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Our interview in this episode is with Glenn Gerstell, freed at last from some of the constraints that come with government service. We cover the Snowden leaks, how private and public legal work differs (hint: it’s the turf battles), Cyber Command, Russian election interference, reauthorization of FISA, and the daunting challenges the US (and its Intelligence Community) will face as China’s economy begins to reinforce its global security ambitions.…

Continue Reading Episode 304: Unfiltered: An interview with NSA’s former general counsel

There’s a fine line between legislation addressing deepfakes and legislation that is itself a deep fake. Nate Jones reports on the only federal legislation addressing the problem so far. I claim that it is well short of a serious regulatory effort – and pretty close to a fake law.

In contrast, India seems serious about imposing liability on companies whose unbreakable end-to-end crypto causes harm, at least to judge from the howls of the usual defenders of such crypto. David Kris explains how the law will work. I ask why Silicon Valley gets to impose the externalities of encryption-facilitated crime on society without consequence when we’d never allow tech companies to say that society should pick up the tab for their pollution because their products are so cool. In related news, the FBI may be turning the Pensacola military terrorism attack into a slow-motion replay of the San Bernardino fight with Apple, this time with more top cover.…

Continue Reading Episode 295: The line between deepfake legislation and deeply fake legislation

We open the episode with David Kris’s thoughts on the two-years-late CFIUS investigation of TikTok, its Chinese owner, ByteDance, and ByteDance’s US acquisition of the lip-syncing company Musical.ly. Our best guess is that this unprecedented reach-back investigation will end in a more or less precedented mitigation agreement.…

Continue Reading Episode 285: ByteDance bitten by CFIUS

Paul Rosenzweig leads off with This Week in China Tech Fear – an enduring and fecund feature in Washington these days. We cover the Trump Administration’s plan to blacklist up to five Chinese surveillance companies, including Hikvision, for contributing to Uighur human rights violations in the West of China, DHS’s rather…

Brazen Russian intrusions into the US electricity grid lead our episode. I ask Matthew Heiman and Nick Weaver whether Russia intended for us to know about their intrusions (duh, yes!) and how we should respond to the implicit threat to leave Americans freezing in the dark. Their answers and mine show creativity if not exactly sobriety.…

Continue Reading Episode 246: Russia’s Successful Search for Deterrence on the Cheap

Episode 221: Daugherty’s Revenge

The 11th Circuit’s LabMD decision is a dish served cold for Michael Daugherty, the CEO of the defunct company. The decision overturns decades of FTC jurisdiction, acquired over the years by a kind of bureaucratic adverse possession. Thanks to the LabMD opinion, practically all the FTC’s privacy and security consent decrees are at risk of being at least partly unenforceable — and if the dictum holds, the FTC may have to show that everything it views as an “unfair” lack of security is actually a negligent security practice.…

Continue Reading The Cyberlaw Podcast – News Roundup

No holds are barred as a freewheeling panel of cryptographers and security pros duke it out with me and the Justice Department over going dark, exceptional access, and the Apple-FBI conflict.  Among the combatants:  Patrick Henry, a notable cryptographer with experience at GCHQ, NSA, and the private sector; Dan Kaminsky, the Chief Scientist at White Ops; Kiran Raj, who is Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General; and Dr. Zulfikar Ramzan the CTO of RSA Security.  Our thanks to Catherine Lotrionte who generously agreed to let me record this one-hour panel at her remarkable Annual International Conference on Cyber Engagement.
Continue Reading Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast – Interview with Patrick Henry, Dan Kaminsky, Kiran Raj, and Dr. Zulfikar Ramzan