fueled advertising model. In a move that raises doubts about how far from Brussels the Brussels Effect can reach, Facebook is changing its business model, but just for Europe, where kids won't get ads and grownups will have the dubious option of paying about ten bucks a month for Facebook and Insta. Another straw in the wind: Ordered by the French government to drop Russian government news channels, YouTube competitor Rumble has decided to drop France instead. Download 480th Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

Our headline story for this episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast is the U.K.'s sweeping new Online Safety Act, which regulates social media in a host of ways. Mark MacCarthy spells some of them out, but the big surprise is encryption. U.S. encrypted messaging companies used up all the oxygen in the room hyperventilating about the risk that end-to-end encryption would be regulated. Journalists paid little attention in the past year or two to all the other regulatory provisions. And even then, they got it wrong, gleefully claiming that the U.K. backed down and took the authority to regulate encrypted apps out of the bill. Mark and I explain just how wrong they are. It was the messaging companies who blinked and are now pretending they won.  In cybersecurity news, David Kris and I have kind words for the Department of Homeland Security's report on how to coordinate cyber incident reporting. Unfortunately, there is a vast gulf between writing a report on coordinating incident reporting and actually coordinating incident reporting. David also offers a generous view of the conservative catfight between former Congressman Bob Goodlatte on one side and Michael Ellis and me on the other. The latest installment in that conflict is here. If you need to catch up on the raft of antitrust litigation launched by the Biden administration, Gus Hurwitz has you covered. First, he explains what's at stake in the Justice Department's case against Google – and why we don't know more about it. Then he previews the imminent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) case against Amazon. Followed by his criticism of Lina Khan's decision to name three Amazon execs as targets in the FTC's other big Amazon case – over Prime membership. Amazon is clearly Lina Khan's White Whale, but that doesn't mean that everyone who works there is sushi. Mark picks up the competition law theme, explaining the U.K. competition watchdog's principles for AI regulation. Along the way, he shows that whether AI is regulated by one entity or several could have a profound impact on what kind of regulation AI gets. I update listeners on the litigation over the Biden administration's pressure on social media companies to ban misinformation and use it to plug the latest Cybertoonz commentary on the case. I also note the Commerce Department claim that its controls on chip technology have not failed, arguing that there's no evidence that China can make advanced chips “at scale.”  But the Commerce Department would say that, wouldn't they? Finally, for This Week in Anticlimactic Privacy News, I note that the U.K. has decided, following the EU ruling, that U.S. law is “adequate” for transatlantic data transfers. Download 473rd Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

Our headline story for this episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast is the U.K.'s sweeping new Online Safety Act, which regulates social media in a host of ways. Mark MacCarthy spells some of them out, but the big surprise is encryption. U.S. encrypted messaging companies used up all the oxygen in the room hyperventilating about the risk that end-to-end encryption would be regulated. Journalists paid little attention in the past year or two to all the other regulatory provisions. And even then, they got it wrong, gleefully claiming that the U.K. backed down and took the authority to regulate encrypted apps out of the bill. Mark and I explain just how wrong they are. It was the messaging companies who blinked and are now pretending they won.  In cybersecurity news, David Kris and I have kind words for the Department of Homeland Security's report on how to coordinate cyber incident reporting. Unfortunately, there is a vast gulf between writing a report on coordinating incident reporting and actually coordinating incident reporting. David also offers a generous view of the conservative catfight between former Congressman Bob Goodlatte on one side and Michael Ellis and me on the other. The latest installment in that conflict is here. If you need to catch up on the raft of antitrust litigation launched by the Biden administration, Gus Hurwitz has you covered. First, he explains what's at stake in the Justice Department's case against Google – and why we don't know more about it. Then he previews the imminent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) case against Amazon. Followed by his criticism of Lina Khan's decision to name three Amazon execs as targets in the FTC's other big Amazon case – over Prime membership. Amazon is clearly Lina Khan's White Whale, but that doesn't mean that everyone who works there is sushi. Mark picks up the competition law theme, explaining the U.K. competition watchdog's principles for AI regulation. Along the way, he shows that whether AI is regulated by one entity or several could have a profound impact on what kind of regulation AI gets. I update listeners on the litigation over the Biden administration's pressure on social media companies to ban misinformation and use it to plug the latest Cybertoonz commentary on the case. I also note the Commerce Department claim that its controls on chip technology have not failed, arguing that there's no evidence that China can make advanced chips “at scale.”  But the Commerce Department would say that, wouldn't they? Finally, for This Week in Anticlimactic Privacy News, I note that the U.K. has decided, following the EU ruling, that U.S. law is “adequate” for transatlantic data transfers. Download 473rd Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

The National Intelligence Strategy is out, and David Kris, a founder of Culper Partners, sat down to talk about it with Michael Collins, the acting head of the National Intelligence Council. They discussed many aspects of U.S. national security, defense, cyber, and intelligence strategy, including the increasing geopolitical significance of non-state entities, and even the meaning of the word intelligence itself. They also cover Mike's long and illustrious career inside the U.S. intelligence community and his thoughts about the future of U.S. intelligence.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eric Goldstein is the Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, having served previously as Global Head of Cybersecurity Policy Strategy and Regulation at Goldman Sachs, where he led development of the firm's cybersecurity risk management program, and in cybersecurity positions in DHS, as well as practicing cybersecurity law in the private sector. David Kris, Lawfare Contributor and former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, and Bryan Cunningham, Lawfare Contributor and Executive Director of the University of California, Irvine's Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute, sat down with Eric to talk about all things cybersecurity, including the U.S. National Cybersecurity Strategy and U.S. government cyber lanes in the road. Eric also discusses ransomware and what it's like for a lawyer to serve in an operational position. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was a disastrous week for cryptocurrency in the United States, as the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) filed suit against the two biggest exchanges, Binance and Coinbase, on a theory that makes it nearly impossible to run a cryptocurrency exchange that is competitive with overseas exchanges. Nick Weaver lays out the differences between “process crimes” and “crime crimes,” and how they help distinguish the two lawsuits. The SEC action marks the end of an uneasy truce, but not the end of the debate. Both exchanges have the funds for a hundred-million-dollar defense and lobbying campaign. So you can expect to hear more about this issue for years (and years) to come. I touch on two AI regulation stories. First, I found Mark Andreessen's post trying to head off AI regulation pretty persuasive until the end, where he said that the risk of bad people using AI for bad things can be addressed by using AI to stop them. Sorry, Mark, it doesn't work that way. We aren't stopping the crimes that modern encryption makes possible by throwing more crypto at the culprits.  My nominee for the AI Regulation Hall of Fame, though, goes to Japan, which has decided to address the phony issue of AI copyright infringement by declaring that it's a phony issue and there'll be no copyright liability for their AI industry when they train models on copyrighted content. This is the right answer, but it's also a brilliant way of borrowing and subverting the EU's GDPR model (“We regulate the world, and help EU industry too”). If Japan applies this policy to models built and trained in Japan, it will give Japanese AI companies at least an arguable immunity from copyright claims  around the world. Companies will flock to Japan to train their models and build their datasets in relative regulatory certainty. The rest of the world can follow suit or watch their industries set up shop in Japan. It helps, of course, that copyright claims against AI are mostly rent-seeking by Big Content, but this has to be the smartest piece of international AI regulation any jurisdiction has come up with so far. Kurt Sanger, just back from a NATO cyber conference in Estonia, explains why military cyber defenders are stressing their need for access to the private networks they'll be defending. Whether they'll get it, we agree, is another kettle of fish entirely. David Kris turns to public-private cooperation issues in another context. The Cyberspace Solarium Commission has another report out. It calls on the government to refresh and rethink the aging orders that regulate how the government deals with the private sector on cyber matters. Kurt and I consider whether Russia is committing war crimes by DDOSing emergency services in Ukraine at the same time as its bombing of Ukrainian cities. We agree that the evidence isn't there yet.  Nick and I dig into two recent exploits that stand out from the crowd. It turns out that Barracuda's security appliance has been so badly compromised that the only remedial measure involve a woodchipper. Nick is confident that the tradecraft here suggests a nation-state attacker. I wonder if it's also a way to move Barracuda's customers to the cloud.  The other compromise is an attack on MOVEit Transfer. The attack on the secure file transfer system has allowed ransomware gang Clop to download so much proprietary data that they have resorted to telling their victims to self-identify and pay the ransom rather than wait for Clop to figure out who they've pawned. Kurt, David, and I talk about the White House effort to sell section 702 of FISA for its cybersecurity value and my effort, with Michael Ellis, to sell 702 (packaged with intelligence reform) to a conservative caucus that is newly skeptical of the intelligence community. David finds himself uncomfortably close to endorsing our efforts. Finally, in quick updates: Nick talks about Tesla's Full Self Driving, and the accidents it has been involved in I warn listeners that Virginia has joined the ranks of states that require an ID proving age to access Pornhub. I predict that twenty states will adopt such a requirement in the next year Download 462nd Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.  

It was a disastrous week for cryptocurrency in the United States, as the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) filed suit against the two biggest exchanges, Binance and Coinbase, on a theory that makes it nearly impossible to run a cryptocurrency exchange that is competitive with overseas exchanges. Nick Weaver lays out the differences between “process crimes” and “crime crimes,” and how they help distinguish the two lawsuits. The SEC action marks the end of an uneasy truce, but not the end of the debate. Both exchanges have the funds for a hundred-million-dollar defense and lobbying campaign. So you can expect to hear more about this issue for years (and years) to come. I touch on two AI regulation stories. First, I found Mark Andreessen's post trying to head off AI regulation pretty persuasive until the end, where he said that the risk of bad people using AI for bad things can be addressed by using AI to stop them. Sorry, Mark, it doesn't work that way. We aren't stopping the crimes that modern encryption makes possible by throwing more crypto at the culprits.  My nominee for the AI Regulation Hall of Fame, though, goes to Japan, which has decided to address the phony issue of AI copyright infringement by declaring that it's a phony issue and there'll be no copyright liability for their AI industry when they train models on copyrighted content. This is the right answer, but it's also a brilliant way of borrowing and subverting the EU's GDPR model (“We regulate the world, and help EU industry too”). If Japan applies this policy to models built and trained in Japan, it will give Japanese AI companies at least an arguable immunity from copyright claims  around the world. Companies will flock to Japan to train their models and build their datasets in relative regulatory certainty. The rest of the world can follow suit or watch their industries set up shop in Japan. It helps, of course, that copyright claims against AI are mostly rent-seeking by Big Content, but this has to be the smartest piece of international AI regulation any jurisdiction has come up with so far. Kurt Sanger, just back from a NATO cyber conference in Estonia, explains why military cyber defenders are stressing their need for access to the private networks they'll be defending. Whether they'll get it, we agree, is another kettle of fish entirely. David Kris turns to public-private cooperation issues in another context. The Cyberspace Solarium Commission has another report out. It calls on the government to refresh and rethink the aging orders that regulate how the government deals with the private sector on cyber matters. Kurt and I consider whether Russia is committing war crimes by DDOSing emergency services in Ukraine at the same time as its bombing of Ukrainian cities. We agree that the evidence isn't there yet.  Nick and I dig into two recent exploits that stand out from the crowd. It turns out that Barracuda's security appliance has been so badly compromised that the only remedial measure involve a woodchipper. Nick is confident that the tradecraft here suggests a nation-state attacker. I wonder if it's also a way to move Barracuda's customers to the cloud.  The other compromise is an attack on MOVEit Transfer. The attack on the secure file transfer system has allowed ransomware gang Clop to download so much proprietary data that they have resorted to telling their victims to self-identify and pay the ransom rather than wait for Clop to figure out who they've pawned. Kurt, David, and I talk about the White House effort to sell section 702 of FISA for its cybersecurity value and my effort, with Michael Ellis, to sell 702 (packaged with intelligence reform) to a conservative caucus that is newly skeptical of the intelligence community. David finds himself uncomfortably close to endorsing our efforts. Finally, in quick updates: Nick talks about Tesla's Full Self Driving, and the accidents it has been involved in I warn listeners that Virginia has joined the ranks of states that require an ID proving age to access Pornhub. I predict that twenty states will adopt such a requirement in the next year Download 462nd Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.  

David Cohen is the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a position he held also during the Obama administration. He's also been Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence in the Department of the Treasury and a partner at the WilmerHale law firm.David Kris, Lawfare contributor and former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, and Bryan Cunningham, Lawfare contributor and Executive Director of the University of California, Irvine's Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute, sat down with David to talk about his career, including taking the same job twice; the coming debate about the FISA Amendments Act reauthorization; relationships between CIA and other U.S. government elements, particularly in cyber; the new CIA Transnational and Technology Mission Center; and the strategic competition between the United States and the People's Republic of China.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris Fonzone is the General Counsel of ODNI and has worked in senior legal roles at the Defense Department, the National Security Council, and the Department of Justice, and in the private sector as a partner at the Sidley Austin law firm. Laura Galante is the Intelligence Community's Cyber Executive and Director of ODNI's Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC). She worked previously in a position that involves supporting Ukrainian government agencies on cyber defense in the Defense Intelligence Agency and in the private sector at Mandiant.David Kris, Lawfare contributor and former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, and Bryan Cunningham, Lawfare contributor and Executive Director of the University of California, Irvine's Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute, sat down with Chris and Laura to talk about their careers, the intra- and interagency issues in cyber policy and operations, the new National Cyber Strategy, and more.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rob Joyce is the Director of the Cybersecurity Directorate at the National Security Agency. He's been NSA's top cryptologic representative in the United Kingdom and has also worked in the U.S. National Security Council. David Kris, Lawfare contributor and former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, and Bryan Cunningham, Lawfare contributor and Executive Director of the University of California, Irvine's Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute, sat down with Rob to talk about his career trajectory, the quantum decryption threat, strategic competition in cyber with the People's Republic of China, and cooperation between the private sector and the government in cyberspace.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As Director of the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly is one of several women at the very top of the cybersecurity pyramid in the United States. A graduate of West Point, decorated U.S. Army officer, and a Rhodes Scholar, Jen has served her country in a plethora of senior cybersecurity and counterterrorism roles, and most recently before her return to government, was the head of Firm Resilience at Morgan Stanley. David Kris, Lawfare contributor and former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, and Bryan Cunningham, Lawfare contributor and Executive Director of the University of California, Irvine's Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute, sat down with Jen to talk about everything cybersecurity, about the need for revolutionary new approaches to emerging threats to our cyber and national security, the recent U.S. National Cyber Strategy, the cyber offense/defense flywheel, and even where her avatar got her cape. Jen also talks about CISA's priorities for the coming years, new cyber incident reporting requirements, and new cybersecurity help coming to a city near you. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kemba Walden recently took over from Chris Inglis as Acting National Cyber Director in the White House. She had been Principal Deputy Assistant National Cyber Director after serving in multiple cybersecurity positions in government and in the private sector.David Kris, Lawfare contributor and former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, and Bryan Cunningham, Lawfare contributor and Executive Director of the University of California, Irvine's Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute, sat down with Kemba to talk about the challenges and opportunities of her new role, the recently released U.S. National Cyber Strategy and the significant policy changes it announces, threats to our national and economic security from China, and a fairly long discussion of music theory.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris Inglis has had an illustrious career in the defense of this country, serving as an Air Force general, deputy director of the National Security Agency, and most recently as the first National Cyber Director in the White House. Chris stepped down from his position last week, and he sat down for his first interview as a private citizen with David Kris, Lawfare contributor and former assistant attorney general for the National Security Division, and Bryan Cunningham, Lawfare contributor and executive director of the University of California, Irvine's Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute. They talked about a wide range of cyber topics, including the newly minted National Cyber Strategy, protection of critical infrastructure, cyber insurance, competition in the international front, and more.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast is dominated by stories about possible cybersecurity regulation. David Kris points us first to an article by the leadership of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration in Foreign Affairs. Jen Easterly and Eric Goldstein seem to take a tough line on “Why Companies Must Build Safety Into Tech Products.“ But for all the tough language, one word, “regulation,” is entirely missing from the piece. Meanwhile, the cybersecurity strategy that the White House has been reportedly drafting for months seems to be hung up over how enthusiastically to demand regulation. All of which seems just a little weird in a world where Republicans hold the House. Regulation is not likely to be high on the GOP to-do list, so calls for tougher regulation are almost certainly more symbolic than real. Still, this is a week for symbolic calls for regulation. David also takes us through an National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) report on the anticompetitive impact of Apple's and Google's control of their mobile app markets. The report points to many problems and opportunities for abuse inherent in their headlock on what apps can be sold to phone users. But, as Google and Apple are quick to point out, they do play a role in regulating app security, so breaking the headlock could be bad for cybersecurity. In any event, practically every recommendation for action in the report is a call for Congress to step in—almost certainly a nonstarter for reasons already given. Not to be outdone on the phony regulation beat, Jordan Schneider and Sultan Meghji explore some of the policy and regulatory proposals for AI that have been inspired by the success of ChatGPT. The EU's AI Act is coming in for lots of attention, mainly from parts of the industry that want to be regulation-free. Sultan and I trade observations about who'll be hollowed out first by ChatGPT, law firms or investment firms. Sultan also tells us why the ION ransomware hack matters. Jordan and Sultan find a cybersecurity angle to The Great Chinese Balloon Scandal of 2023. And I offer an assessment of Matt Taibbi's story about the Hamilton 68 “Russian influence” reports. If you have wondered what the fuss was about, do not expect mainstream media to tell you; the media does not come out looking good in this story. Unfortunately for Matt Taibbi, he does not look much better than the reporters his story criticizes. David thinks it is a balanced and moderate take, for which I offer an apology and a promise to do better next time.

This episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast is dominated by stories about possible cybersecurity regulation. David Kris points us first to an article by the leadership of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration in Foreign Affairs. Jen Easterly and Eric Goldstein seem to take a tough line on “Why Companies Must Build Safety Into Tech Products.“ But for all the tough language, one word, “regulation,” is entirely missing from the piece. Meanwhile, the cybersecurity strategy that the White House has been reportedly drafting for months seems to be hung up over how enthusiastically to demand regulation. All of which seems just a little weird in a world where Republicans hold the House. Regulation is not likely to be high on the GOP to-do list, so calls for tougher regulation are almost certainly more symbolic than real. Still, this is a week for symbolic calls for regulation. David also takes us through an National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) report on the anticompetitive impact of Apple's and Google's control of their mobile app markets. The report points to many problems and opportunities for abuse inherent in their headlock on what apps can be sold to phone users. But, as Google and Apple are quick to point out, they do play a role in regulating app security, so breaking the headlock could be bad for cybersecurity. In any event, practically every recommendation for action in the report is a call for Congress to step in—almost certainly a nonstarter for reasons already given. Not to be outdone on the phony regulation beat, Jordan Schneider and Sultan Meghji explore some of the policy and regulatory proposals for AI that have been inspired by the success of ChatGPT. The EU's AI Act is coming in for lots of attention, mainly from parts of the industry that want to be regulation-free. Sultan and I trade observations about who'll be hollowed out first by ChatGPT, law firms or investment firms. Sultan also tells us why the ION ransomware hack matters. Jordan and Sultan find a cybersecurity angle to The Great Chinese Balloon Scandal of 2023. And I offer an assessment of Matt Taibbi's story about the Hamilton 68 “Russian influence” reports. If you have wondered what the fuss was about, do not expect mainstream media to tell you; the media does not come out looking good in this story. Unfortunately for Matt Taibbi, he does not look much better than the reporters his story criticizes. David thinks it is a balanced and moderate take, for which I offer an apology and a promise to do better next time.

The Cyberlaw Podcast kicks off 2023 by staring directly into the sun(set) of Section 702 authorization. The entire panel, including guest host Brian Fleming and guests Michael Ellis  and David Kris, debates where things could be headed this year as the clock is officially ticking on FISA Section 702 reauthorization. Although there is agreement that a straight reauthorization is unlikely in today's political environment, the ultimate landing spot for Section 702 is very much in doubt and a “game of chicken” will likely precede any potential deal. Everything seems to be in play, as this reauthorization battle could result in meaningful reform or a complete car crash come this time next year. Sticking with Congress, Michael also reacts to President Biden's recent bipartisan call to action regarding “Big Tech” and ponders where Republicans and Democrats could potentially find agreement on an issue everyone seems to agree on (for very different reasons). The panel also discusses the timing of President Biden's OpEd in the Wall Street Journal and debates whether it is intended as a challenge to the Republican-controlled House to act rather than simply increase oversight on the tech industry.  David then introduces a fascinating story about the bold recent action by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) to bring suit against Covington & Burling LLP to enforce an administrative subpoena seeking disclosure of the firm's clients implicated in a 2020 cyberattack by Chinese state-sponsored group, Hafnium. David posits that the SEC knows exactly what it is doing by taking such aggressive action in the face of strong resistance, and the panel discusses whether the SEC may have already won by attempting to protect its burgeoning piece of turf in the U.S. government cybersecurity enforcement landscape. Brian then turns to the crypto regulatory and enforcement space to discuss Coinbase's recent settlement with New York's Department of Financial Services. Rather than signal another crack in the foundation of the once high-flying crypto industry, Brian offers that this may just be routine growing pains for a maturing industry that is more like the traditional banking sector, from a regulatory and compliance standpoint, than it may have wanted to believe. Then, in the China portion of the episode, Michael discusses the latest news on the establishment of reverse Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), and suggests it may still be some time before this tool gets finalized (even as the substantive scope appears to be shrinking). Next, Brian discusses a recent D.C. Circuit decision which upheld the Federal Communication Commission's decision to rescind the license of China Telecom at the recommendation of the executive branch agencies known as Team Telecom (Department of Justice, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security). This important, first-of-its-kind decision reinforces the role of Team Telecom as an important national security gatekeeper for U.S. telecommunications infrastructure. Finally, David highlights an interesting recent story about an FBI search of an apparent Chinese police outpost in New York and ponders what it would mean to negotiate with and be educated by undeclared Chinese law enforcement agents in a foreign country. In a few updates and quick hits: Brian updates listeners on the U.S. government's continuing efforts to win multilateral support from key allies for tough new semiconductor export controls targeting China. Michael picks up the thread on the Twitter Files release and offers his quick take on what it says about ReleaseTheMemo.   And, last but not least, Brian discusses the unsurprising (according the Stewart) decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to allow WhatsApp's spyware suit against NSO Group to continue.  

The Cyberlaw Podcast kicks off 2023 by staring directly into the sun(set) of Section 702 authorization. The entire panel, including guest host Brian Fleming and guests Michael Ellis  and David Kris, debates where things could be headed this year as the clock is officially ticking on FISA Section 702 reauthorization. Although there is agreement that a straight reauthorization is unlikely in today's political environment, the ultimate landing spot for Section 702 is very much in doubt and a “game of chicken” will likely precede any potential deal. Everything seems to be in play, as this reauthorization battle could result in meaningful reform or a complete car crash come this time next year. Sticking with Congress, Michael also reacts to President Biden's recent bipartisan call to action regarding “Big Tech” and ponders where Republicans and Democrats could potentially find agreement on an issue everyone seems to agree on (for very different reasons). The panel also discusses the timing of President Biden's OpEd in the Wall Street Journal and debates whether it is intended as a challenge to the Republican-controlled House to act rather than simply increase oversight on the tech industry.  David then introduces a fascinating story about the bold recent action by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) to bring suit against Covington & Burling LLP to enforce an administrative subpoena seeking disclosure of the firm's clients implicated in a 2020 cyberattack by Chinese state-sponsored group, Hafnium. David posits that the SEC knows exactly what it is doing by taking such aggressive action in the face of strong resistance, and the panel discusses whether the SEC may have already won by attempting to protect its burgeoning piece of turf in the U.S. government cybersecurity enforcement landscape. Brian then turns to the crypto regulatory and enforcement space to discuss Coinbase's recent settlement with New York's Department of Financial Services. Rather than signal another crack in the foundation of the once high-flying crypto industry, Brian offers that this may just be routine growing pains for a maturing industry that is more like the traditional banking sector, from a regulatory and compliance standpoint, than it may have wanted to believe. Then, in the China portion of the episode, Michael discusses the latest news on the establishment of reverse Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), and suggests it may still be some time before this tool gets finalized (even as the substantive scope appears to be shrinking). Next, Brian discusses a recent D.C. Circuit decision which upheld the Federal Communication Commission's decision to rescind the license of China Telecom at the recommendation of the executive branch agencies known as Team Telecom (Department of Justice, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security). This important, first-of-its-kind decision reinforces the role of Team Telecom as an important national security gatekeeper for U.S. telecommunications infrastructure. Finally, David highlights an interesting recent story about an FBI search of an apparent Chinese police outpost in New York and ponders what it would mean to negotiate with and be educated by undeclared Chinese law enforcement agents in a foreign country. In a few updates and quick hits: Brian updates listeners on the U.S. government's continuing efforts to win multilateral support from key allies for tough new semiconductor export controls targeting China. Michael picks up the thread on the Twitter Files release and offers his quick take on what it says about ReleaseTheMemo.   And, last but not least, Brian discusses the unsurprising (according the Stewart) decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to allow WhatsApp's spyware suit against NSO Group to continue.  

We spend much of this episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast talking about toxified technology – new tech that is being demonized for a variety of reasons. Exhibit One, of course, is “spyware,” essentially hacking tools that allow governments to access phones or computers otherwise closed to them, usually by end-to-end encryption. The Washington Post and the New York Times have led a campaign to turn NSO's Pegasus tool for hacking phones into radioactive waste. Jim Dempsey, though, reminds us that not too long ago, in defending end-to-end encryption, tech policy advocates insisted that the government did not need mandated access to encrypted phones because they could engage in self-help in the form of hacking. David Kris points out that, used with a warrant, there's nothing uniquely dangerous about hacking tools of this kind. I offer an explanation for why the public policy community and its Silicon Valley funders have changed their tune on the issue: having won the end-to-end encryption debate, they feel free to move on to the next anti-law-enforcement campaign. That campaign includes private lawsuits against NSO by companies like WhatsApp, whose lawsuit was briefly delayed by NSO's claim of sovereign immunity on behalf of the (unnamed) countries it builds its products for. That claim made it to the Supreme Court, David reports, where the U.S. government recently filed a brief that will almost certainly send NSO back to court without any sovereign immunity protection. Meanwhile, in France, Amesys and its executives are being prosecuted for facilitating the torture of Libyan citizens at the hands of the Muammar Qaddafi regime. Amesys evidently sold an earlier and less completely toxified technology—packet inspection tools—to Libya. The criminal case is pending. And in the U.S., a whole set of tech toxification campaigns are under way, aimed at Chinese products. This week, Jim notes, the Federal Communications Commission came to the end of a long road that began with jawboning in the 2000s and culminated in a flat ban on installing Chinese telecom gear in U.S. networks. On deck for China are DJI's drones, which several Senators see as a comparable national security threat that should be handled with a similar ban. Maury Shenk tells us that the British government is taking the first steps on a similar path, this time with a ban on some government uses of Chinese surveillance camera systems. Those measures do not always work, Maury tells us, pointing to a story that hints at trouble ahead for U.S. efforts to decouple Chinese from American artificial intelligence research and development.  Maury and I take a moment to debunk efforts to persuade readers that artificial intelligence (AI) is toxic because Silicon Valley will use it to take our jobs. AI code writing is not likely to graduate from facilitating coding any time soon, we agree. Whether AI can do more in human resources (HR) may be limited by a different toxification campaign—the largely phony claim that AI is full of bias. Amazon's effort to use AI in HR, I predict, will be sabotaged by this claim. The effort to avoid bias will almost certainly lead Amazon to build race and gender quotas into its engine. And in a few quick hits: I express doubt that Australia's “unleash the hounds” approach to ransomware actually has anything to do with one notorious ransomware actor's extortion site going down  Maury praises an MIT Technology Review piece that argues persuasively that China's social credit system is not quite as dystopian as it's been portrayed. I point out that, with Airbnb practicing guilt by association and PayPal taking your money for saying things PayPal doesn't like, Silicon Valley can brag that it's going to reach Full-Bore Dystopia well before China.  I cover the fourth review in three administrations of the dual-hat leadership of NSA and Cyber Command. No change is likely.  And we close with a downbeat assessment of Elon Musk's chances of withstanding the combined hostility of European and U.S. regulators, the press, and the left-wing tech-toxifiers in civil society. He is a talented guy, I argue, and with a three-year runway, he could succeed, but he does not have three years.

We spend much of this episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast talking about toxified technology – new tech that is being demonized for a variety of reasons. Exhibit One, of course, is “spyware,” essentially hacking tools that allow governments to access phones or computers otherwise closed to them, usually by end-to-end encryption. The Washington Post and the New York Times have led a campaign to turn NSO's Pegasus tool for hacking phones into radioactive waste. Jim Dempsey, though, reminds us that not too long ago, in defending end-to-end encryption, tech policy advocates insisted that the government did not need mandated access to encrypted phones because they could engage in self-help in the form of hacking. David Kris points out that, used with a warrant, there's nothing uniquely dangerous about hacking tools of this kind. I offer an explanation for why the public policy community and its Silicon Valley funders have changed their tune on the issue: having won the end-to-end encryption debate, they feel free to move on to the next anti-law-enforcement campaign. That campaign includes private lawsuits against NSO by companies like WhatsApp, whose lawsuit was briefly delayed by NSO's claim of sovereign immunity on behalf of the (unnamed) countries it builds its products for. That claim made it to the Supreme Court, David reports, where the U.S. government recently filed a brief that will almost certainly send NSO back to court without any sovereign immunity protection. Meanwhile, in France, Amesys and its executives are being prosecuted for facilitating the torture of Libyan citizens at the hands of the Muammar Qaddafi regime. Amesys evidently sold an earlier and less completely toxified technology—packet inspection tools—to Libya. The criminal case is pending. And in the U.S., a whole set of tech toxification campaigns are under way, aimed at Chinese products. This week, Jim notes, the Federal Communications Commission came to the end of a long road that began with jawboning in the 2000s and culminated in a flat ban on installing Chinese telecom gear in U.S. networks. On deck for China are DJI's drones, which several Senators see as a comparable national security threat that should be handled with a similar ban. Maury Shenk tells us that the British government is taking the first steps on a similar path, this time with a ban on some government uses of Chinese surveillance camera systems. Those measures do not always work, Maury tells us, pointing to a story that hints at trouble ahead for U.S. efforts to decouple Chinese from American artificial intelligence research and development.  Maury and I take a moment to debunk efforts to persuade readers that artificial intelligence (AI) is toxic because Silicon Valley will use it to take our jobs. AI code writing is not likely to graduate from facilitating coding any time soon, we agree. Whether AI can do more in human resources (HR) may be limited by a different toxification campaign—the largely phony claim that AI is full of bias. Amazon's effort to use AI in HR, I predict, will be sabotaged by this claim. The effort to avoid bias will almost certainly lead Amazon to build race and gender quotas into its engine. And in a few quick hits: I express doubt that Australia's “unleash the hounds” approach to ransomware actually has anything to do with one notorious ransomware actor's extortion site going down  Maury praises an MIT Technology Review piece that argues persuasively that China's social credit system is not quite as dystopian as it's been portrayed. I point out that, with Airbnb practicing guilt by association and PayPal taking your money for saying things PayPal doesn't like, Silicon Valley can brag that it's going to reach Full-Bore Dystopia well before China.  I cover the fourth review in three administrations of the dual-hat leadership of NSA and Cyber Command. No change is likely.  And we close with a downbeat assessment of Elon Musk's chances of withstanding the combined hostility of European and U.S. regulators, the press, and the left-wing tech-toxifiers in civil society. He is a talented guy, I argue, and with a three-year runway, he could succeed, but he does not have three years.

The war that began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine grinds on. Cybersecurity experts have spent much of 2022 trying to draw lessons about cyberwar strategies from the conflict. Dmitri Alperovitch takes us through the latest lessons, cautioning that all of them could look different in a few months, as both sides adapt to the others' actions.  David Kris joins Dmitri to evaluate a Microsoft report hinting that China may be abusing its recent edict requiring that software vulnerabilities be reported first to the Chinese government. The temptation to turn such reports into zero-day exploits may be irresistible, and Microsoft notes with suspicion a recent rise in Chinese zero-day exploits. Dmitri worried about just such a development while serving on the Cyber Safety Review Board, but he is not yet convinced that we have the evidence to prove the case against the Chinese mandatory disclosure law.  Sultan Meghji keeps us in Redmond, digging through a deep Protocol story on how Microsoft has helped build Artificial Intelligence (AI) in China. The amount of money invested, and the deep bench of AI researchers from China, raises real questions about how the United States can decouple from China—and whether China may eventually decide to do the decoupling.  I express skepticism about the White House's latest initiative on ransomware, a 30-plus nation summit that produced a modest set of concrete agreements. But Sultan and Dmitri have been on the receiving end of deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger's forceful personality, and they think we will see results. We'd better. Baks reported that ransomware payments doubled last year, to $1.2 billion.   David introduces the high-stakes struggle over when cyberattacks can be excluded from insurance coverage as acts of war. A recent settlement between Mondelez and Zurich has left the law in limbo.  Sultan tells me why AI is so bad at explaining the results it reaches. He sees light at the end of the tunnel. I see more stealthy imposition of woke academic values. But we find common ground in trashing the Facial Recognition Act, a lefty Democrat bill that throws together every bad proposal to regulate facial recognition ever put forward and adds a few more. A red wave will be worth it just to make sure this bill stays dead. Finally, Sultan reviews the National Security Agency's report on supply chain security. And I introduce the elephant in the room, or at least the mastodon: Elon Musk's takeover at Twitter and the reaction to it. I downplay the probability of CFIUS reviewing the deal. And I mock the Elon-haters who fear that scrimping on content moderation will turn Twitter into a hellhole that includes *gasp!* Republican speech. Turns out that they are fleeing Twitter for Mastodon, which pretty much invented scrimping on content moderation.

The war that began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine grinds on. Cybersecurity experts have spent much of 2022 trying to draw lessons about cyberwar strategies from the conflict. Dmitri Alperovitch takes us through the latest lessons, cautioning that all of them could look different in a few months, as both sides adapt to the others' actions.  David Kris joins Dmitri to evaluate a Microsoft report hinting that China may be abusing its recent edict requiring that software vulnerabilities be reported first to the Chinese government. The temptation to turn such reports into zero-day exploits may be irresistible, and Microsoft notes with suspicion a recent rise in Chinese zero-day exploits. Dmitri worried about just such a development while serving on the Cyber Safety Review Board, but he is not yet convinced that we have the evidence to prove the case against the Chinese mandatory disclosure law.  Sultan Meghji keeps us in Redmond, digging through a deep Protocol story on how Microsoft has helped build Artificial Intelligence (AI) in China. The amount of money invested, and the deep bench of AI researchers from China, raises real questions about how the United States can decouple from China—and whether China may eventually decide to do the decoupling.  I express skepticism about the White House's latest initiative on ransomware, a 30-plus nation summit that produced a modest set of concrete agreements. But Sultan and Dmitri have been on the receiving end of deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger's forceful personality, and they think we will see results. We'd better. Baks reported that ransomware payments doubled last year, to $1.2 billion.   David introduces the high-stakes struggle over when cyberattacks can be excluded from insurance coverage as acts of war. A recent settlement between Mondelez and Zurich has left the law in limbo.  Sultan tells me why AI is so bad at explaining the results it reaches. He sees light at the end of the tunnel. I see more stealthy imposition of woke academic values. But we find common ground in trashing the Facial Recognition Act, a lefty Democrat bill that throws together every bad proposal to regulate facial recognition ever put forward and adds a few more. A red wave will be worth it just to make sure this bill stays dead. Finally, Sultan reviews the National Security Agency's report on supply chain security. And I introduce the elephant in the room, or at least the mastodon: Elon Musk's takeover at Twitter and the reaction to it. I downplay the probability of CFIUS reviewing the deal. And I mock the Elon-haters who fear that scrimping on content moderation will turn Twitter into a hellhole that includes *gasp!* Republican speech. Turns out that they are fleeing Twitter for Mastodon, which pretty much invented scrimping on content moderation.

David Kris opens this episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast by laying out some of the massive disruption that the Biden Administration has kicked off in China's semiconductor industry—and its Western suppliers. The reverberations of the administration's new measures will be felt for years, and the Chinese government's response, not to mention the ultimate consequences, remains uncertain. Richard Stiennon, our industry analyst, gives us an overview of the cybersecurity market, where tech and cyber companies have taken a beating but cybersecurity startups continue to gain funding.  Mark MacCarthy reviews the industry from the viewpoint of the trustbusters. Google is facing what looks like a serious AdTech platform challenge from several directions—the EU, the Justice Department, and several states. Facebook, meanwhile, is lucky to be a target of the Federal Trade Commission, which rather embarrassingly had to withdraw claims that the acquisition of Within would remove an actual (as opposed to hypothetical) competitor from the market. No one seems to have challenged Google's acquisition of Mandiant, meanwhile. Richard suspects that is because Google is not likely to do anything with the company.  David walks us through the new White House national security strategy—and puts it in historical context.  Mark and I cross swords over PayPal's determination to take my money for saying things Paypal doesn't like. Visa and Mastercard are less upfront about their ability to boycott businesses they consider beyond the pale, but all money transfer companies have rules of this kind, he says. We end up agreeing that transparency, the measure usually recommended for platform speech suppression, makes sense for Paypal and its ilk, especially since they're already subject to extensive government regulation.   Richard and I dive into the market for identity security. It's hot, thanks to zero trust computing. Thoma Bravo is leading a rollup of identity companies. I predict security troubles ahead for the merged portfolio.   In updates and quick hits: The Texas social media law is on hold again, but do not get excited. It is a  voluntary deal designed to speed Supreme Court consideration of a review petition.  Now Ukraine knows how Twitter feels: Elon Musk has changed his mind again. He will not be demanding that Department of Defense pay for the Starlink service Elon rolled out at the start of the war with Russia. After catching Google red-handed in what looks like ideological use of a spam filter, the GOP now appears to be overplaying its hand.  And I predict much more coverage, not to mention prosecutorial attention, will result from accusations that a powerful partner at the establishment law firm, Dechert, engaged in hack-and-dox attacks on adversaries of his clients.

David Kris opens this episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast by laying out some of the massive disruption that the Biden Administration has kicked off in China's semiconductor industry—and its Western suppliers. The reverberations of the administration's new measures will be felt for years, and the Chinese government's response, not to mention the ultimate consequences, remains uncertain. Richard Stiennon, our industry analyst, gives us an overview of the cybersecurity market, where tech and cyber companies have taken a beating but cybersecurity startups continue to gain funding.  Mark MacCarthy reviews the industry from the viewpoint of the trustbusters. Google is facing what looks like a serious AdTech platform challenge from several directions—the EU, the Justice Department, and several states. Facebook, meanwhile, is lucky to be a target of the Federal Trade Commission, which rather embarrassingly had to withdraw claims that the acquisition of Within would remove an actual (as opposed to hypothetical) competitor from the market. No one seems to have challenged Google's acquisition of Mandiant, meanwhile. Richard suspects that is because Google is not likely to do anything with the company.  David walks us through the new White House national security strategy—and puts it in historical context.  Mark and I cross swords over PayPal's determination to take my money for saying things Paypal doesn't like. Visa and Mastercard are less upfront about their ability to boycott businesses they consider beyond the pale, but all money transfer companies have rules of this kind, he says. We end up agreeing that transparency, the measure usually recommended for platform speech suppression, makes sense for Paypal and its ilk, especially since they're already subject to extensive government regulation.   Richard and I dive into the market for identity security. It's hot, thanks to zero trust computing. Thoma Bravo is leading a rollup of identity companies. I predict security troubles ahead for the merged portfolio.   In updates and quick hits: The Texas social media law is on hold again, but do not get excited. It is a  voluntary deal designed to speed Supreme Court consideration of a review petition.  Now Ukraine knows how Twitter feels: Elon Musk has changed his mind again. He will not be demanding that Department of Defense pay for the Starlink service Elon rolled out at the start of the war with Russia. After catching Google red-handed in what looks like ideological use of a spam filter, the GOP now appears to be overplaying its hand.  And I predict much more coverage, not to mention prosecutorial attention, will result from accusations that a powerful partner at the establishment law firm, Dechert, engaged in hack-and-dox attacks on adversaries of his clients.

It's that time again on the Congressional calendar. All the big, bipartisan tech initiatives that looked so good a few months ago are beginning to compete for time on the floor like fat men desperate to get through a small door. And tech lobbyists are doing their best to hinder the bills they hate while advancing those they like. We open the Cyberlaw Podcast by reviewing a few of the top contenders. Justin (Gus) Hurwitz tells us that the big bipartisan compromise on privacy is probably dead for this Congress, killed by Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and the new politics of abortion. The big subsidy for domestic chip fabs is still alive, Jamil Jaffer but beset by House and Senate differences, plus a proposal to regulate outward investment by U.S. firms that would benefit China and Russia. And Senator Amy Klobuchar's (D-MIN) platform anti-self-preferencing bill is being picked to pieces by lobbyists trying to cleave away Republican votes over content moderation and national security.   David Kris unpacks the First Circuit decision on telephone pole cameras and the fourth amendment. Technology and Fourth Amendment law is increasingly agoraphobic, I argue, as aging boomers find themselves on a vast featureless constitutional plain, with no precedents to guide them and forced to fall back on their sense of what was creepy in their day. Speaking of creepy, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has a detailed report on just how creepy content moderation and privacy protections are at TikTok and WeChat. Jamil gives the highlights.    Not that Silicon Valley has anything to brag about. I sum up This Week in Big Tech Censorship with two newly emerging rules for conservatives on line: First, obeying Big Tech's rules is no defense; it just takes a little longer before your business revenue is cut off. Second, having science on your side is no defense. As a Brown University doctor discovered, citing a study that undermines Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) orthodoxy will get you suspended. Who knew we were supposed to follow the science with enough needle and thread to sew its mouth shut? If Sen. Klobuchar fails, all eyes will turn to Lina Khan's Federal Trade Commission, Gus tells us, and its defense of the “right to repair” may give a clue to how it will regulate.  David flags a Google study of zero-days sold to governments in 2021. He finds it a little depressing, but I note that at least some of the zero-days probably require court orders to implement. Jamil also reviews a corporate report on security, Microsoft's analysis of how Microsoft saved the world from Russian cyber espionage—or would have if you ignoramuses would just buy more cloud services. OK, it's not quite that bad, but the marketing motivations behind the report show a little too often in what is otherwise a useful review of Russian tactics.  In quick hits: Gus tells us about a billboard that can pick your pocket: In NYC, naturally.  Jamil thinks we may have finally found Putin's billions, through the magic of shared email addresses.  I offer a preview of the next U.S.-E.U. privacy spat, over sharing biometrics at the border.  And David and I talk marijuana and security clearances. If you listen to the podcast for career advice, it's a long wait, but David delivers Security Agency Counsel after a long series of acting General Counsels.

It's that time again on the Congressional calendar. All the big, bipartisan tech initiatives that looked so good a few months ago are beginning to compete for time on the floor like fat men desperate to get through a small door. And tech lobbyists are doing their best to hinder the bills they hate while advancing those they like. We open the Cyberlaw Podcast by reviewing a few of the top contenders. Justin (Gus) Hurwitz tells us that the big bipartisan compromise on privacy is probably dead for this Congress, killed by Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and the new politics of abortion. The big subsidy for domestic chip fabs is still alive, Jamil Jaffer but beset by House and Senate differences, plus a proposal to regulate outward investment by U.S. firms that would benefit China and Russia. And Senator Amy Klobuchar's (D-MIN) platform anti-self-preferencing bill is being picked to pieces by lobbyists trying to cleave away Republican votes over content moderation and national security.   David Kris unpacks the First Circuit decision on telephone pole cameras and the fourth amendment. Technology and Fourth Amendment law is increasingly agoraphobic, I argue, as aging boomers find themselves on a vast featureless constitutional plain, with no precedents to guide them and forced to fall back on their sense of what was creepy in their day. Speaking of creepy, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has a detailed report on just how creepy content moderation and privacy protections are at TikTok and WeChat. Jamil gives the highlights.    Not that Silicon Valley has anything to brag about. I sum up This Week in Big Tech Censorship with two newly emerging rules for conservatives on line: First, obeying Big Tech's rules is no defense; it just takes a little longer before your business revenue is cut off. Second, having science on your side is no defense. As a Brown University doctor discovered, citing a study that undermines Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) orthodoxy will get you suspended. Who knew we were supposed to follow the science with enough needle and thread to sew its mouth shut? If Sen. Klobuchar fails, all eyes will turn to Lina Khan's Federal Trade Commission, Gus tells us, and its defense of the “right to repair” may give a clue to how it will regulate.  David flags a Google study of zero-days sold to governments in 2021. He finds it a little depressing, but I note that at least some of the zero-days probably require court orders to implement. Jamil also reviews a corporate report on security, Microsoft's analysis of how Microsoft saved the world from Russian cyber espionage—or would have if you ignoramuses would just buy more cloud services. OK, it's not quite that bad, but the marketing motivations behind the report show a little too often in what is otherwise a useful review of Russian tactics.  In quick hits: Gus tells us about a billboard that can pick your pocket: In NYC, naturally.  Jamil thinks we may have finally found Putin's billions, through the magic of shared email addresses.  I offer a preview of the next U.S.-E.U. privacy spat, over sharing biometrics at the border.  And David and I talk marijuana and security clearances. If you listen to the podcast for career advice, it's a long wait, but David delivers Security Agency Counsel after a long series of acting General Counsels.

A special reminder that we will be doing episode 400 live on video and with audience participation on March 28, 2022 at noon Eastern daylight time. So mark your calendar and when the time comes, use this link to join the audience: https://riverside.fm/studio/the-cyberlaw-podcast-400 See you there!  For the third week in a row, we lead with cyber and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Paul Rosenzweig comments on the most surprising thing about social media's decoupling from Russia—how enthusiastically the industry is pursuing the separation. Facebook is allowing Ukrainians to threaten violence against Russian leadership and removing or fact checking Russian government and media posts. Not satisfied with this, the EU wants Google to remove Russia Today and Sputnik from search results. I ask why the U.S. can't take over Facebook and Twitter infrastructure to deliver the Voice of America to Facebook and Twitter users who've been cut off by their departure. Nobody likes that idea but me. Meanwhile, Paul notes that The Great Cyberwar that Wasn't could still make an appearance, citing Ciaran Martin's sober Lawfare piece.   David Kris tells us that Congress has, after a few false starts, finally passed a cyber incident reporting bill, notwithstanding the Justice Department's over-the-top histrionics in opposition. I wonder if the bill, passed in haste due to the Ukraine conflict, should have had another round of edits, since it seems to lock in a leisurely reg-writing process that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) can't cut short.   Jane Bambauer and David unpack the first district court opinion considering the legal status of “geofence” warrants—where Google gradually releases more data about people whose phones were found near a crime scene when the crime was committed. It's a long opinion by Judge M. Hannah Lauck, but none of us finds it satisfying. As is often true, Orin Kerr's take is more persuasive than the court's. Next, Paul Rosenzweig digs into Biden's cryptocurrency executive order. It's not a nothingburger, he opines, but it is a process-burger, meaning that nothing will happen in the field for many months, but the interagency mill will begin to grind, and sooner or later will likely grind exceeding fine.  Jane and I draw lessons from WIRED's “expose” on three wrongful arrests based on face recognition software, but not the “face recognition is Evil” lesson WIRED wanted us to draw. The arrests do reflect less than perfect policing, and are a wrenching view of what it's like for an innocent man to face charges that aren't true. But it's unpersuasive to blame face recognition for mistakes that could have been avoided with a little more care by the cops. David and I highly recommend Brian Krebs's great series on what we can learn from leaked chat logs belonging to the Conti ransomware gang. What we learned from the Conti leaks. My favorite insight was the Conti member who said, when a company resisted paying to keep its files from being published, that “There is a journalist who will help intimidate them for 5 percent of the payout.” I suggest that our listeners crowdsource an effort to find journalists who might fit this description. It might not be hard; after all, how many journalists these days are breaking stories that dive deep into doxxed databases?  Paul and I spend a little more time than it deserves on an ICANN paper about ways to block Russia from the network. But I am inspired to suggest that the country code .su—presumably all that's left of the Soviet Union—be permanently retired. I mean, really, does anyone respectable want it back?  Jane gives a lick and a promise to the Open App Markets bill coming out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I alert the American Civil Liberties Union to a shocking porcine privacy invasion.  I discover that none of the other panelists is surprised that 15 percent of people have already had sex with a robot but all of them find the idea of falling in love with a robot preposterous.      Download the 398th Episode (mp3)   You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families or pets.

A special reminder that we will be doing episode 400 live on video and with audience participation on March 28, 2022 at noon Eastern daylight time. So mark your calendar and when the time comes, use this link to join the audience: https://riverside.fm/studio/the-cyberlaw-podcast-400 See you there!  For the third week in a row, we lead with cyber and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Paul Rosenzweig comments on the most surprising thing about social media's decoupling from Russia—how enthusiastically the industry is pursuing the separation. Facebook is allowing Ukrainians to threaten violence against Russian leadership and removing or fact checking Russian government and media posts. Not satisfied with this, the EU wants Google to remove Russia Today and Sputnik from search results. I ask why the U.S. can't take over Facebook and Twitter infrastructure to deliver the Voice of America to Facebook and Twitter users who've been cut off by their departure. Nobody likes that idea but me. Meanwhile, Paul notes that The Great Cyberwar that Wasn't could still make an appearance, citing Ciaran Martin's sober Lawfare piece.   David Kris tells us that Congress has, after a few false starts, finally passed a cyber incident reporting bill, notwithstanding the Justice Department's over-the-top histrionics in opposition. I wonder if the bill, passed in haste due to the Ukraine conflict, should have had another round of edits, since it seems to lock in a leisurely reg-writing process that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) can't cut short.   Jane Bambauer and David unpack the first district court opinion considering the legal status of “geofence” warrants—where Google gradually releases more data about people whose phones were found near a crime scene when the crime was committed. It's a long opinion by Judge M. Hannah Lauck, but none of us finds it satisfying. As is often true, Orin Kerr's take is more persuasive than the court's. Next, Paul Rosenzweig digs into Biden's cryptocurrency executive order. It's not a nothingburger, he opines, but it is a process-burger, meaning that nothing will happen in the field for many months, but the interagency mill will begin to grind, and sooner or later will likely grind exceeding fine.  Jane and I draw lessons from WIRED's “expose” on three wrongful arrests based on face recognition software, but not the “face recognition is Evil” lesson WIRED wanted us to draw. The arrests do reflect less than perfect policing, and are a wrenching view of what it's like for an innocent man to face charges that aren't true. But it's unpersuasive to blame face recognition for mistakes that could have been avoided with a little more care by the cops. David and I highly recommend Brian Krebs's great series on what we can learn from leaked chat logs belonging to the Conti ransomware gang. What we learned from the Conti leaks. My favorite insight was the Conti member who said, when a company resisted paying to keep its files from being published, that “There is a journalist who will help intimidate them for 5 percent of the payout.” I suggest that our listeners crowdsource an effort to find journalists who might fit this description. It might not be hard; after all, how many journalists these days are breaking stories that dive deep into doxxed databases?  Paul and I spend a little more time than it deserves on an ICANN paper about ways to block Russia from the network. But I am inspired to suggest that the country code .su—presumably all that's left of the Soviet Union—be permanently retired. I mean, really, does anyone respectable want it back?  Jane gives a lick and a promise to the Open App Markets bill coming out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I alert the American Civil Liberties Union to a shocking porcine privacy invasion.  I discover that none of the other panelists is surprised that 15 percent of people have already had sex with a robot but all of them find the idea of falling in love with a robot preposterous.      Download the 398th Episode (mp3)   You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families or pets.

The Cyberlaw Podcast has decided to take a leaf from the (alleged) Bitcoin Bandits' embrace of cringe rap. No more apologies. We're proud to have been cringe-casting for the last six years. Scott Shapiro, however, shows that there's a lot more meat to the bitcoin story than embarrassing social media posts. In fact, the government's filing after the arrest of Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan paints a forbidding picture of how hard it is to actually cash $4.5 billion in bitcoin. That's what the government wants us to think, but it's persuasive nonetheless, and both Scott and David Kris recommend it as a read. Like the Rolling Stones performing their greatest hits from 1965 on tour this year, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon is replaying his favorite schtick from 2013 or so—complaining that the government has an intelligence program that collects some U.S. person data under a legal theory that would surprise most Americans. Based on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board staff recommendations, Dave Aitel and David Kris conclude that this doesn't sound like much of a scandal, but it may lead to new popup boxes on intel analysts' desktops as they search the resulting databases. In an entirely predictable but still discouraging development, Dave Aitel points to persuasive reports from two forensics firms that an Indian government body has compromised the computers of a group of Indian activists and then used its access not just to spy on the activists but to load fake and incriminating documents onto their computers.  In the EU, meanwhile, crisis is drawing nearer over the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the European Court of Justice decision in the Schrems cases. David Kris covers one surprising trend. The court may have been aiming at the United States, but its ruling is starting to hit European companies who are discovering that they may have to choose between Silicon Valley services and serious liability. That's the message in the latest French ruling that websites using Google Analytics are in breach of GDPR. Next to face the choice may be European publishers who depend on data-dependent advertising whose legality the Belgian data protection authority has gravely undercut. Scott and I dig into the IRS's travails in trying to implement facial recognition for taxpayer access to records. I reprise my defense of face recognition in Lawfare. Nobody is going to come out of this looking good, Scott and I agree, but I predict that abandoning facial recognition technology is going to mean more fraud as well as more costly and lousier service for taxpayers. I point to the only place Silicon Valley seems to be innovating—new ways to show conservatives that their views are not welcome. Airbnb has embraced the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), whose business model is labeling mainstream conservative groups as “hate” mongers. It told Michelle Malkin that her speech at a SPLC “hate” conference meant that she was forever barred from using Airbnb—and so was her husband. By my count that's guilt by association three times removed. Equally remarkable, Facebook is now telling Bjorn Lonborg that he cannot repeat true facts if he's using them to support the Wrong Narrative.  We're not in content moderation land any more if truth is not a defense, and tech firms that supply real things for real life can deny them to people whose views they don't like. Scott and I unpack the EARN IT Act  (Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act), again reported out of committee with a chorus of boos from privacy NGOs. We also note that supporters of getting tough on the platforms over child sex abuse material aren't waiting for EARN IT. A sex trafficking lawsuit against Pornhub has survived a Section 230 challenge.  Download the 394th Episode (mp3)  You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!   The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

Just one week of antitrust litigation news shows how much turbulence Facebook and Google are encountering. Michael Weiner gives us a remarkably compact summary of the many issues, from deeply historical (Facebook's purchase of Instagram) to cutting edge tech (complaints about Oculus self-preferencing). In all, he brings us current on two state attorney general cases, two Federal Trade Commission cases and one Department of Justice case against the twin giants of surveillance advertising.  Speaking of litigation, no major new technology has been greeted with more litigation in its infancy than face recognition. So this week we interview Hoan Ton-That, CEO of what must be the most controversial tech startup in decades—Clearview AI. We probe deeply into face recognition's reputation for bias, and what the company is doing about it. Hoan is clearly taking the controversy in stride and confident that the technology will overcome efforts to turn it toxic. Meanwhile, I note, the debate is clearing out what would have been formidable competition from the likes of Microsoft, Amazon and IBM.  If you think face recognition should be banned as racist, sexist and inaccurate, this interview will make you think. Meanwhile, David Kris notes, rumors of war are rampant on the Russian-Ukrainian border—and in cyberspace. So far, it's a bit of a phony cyberwar, featuring web defacing and dormant file wipers. But it could blow up at any time, and we may be surprised how much damage can be done with a keyboard.  Speaking of damage done with a keyboard, open source software is showing how much damage can be done without even trying (although some developers are in fact trying pretty hard). Nick Weaver and I dig into the Log4j and other messes, and the White House effort to head off future open source debacles.  David is in charge of good news this week. It looks as though Russia has arrested a bunch of REvil co-conspirators, including one person that the White House holds responsible for the Colonial Pipeline attack. It's surely not a coincidence that this hint of cooperation from Vladimir Putin comes when he'd very much like to have leverage on the Biden administration over Ukraine. The EU is now firmly committed to cutting off the continent from a host of technologies offered, often free, by Silicon Valley. Google Analytics is out, according to Austrian authorities, even if this means accusing the European Parliament of violating European law. Nick reminds us that this isn't all the services that could be cut off. Google Translate also depends on transatlantic data flows and could become unavailable in Europe. I offer an incendiary solution to that problem.  Secure messaging is still under attack, but this week it's European governments taking the shots. The UK government is planning an ad campaign against end-to-end encryption, and Germany is growling about shutting down Telegram for allowing hate speech. Nick issues a heartfelt complaint about the disingenuity of both sides in the crypto debate. Speaking of Germans who can't live up to their reputation on protecting privacy, Nick notes that German police did exactly what Gapple feared, using a coronavirus contact-tracing app to find potential witnesses. Meanwhile, in good news, let's not forget Twitter, whose woke colonialism led it to suspend Nigeria's president for threatening secessionists with war. Turns out it was easier to go to war with Twitter, which has now unconditionally surrendered to the Nigerian government.  Finally, I claim kinship with Joe Rogan as one of the podcasters that bien pensant NGOs and academics hope to censor. My plan is to create a joint defense fund to which Joe and I will each contribute one percent of our podcasting revenues. Download the 390th Episode (mp3)  You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

The Right Opinion: Dem-ja Vu This Week: Parnas is the new Michael Cohen Parnas Says He Warned Top Ukraine Aide on Potential Cutoff of Fundshttps://www.wsj.com/articles/house-impeachment-panels-release-documents-on-contacts-of-lev-parnas-11579141413 Sidebar on Christiane Amanpour Former Rep. Bob Livingston on OAN: https://t.co/ZKJAbhlXyb?amp=1 Yovanovitch is the new Christine Blasey Ford, Stormy Daniels and Hillary Clinton all rolled into one. David Kris is the new Mueller: Is the FBI Really Addressing the FISA Abuse? Trump Weighs In, People Ask Where Is Joe Pientka?https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/01/12/764485/ Nunes Memo: https://www.vox.com/2018/2/2/16957588/nunes-memo-released-full-text-read-pdf-declassified The Right Opinion Merch Store:https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirts/therightopinion  Subscribe: TheRightOpinion.podbean.comor search “The Right Opinion”On iTunes or Google Play(For your monthly episodes and all exclusive bonus episodes) Twitter and Instagram:@RightOpinionPod Email Harrison:TheRightOpinionPod@gmail.com We will also be available on a 24-48 hour delay on HackerHamin.podbean.comOr search “HackerHamin” on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play and more.And Rat Salad ReviewRatSaladReview.com Available on YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio and Stitcher  This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rightopinionpod.substack.com

In our interview, Elsa Kania and Sam Bendett explain what China and Russia have learned from the American way of warfighting—and from Russia's success in Syria. The short answer: everything. But instead of leaving us smug, I argue it ought to leave us worried about surprise. Elsa and Sam both try to predict where the surprises might come from. Yogi Berra makes an appearance. In the News Roundup, David Kris explains the Fourth Circuit's decision to accept a lib/left invitation to screw up the law of stored electronic communications for a generation. And in other litigation, a Trump-appointed judge dismisses a lawsuit against Silicon Valley's censorship of the right. Nate Jones and I agree that, while the decision is broadly consistent with law, it may spell trouble for Silicon Valley in the long run. That's because it depends on an idiosyncratic U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit interpretation of the District's public accommodation law. I speculate that Alabama or Texas or Mississippi could easily draft a law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of viewpoint in public accommodations like the Internet.  Nick Weaver and I note the UN report that North Korea has stolen $571 million, much of it in cryptocurrency. I ask whether the US Treasury could seize those ill-gotten bits. Maybe, says Nick, but it would really bollix up the world of cryptocurrency (not that he minds). I explain why DHS will be rolling out facial scanning technology to a boatload of US airports—and why there's no hidden privacy scandal in the initiative. It kind of makes you wonder about their banks and their chocolate: Nick gloats as Switzerland's proposed Internet voting system follows his predicted path from questionable to deep, smoking crater. Elsa Kania and I touch on the Navy Secretary's willingness to accept scathing criticism of the Navy's cybersecurity. And Nick and I close with an effort to draw lessons from the disastrous software and human factor interactions at the heart of the Boeing 737 MAX crashes. Download the 255th Episode (mp3). You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed!   As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!   The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.

On Episode 254 of The Cyberlaw Podcast, Stewart spends a few days off the grid, and David Kris, Maury Shenk and Brian Egan extol the virtues of data privacy and the European Union in his absence.   Maury interviews James Griffiths, a journalist based in Hong Kong and the author of the new book, “The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet.”   In the news, David and Brian discuss last week's revelation that the NSA is considering whether it will continue to seek renewal of the of the Section 215 “call detail record” program authority when it expires in December. We plug last week's Lawfare Podcast in which the national security advisor to House Minority Leader McCarthy made news when he reported that the NSA hasn't been using this program for several months. David waxes poetic on the little-known and little-used “lone wolf” authority, which is also up for renewal this year.   We explore the long lineup of politicians and government officials who are lining up with new proposals to “get tough” on large technology companies. Leading the charge is Sen. Warren, who promises to roll out a plan to break up “platform utilities”—basically, large Internet companies that run their own marketplaces—if she is elected president. Not to be outdone, the current chair of the Federal Trade Commission has urged that Congress provide new authorities for the FTC to impose civil enforcement penalties on tech (and presumably other) companies that violate their data privacy commitments. And last—but never least—the French finance minister announced that he will propose a 3 percent tax on the revenue of the 30 largest Internet businesses in France, most of which are U.S. companies.   David discusses how one technology company is using a more familiar tool—litigation—to fight back against Chinese companies for creating and then selling fake Facebook and Instagram accounts.   In the “motherhood and apple pie” category, Maury explains French President Macron's call for the creation of a “European Agency for the Protection of Democracies” to protect elections against cyberattacks. And Brian covers a recently re-introduced bill, the Cyber Deterrence and Response Act, which would impose sanctions on “all entities and persons responsible or complicit in malicious cyber activities aimed against the United States.”     If you are in London this week, you can see James Griffiths during his book tour. On March 13, he will be at the Frontline Club, and on March 14, he will be at Chatham House. You can also see him later this month at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club.     Download the 254th Episode (mp3).   You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed!   As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!   The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.

We interview Dmitri Alperovitch of CrowdStrike on the company's 2019 Global Threat Report, which features a ranking of Western cyber adversaries based on how long it takes each of them to turn a modest foothold into code execution on a compromised network. The Russians put up truly frightening numbers—from foothold to execution in less than twenty minutes—but the real surprise is the North Koreans, who clock in at 2:20. The Chinese take the bronze at just over 4 hours. Dmitri also gives props to a newcomer—South Korea—whose skills are substantial. In the News Roundup, I cheer the police for using “reverse location search warrants” to compel Google to hand over data on anyone near a crime scene. Nick Weaver agrees and puts the blame on Google and others who collect the data rather than the police who use it to solve crimes. A committee of the U.K. House of Commons has issued a blistering final report on disinformation and fake news. I offer this TL;DR: that all right-thinking Brits must condemn Facebook because Leave won, just as all right-thinking Americans must condemn Facebook because Trump won. Maury Shenk takes a more nuanced view. Nick and Dmitri explain just how scary the growth of DNSpionage has become. The only thing as scary seems to be the continuing effort to put voting systems on the Internet. Nick reacts to this in the typical way of his people. The mysterious Facebook Title III case won't be unsealed, so we really don't know what the Justice Department was trying to get from Facebook. The New York Times claims that India is proposing Internet censorship along China's model. I think that's just the New York Times's bias showing and that India is mainly imitating Europe. Maury rides to the New York Times's rescue. In breaking news, The Cyberlaw Podcast has developed AI podcasting so good we don't dare tell you about it. This Week in Chutzpah: Alleged hacker Lauri Love has lost his bid to recover the data he stole. I want to know why we didn't give it back to him with a couple of keyloggers installed. The temptation to decrypt—and give prosecutors new evidence—would be irresistible. In closing, Nick and I dwell on YouTube's pedophile comment problem and whether recommendation engines are more to blame than human nature. Our colleagues Nate Jones and David Kris have launched the Culper Partners Rule of Law Series. Be sure to listen as episodes are released through Lawfare.  Do you have policy ideas for how to improve cybercrime enforcement? Our friends at Third Way and the Journal of National Security Law & Policy are accepting proposals for their upcoming Cyber Enforcement Symposium. You can find the call for papers here.   Download the 252nd Episode (mp3). You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed!  As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!   The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.

The backlash against Big Tech dominates this episode, with new regulatory initiatives in the U.S., EU, Israel, Russia and China. The misbegotten link tax and upload filter provisions of the EU copyright directive have survived the convoluted EU legislative gantlet. My prediction: The link tax will fail because Google wants it to fail, but the upload filter will succeed because Google wants YouTube's competitors to fail. Rumors are flying that the Federal Trade Commission and Facebook will agree on a $1+ billion fine on the company for failure to adhere to its consent decree. My guess? This is not so much about law as it is about the climate of hostility around the company since it took the blame for Trump's election. And, in yet another attack on Big Tech, the EU is targeting Google and Amazon for unfair practices as sales platforms. Artificial intelligence is so overworked a tech theme that it has even attracted the attention of the White House and the Defense Department. We ask a new contributor, Jessica “Zhanna” Malekos Smith, to walk us through the president's executive order on artificial intelligence. I complain that it's a cookie-cutter order that could as easily be applied to alien abductions. The Pentagon's AI strategy, in contrast, is somewhat more substantive. If you can't beat ‘em, ban ‘em. Instead of regulating Big Tech, Russia is looking to take its own internet offline in an emergency. The real question is whether Russia is planning to cause the emergency it's protecting itself against. If so, we are profoundly unready. The CFIUS model is contagious! Brian Egan tells us Israel is considering restrictions on Chinese investment as the world keeps choosing sides in the new cold war. China's Ministry of Public Security is now authorized to conduct no-notice penetration testing of internet businesses operating in China. I must say, it was nice of them to offer the service in beta to the Office of Personnel Management, Anthem and Equifax. Speaking of which, could this spell more trouble for Western firms doing business in China? Brian touches on the Treasury Department's new sanctions against Iranian organizations for supporting intelligence and cyber operations targeting U.S. persons. It turns out that the hackers had help—and that there is no ideology so loathsome it can't win converts among Americans. Nate Jones describes the EU's plan to use “cyber sanctions” to fend off hackers during upcoming elections. This Week in Old Guys You Shouldn't Mess With: Nate reveals how 94-year-old William H. Webster helped take down a Jamaican scam artist. Our colleagues Nate Jones and David Kris have launched the Culper Partners Rule of Law Series. Be sure to listen as episodes are released through Lawfare. Do you have policy ideas for how to improve cybercrime enforcement? Our friends at Third Way and the Journal of National Security Law & Policy are accepting proposals for their upcoming Cyber Enforcement Symposium. You can find the call for papers here. Download the 251st Episode (mp3). You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed! As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.

If you get SMS messages on your phone and think you have two-factor authentication, you're kidding yourself. That's the message Nick Weaver and David Kris extract from two stories we cover in this week's episode of The Cyberlaw Podcast—the Justice Department's indictment of a couple of kids whose hacker chops are modest but whose social engineering skills are remarkable. They used those skills to bribe or bamboozle phone companies into changing the phone numbers of their victims, allowing them to intercept all the two-factor authentication they needed to steal boatloads of cryptocurrency. For those with better hacking chops than social skills, there's always exploitation of SS7 vulnerabilities, which allow interception of text messages without all the muss and fuss of changing SIM cards. Okay, it ain't “When Harry Met Sally,” but for a degraded age, “When Bezos Exposed Pecker” will have to do. David keeps us focused on the legal questions: Was the “Enquirer” letter really extortion? Would publication of the pics be actionable? And is there any way the “Enquirer” could get those text messages without someone committing a crime? And, of course, whether the best way to woo your new girlfriend is to send her brother to jail. Social media—privacy law threat or competition law menace? That's the question European (naturally) regulators are weighing. But Matthew Heiman and I have a pretty good idea what their answer will be: Both! We look at the Twitter-mobbing of Facebook by regulators and ask whether the competition charges make more sense than the privacy claims. Looks like the net effect of the Obama-Xi agreement on not stealing commercial secrets is that a better class of Chinese officials is stealing our commercial secrets. President Xi kicked the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to the curb and brought in the professionals from China's Ministry of State Security (MSS). So now Chinese tradecraft is a little better, and the Justice Department is indicting MSS officials instead of PLA soldiers. David sums up. NERC is proposing a $10 million fine for cybersecurity violations on a utility reported to be Duke Energy. Matthew and I are shocked. Not by the fine, which was negotiated, or by the violations, many of them self-reported, but by the cheese-paring, penny-ante nature of so-called cybersecurity enforcement at NERC and FERC. All this Sturm und Drang to make sure utilities use six-character passwords? When security guys complain about compliance trumping security, these NERC rules will be Exhibit A. Finally, add another chapter to the Annals of Failed Civil Liberties Campaigns, as EFF and likeminded reporters try to get us outraged about the FBI using court orders to identify a North Korean botnet. Nick points out that academics have been conducting research that is more intrusive for years without unduly disturbing university lawyers. Okay, one more: I celebrate HoyaSaxaSD for a podcast review that honors our own inimitable Nick Weaver: “I got a fever, and the only cure is more Weaver. Love the show. I'm a lawyer but not in tech or security law, but it's still fascinating. My teenage sons also like most episodes, especially the Nick Weaver segments. And I concur. There needs to be Weaver in every episode, and more of him. In fact, an hour of Weaver and Baker debating/discussing would be the perfect show.”  I am moved to channel Peggy Lee. And if more good reviews don't pour in, I may make that performance a weekly feature. David Kris, I'm sure, would consider that extortion, on the ground that no one has a right to butcher Peggy Lee's oeuvre like that.   Do you have policy ideas for how to improve cybercrime enforcement? Our friends at Third Way and the Journal of National Security Law & Policy are accepting proposals for their upcoming Cyber Enforcement Symposium. You can find the call for papers here: https://www.thirdway.org/letter/2019-cyber-symposium-call-for-papers   Download the 250th Episode (mp3). You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed!  As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!   The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.

So says the remarkable Jeff Jonas, CEO of Senzing. And he's got a claim to be doing just that. A data scientist before data science was cool, Jeff has used his technical skills and an intuitive grasp of complex data problems to stop card counters in Las Vegas and terrorists targeting the U.S., and then to launch an initiative making voter registration more accurate and widespread. Most recently, in the course of an effort to improve maritime security around Singapore, he also found a key to identifying asteroids due to collide with each other so they can be watched. Because when this happens, who knows where their new course will take them? The media has been hyping a strikingly bad magistrate judge's opinion giving 5th Amendment protection to biometric phone security. This leads Gus Hurwitz and me to question why Congress ever promoted U.S. magistrates to “magistrate judges” in the first place. We suggest striking the word “judge” from the title given to these Article I judicial aides; call it the Truth in Judging Act. Congress and the president can't even agree on a compromise that would end the partial government shutdown. So what genius decided that our security from terrorist attacks should depend on Congress and the president agreeing every couple of years on yet another part of our counterterrorism legislation? Like it or not, though, 2019 will feature another cliffhanger, as several national security provisions of FISA come to an end unless renewed. Jamil Jaffer and David Kris talk about the provisions and possible outcomes. I plead for a compromise that takes seriously the Trumpist concern about partisan abuse of the law. If the SEC didn't own EDGAR, I suspect the government would have imposed serious fines on the owner of EDGAR for enabling a new form of insider trading. Jamil and Gus debate the real question: How can hackers with access to guaranteed market moving info manage to make only $4 million in six months of trading? The Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel has reversed an Obama-era interpretation limiting the scope of federal criminal laws governing online gambling. David provides the background; I introduce our listeners to the Baptist-bootlegger coalition.  If you would like to hear more from Jeff Jonas and you'll be in London on January 29, be sure to attend his talk, “AI for Entity Resolution,” at the SAGE Ocean speaker series. Event details can be found here.   Download the 247th Episode (mp3). You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed! As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.

Nate Jones, David Kris and I kick off 2019 with a roundup of the month of news since we took our Christmas break. First, we break down the utterly predictable but undismissable Silicon Valley claim that the administration's new export control strategy will hurt the emerging AI industry. Then we draw on our guests' expertise in counterintelligence prosecutions to review the APT10 indictment – and the claim by Jack Goldsmith and Robert Williams that the strategy is a failure. We conclude that it isn't a magic bullet, but that's not quite the same as a failure. I tease my plan to introduce two dozen more or less unthinkable retaliatory responses the U.S. could deploy if and when it decides to get more serious about deterring adversarial cyber operations. We quickly cover three new hacks that once looked as though they might be government sponsored. Now it looks as though two were less strategic than that. The denial of service attack on newspaper printing may have been a profit-motivated ransomware attack, and the guy who doxxed the German political establishment may have been a lone hacker (hopefully not one weighing 400 pounds or we'll never hear the end of it). We quickly review the bidding on the U.S.-China “quantum arms race,” which may be a bit less critical than the press suggests. David and Nate also review the mixed bag of rulings on three motions to suppress in Hal Martin's NSA theft case, which just gets weirder and weirder. David and I are in surprising agreement (along with the judge) that the FBI overreached in using handcuffs, a flashbang and a SWAT team to conduct “noncustodial” questioning of Martin. Today's forecast: Windy with a high probability of litigation as Los Angeles sues The Weather Company for collecting and sharing location information in its apps. We suspect that, in claiming a lack of adequate disclosure about location collection, Los Angeles is relying on the ancient legal maxim, “Damned if you do and damned if you don't.” In other litigation news, Illinois's biometric privacy law continues to encounter judicial skepticism. But the Illinois state courts, unburdened by federal standing law, may yet give teeth to this seriously dumb law as Rosenbach v. Six Flags lives on in the Illinois Supreme Court. In Quick Hits, I am intrigued by the idea that a clever generative adversarial AI “cheated” at a mapping task. In fact, the lesson is both less exciting and more troubling: If you don't understand how your AI is accomplishing the task you've set for it, you need to expect some rude surprises. Despite all the talk of stasis and crisis in Washington, Congress is still passing modestly useful legislation on cyber issues. Nate describes the SECURE Technology Act, which sets vulnerability disclosure policy and calls for bug bounties at DHS. And, finally, I recommend a fascinating and deeply ambivalating report on the many ways third-party sellers game Amazon's Marketplace rules.   Download the 245th Episode (mp3).   You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed!   As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!   The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.

This episode features an interview with Michael Tiffany, the co-founder and president of White Ops and a deep student of how to curtail adtech fraud. Michael explains the adtech business, how fraudsters take advantage of its structure, and what a coalition of law enforcement and tech companies did to wreck one of the most successful fraud networks, known as 3ve. You can read more about the take down in the joint White Ops and Google report, “The Hunt for 3ve.” In the news, David Kris covers the Supreme Court argument in the Apple antitrust standing case. At stake: whether Illinois Brick should apply outside a brick-and-mortar context. Our panel guesses that it won't. You knew this was coming: Megan Reiss covers U.S. proposals to screen Chinese students for espionage risk before giving them visas. We think it's a good idea, but really wish there were a way to score every student in China for how compliant they are with government wishes…oh, wait… Nobody trolls like the Russians troll. David Kris covers a Russian trollsuit claiming that Facebook has unfairly censored Russian speech. Showing that they know their opponents' weakness, the suit includes broad hints that censoring Russians is … racist. Maury Shenk covers the bookend—Russian government threats to sue Google for not complying with Russian censorship demands. And I suggest that Putin's Data Protection law will be just that—a law to protect Putin's data. Speaking of privacy law always protecting the powerful, Michael Tiffany offers several reasons why GDPR has been good for Google and Facebook ad market share and bad for European competitors. It's the tragedy of EU mercantilism: always aiming at the United States and usually hitting itself in the foot. Another day, another Iranian hacking/ransomware indictment. What's different about this one, Megan tells us, is that it includes a Treasury order freezing the bitcoin the Iranians collected. That's a potentially new and powerful law enforcement tool. With only a little cajoling, David Kris acknowledges that this is one Trump administration initiative that is both novel and a good idea. Wrapping up, David Kris ponders the surprisingly straightforward Fourth Amendment issues raised when the police have to stop an autonomous-mode Tesla going 70 on the 101 with a passed out “driver.” And Megan and I ponder the difficulty posed for social media by the “yellow-vest” riots in Paris. Which model applies: Arab Spring or Russian interference? You know what the Macron administration will say. Buckle up, Big Tech. To paraphrase Peter Parker's Uncle Ben, with great power comes utter confusion.   Download the 242nd Episode (mp3). You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or our RSS feed!   As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with Stewart on social media: @stewartbaker on Twitter and on LinkedIn. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested interviewee appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!   The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.

This week's interview is a deep (and long—over an hour) dive into new investment review regulations for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). It's excerpted from an ABA panel discussion on the topic, featuring: Tom Feddo, who currently oversees CFIUS; Aimen Mir, who used to oversee CFIUS; Sanchi Jayaram, who is in charge of the Justice Department's CFIUS and Team Telecom work; David Fagan, a noted CFIUS practitioner; and me as moderator. It turns out the new CFIUS law may be the most innovative—and sweeping—piece of legislation on national security in years.   In the news, it's time for a Cyberlaw Podcast victory lap, as our bold election-eve prediction that foreign governments would not successfully hack the election seems to hold up well, despite laughable Internet Research Agency claims in a new meta-trolling propaganda campaign. I note that challenges to FISA are increasing as it starts to play a role in more criminal cases. I ask David Kris whether Bob Mueller took unwise risks with intelligence equities when he charged a Russian company with criminal election trolling, since that company is now seeking discovery of intelligence intercepts. Dr. Megan Reiss notes that China is making what might be called great strides in “gait recognition” software to supplement face recognition, taking what looks like a global lead in the technology. This reminds me that fifteen years ago, when DARPA was researching gait recognition for terrorist identification, the left/lib NGOs got Congress to kill funding by lampooning what they called “a Monty Python-esque ‘Ministry of Silly Walks.'” Not so funny now, is it guys? Especially in light of evidence that China is exporting its cyber surveillance tech to Africa. How does China do it? According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, with plenty of help from the universities of the English-speaking world. Apparently the People's Liberation Army has been sending its scientists to the West under light cover to study cutting edge defense tech. Nate Jones and I examine the latest chapters in the now-encyclopedic tale of Silicon Valley v. Conservatives. We take a look at a Trump immigration campaign ad that Facebook and broadcast media (Fox included) refused to run. Gab is back, but just by the skin of its teeth. Meanwhile, the pitchforks and torches are being mustered for LinkedIn, which apparently hasn't been sufficiently cowed by lefty censors. And Facebook's effort to suppress Alex Jones's InfoWars site is running into trouble. Megan and I talk about the prospect that Iran is getting ready to launch cyberattacks on the US and Israel. Nate covers the collapse of IronChat security as Dutch police managed to decrypt 258,000 messages in the app. Maybe spurred by my taunting, Edward Snowden denies that he ever endorsed the product, notwithstanding the claim on IronChat's website. My tweet on same: “Hey, @Snowden, IronChat sold secure phones at exorbitant prices because of your endorsement.” Pakistan says “almost all” its banks have been hacked.  Wouldn't it be ironic if North Korea was buying nuclear and missile technology from Pakistan with money stolen from Pakistani banks?  Download the 239th Episode (mp3).  You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or our RSS feed! As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with Stewart on social media: @stewartbaker on Twitter and on LinkedIn. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested interviewee appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!   The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.

This episode puts our experts on the spot with an election-eve question: Will foreign governments attack US electoral rolls or vote-counting machinery in 2018? Remarkably, no one on our panel (Matthew Heiman, Nick Weaver, David Kris, and I) thinks they will. So if you want cybersecurity news, you can stop listening to election coverage and tune in to Episode 238 of The Cyberlaw Podcast. Our interview features Steve Rice (Deputy CIO for DHS) and Max Everett (CIO for the Department of Energy) and was originally taped at a session of the Homeland Security Week conference. In the news, Nick evaluates the report that China hijacked the Border Gateway Protocol; he thinks we need more data. David agrees with me that one way to get the data would be a Justice Department subpoena. Matthew Heiman explains why SCOTUS is skeptical of Google's cy pres settlement that treated 129 million class members like bystanders at someone else's party – and why that skepticism may not appear in US Reports any time soon. Nick and David lay out the painful story of how failures in CIA communications with their assets may have severely compromised HUMINT operations in Iran and China. Matthew and I talk about the string of right-wing killers in the past few weeks and the tech implications, including the defenestration of Gab and a lot of throat-clearing about amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Matthew also explains, then casts doubt on, a Florida Appeals Court decision that rejects the “foregone conclusion” doctrine for compelled passcode disclosure. After all the Internet-enabled vibrator stories we've covered on the podcast, I think we're obliged by gender equity to cover this effort to use artificial intelligence to improve male sex toys. For those who may face confirmation before the Senate Judiciary Committee any time in the next decade, Nick explains that Markov chain techniques have nothing to do with the Devil's Triangle. More hostilities in the US-China Cool War: DOJ has indicted a Chinese-state owned company as well as UMC and three individuals for stealing trade secrets from US companies; and in a coordinated move, the Department of Commerce has placed limits on US businesses interacting with the Chinese company. I wonder whether the Cool War between China and the US is increasingly forcing big foreign tech companies to choose between the two as they develop new technology.     Download the 238th Episode (mp3). You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or our RSS feed! As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with Stewart on social media: @stewartbaker on Twitter and on LinkedIn. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested interviewee appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.

The theme of this week's podcast seems to be the remarkable reach of American soft power: Really, we elect Donald Trump, and suddenly everybody's trolling. The Justice Department criminally charges a Russian troll factory's accountant, and before David Kris can finish explaining it, she's on YouTube, trolling the prosecutors with a housewife schtick. She's not alone. Faced with the news that President Trump is using a commercial iPhone for many of his calls—and, Nate Jones points out, getting tapped by China, Russia, and others as a result—China has a suggestion that scores at the top of the POTUS Troll Scale. Tim Cook goes to Europe to troll Android—and me—with a speech that touches all my buttons: Europhilia, Apple sanctimony in pursuit of profit and blind enthusiasm for privacy regulation. And when the Belgians ask for British help investigating a suspected GCHQ hack of a Belgian ISP, as David and I discuss, the British respond with what can only be described as understated trolling. This week's interview is with Dr. Dipayan Ghosh, Pozen Fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center and co-author of a new report, “Digital Deceit II: A Policy Agenda to Fight Disinformation on the Internet.” I find it an interesting mix of good insights and warmed-over Obama-era nostrums (Carly Rae Jepsen makes a brief appearance). Dipayan and I tangle on privacy but struggle toward common ground on the question of limiting the power of the Big Platforms. He's open-minded and flexible about the details of the proposal, so for fans of civil policy debate (especially those worried about where the platforms' dominance and ad revenue are taking us), this episode is a keeper. Why would a Russian technical institute design malware used in an effort to sabotage a major petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia? Nate Jones lays out the story. Originally suspected of being an Iranian operation, the attack may have originated in Iran, but FireEye persuasively links the underlying (and flawed) malware to Moscow. One possibility is that it's a Russian false flag job, minus the embarrassing GRU operatives' Uber receipts. My guess, though, is that the Russian institute is just amortizing malware development costs by selling off exploits developed for the GRU. If so, this may turn out to be another slow motion disaster for the thugs in the Aquarium. In other news, Yahoo settled a class action over the enormous breach affecting 200 million people and three billion accounts. The price of that settlement? After the lawyers have been paid, the $50 million settlement will work out to about 25 cents per victim. Seems pretty cheap to me. For a brief moment, reality has descended on the left coast. It looks like California isn't eager for a judicial ruling on its campaign to nullify federal net neutrality law. In the UK, Facebook is fined the maximum under pre-GDPR law, for what the privacy agency calls a failure to protect personal data from Cambridge Analytica—but what I suspect is the unspeakable crime of not having prevented the election of Donald Trump. And now that GDPR is in effect, the bien pensants of Europe have served notice; failure to prevent the president's re-election will cost Silicon Valley billions. Finally, what goes around comes around for the Uber “bounty” hackers. David and I think that pretty much answers the question whether they were just confused bounty hunters or extortionists with a clever line of patter.   Download the 237th Episode (mp3).   You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or our RSS feed!   As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with Stewart on social media: @stewartbaker on Twitter and on LinkedIn. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested interviewee appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!   The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.

We are fully back from our August hiatus, and leading off a series of great interviews, I talk with Bruce Schneier about his new book, Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-Connected World. Bruce is an internationally renowned technologist, privacy and security commentator, and someone I respect a lot more than I agree with. But his latest book opens new common ground between us, and we both foresee a darker future for a world that has digitally connected things that can kill people without figuring out a way to secure them. Breaking with Silicon Valley consensus, we see security regulation in the Valley's future, despite all the well-known downsides that regulation will bring. We also find plenty of room for disagreement on topics like encryption policy and attribution. In the News Roundup, I ask Jamil Jaffer, Nate Jones, and David Kris for the stories that people who took August off should go back and read. Jamil nominates the fascinating-as-a-slow-motion-car-wreck story of Maersk's losing battle with NotPetya. We speculate on whether the Russians caused $10 billion in worldwide damage by mistake or on purpose, and whether anyone other than a US government lawyer would call that indiscriminate attack a war crime. David nominates the 179-page complaint against a North Korean hacker behind most of that country's famous hacks. And, as a palate cleanser, the remarkable, score-settling, where-are-they-now story of the companies that challenged the FBI's attribution of the Sony hack to North Korea. Finally, I suggest spending some time with what might be called DCLeaks for good guys: Intrusion Truth, a website devoted to outing personal details about the government hackers who have been attacking Western companies. It (and Crowdstrike) provides an old-fashioned pantsing of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) – the sort of embarrassing doxing that allowed the MSS to take over much of China's cyberespionage portfolio from the hapless People's Liberation Army after it was outed several years ago. In other news, a Five Country Ministerial (homeland security and immigration ministers from the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) issued a statement on encryption that seemed to threaten action, saying that if tech companies don't address the ministers' concerns, “we may pursue technological, enforcement, legislative or other measures to achieve lawful access solutions.” While this group isn't really the “Five Eyes” of SIGINT fame, that's not very comforting for Big Tech, since the statement suggests a wider coalition and another step forward in the effort to bring Big Tech to heel on the issue. Download the 230th Episode (mp3). You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or our RSS feed! As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with Stewart on social media: @stewartbaker on Twitter and on LinkedIn. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested interviewee appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.

Our interview is with Gen. Michael Hayden, author of "The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies." Gen. Hayden is a former head of the CIA and NSA, and a harsh critic of the Trump Administration. We don't agree on some of his criticisms, but we have a productive talk about how intelligence should function in a time of polarization and foreign intervention in our national debates. In the news, David Kris reports that ZTE has gotten a limited life-support order from the Commerce Department. Meanwhile, Nate Jones tells us that China Mobile's application to provide telecom service to Americans is also likely to bite the dust – after nearly seven years of dithering. On Facebook, Tony Rutkowski suggests we call this the revenge of the “neocoms.” So we do. Remarkably, the European Parliament fails to live down to my expectations, showing second thoughts about self-destructive copyright maximalism. Nick Weaver thinks this outbreak of common sense may only be a temporary respite. Paul Rosenzweig confesses to unaccustomed envy of EU security hardheadedness. Turns out that Europe has been rifling through immigrants' digital data in a fashion the Trump Administration probably wouldn't dare to try. More predictably, the Israelis are digging deep into social media to combat the stabbing attacks that afflicted the country until recently. The DNC is trying to improve security, and it has trained 80% of its staff not to click on bad links. But as Nick Weaver and Paul Rosenzweig point out, that's not good enough – even though there are few institutions that can get much above the DNC's 80%. The answer? Nick says it's two-factor authentication. We join forces to nudge Firefox toward offering the same level of support for 2FA as Google Chrome. The feds are getting wise to the Dark Web, Nick tells us. They're focusing on compromising the money launderers – and then their customers. This looks like a strategy that could work for the long haul. Finally, David Kris revisits NSA's still-troubled metadata program, asking whether “the juice is worth the squeeze.” We're going to keep tweeting and posting some of the week's stories that look like candidates for the News Roundup. Please reply to or retweet those you think we should cover. Relevant feeds: @stewartbaker on Twitter, Stewart Baker on LinkedIn, and stewart.a.baker on Facebook.  Download the 225th Episode (mp3). You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or our RSS feed! As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com or leave a message at +1 202 862 5785. Remember: If your suggested interviewee appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.