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
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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 422: Judge Oldham Bails Out Texas
The big news of the week was a Fifth Circuit decision upholding Texas social media regulation law. It was poorly received by the usual supporters of social media censorship but I found it both remarkably well written and surprisingly persuasive. That does not mean it will survive the almost inevitable Supreme Court review but…
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 411: We Go To RSA So You Don’t Have To
- This episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast is dominated by things that U.S. officials said in San Francisco last week at the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) conference. We summarize what they said and offer our views of why they said it.
- Bobby Chesney, returning to the podcast after a long absence, helps us assess Russian warnings that
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Episode 410: Game Play Trumps Chinese National Security
- If you’ve been worrying about how a leaky U.S. government can possibly compete with China’s combination of economic might and autocratic government, this episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast has a few scraps of good news. The funniest, supplied by Dave Aitel, is the tale of the Chinese gamer who was so upset at the
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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…