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
cyberattack
Episode 431: The Empire Strikes Back, at Twitter
The Cyberlaw Podcast leads with the legal cost of Elon Musk’s anti-authoritarian takeover of Twitter. Turns out that authority figures have a lot of weapons, many grounded in law, and Twitter is at risk of being on the receiving end of those weapons. Brian Fleming explores the apparently unkillable notion that the Committee on…
Episode 430: Election Aftershocks for Cyberlaw
We open this episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast by considering the (still evolving) results of the 2022 midterm election. Adam Klein and I trade thoughts on what Congress will do. Adam sees two years in which the Senate does nominations, the House does investigations, and neither does much legislation. Which could leave renewal of the critically…
Episode 429: AI-splaining
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…
Episode 416: “The First Thing We Do, Let’s Hack All the Lawyers”
Dave Aitel introduces a deliciously shocking story about lawyers as victims and – maybe – co-conspirators in the hacking of adversaries’ counsel to win legal disputes. The trick, it turns out, is figuring out how to benefit from hacked documents without actually dirtying one’s hands with the hacking. And here too, a Shakespearean Henry…
Episode 403: Confirmation Bias Meets Ukraine War and Elon Musk
Whatever else the pundits are saying about the use of cyberattacks in the Ukraine war, Dave Aitel notes, they all believe it confirms their past predictions about cyberwar. Not much has been surprising about the cyber weapons the parties have deployed, Scott Shapiro agrees. The Ukrainians have been doxxing Russia’s soldiers in Bucha and…
Episode 401: All at Sea: Maritime Cybersecurity
Spurred by a Cyberspace Solarium op-ed, Nate Jones gives an overview of cybersecurity worries in the maritime sector, where there is plenty to worry about. I critique the U.S. government’s December 2020 National Maritime Cybersecurity Strategy, a 36-page tome that, when the intro and summary and appendices and blank pages are subtracted,…
Episode 399: A Cavalcade of Paranoia
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!
*Please note that using this link on a …
Episode 396: Waging War in a Networked Age
Much of this episode is devoted to how modern networks and media are influencing what has become a major shooting war between Russia and Ukraine. Dmitri Alperovitch gives a sweeping overview. Ukraine and its President, Volodymyr Zelensky, clearly won the initial stages of the war in cyberspace, turning broad Western sympathy into a deeper…
Episode 385: International Tech Policy Week
This week we celebrated International Tech Policy Week, which happens every year around this time, when the American policymakers, the American execs who follow them, and the U.S. journalists who report on them all go home to eat turkey with their families and leave tech policy to the rest of the world.
Leading off…