That’s the question I had after reading Law and Policy for the Quantum Age, by Chris Hoofnagle and Simson Garfinkel. It’s a gracefully written and deeply informative look at the commercial and policy prospects of quantum computing and several other (often more promising) quantum technologies, including sensing, communications, and networking. And it left me
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Episode 292: Debating FISA 215 after Pensacola
The apparent terror attack at Naval Air Station Pensacola spurs a debate among our panelists about whether the FISA Section 215 metadata program deserves to be killed, as Congress has increasingly signaled it intends to do. If the Pensacola attack involved multiple parties acting across US borders, still a live possibility as we talked, then it would be just about the first such attacks since 9/11 – and exactly the kind of attack the metadata program was designed to identify in advance.…
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Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast – Interview with Angelos Keromytis
Episode 118 digs deep into DARPA’s cybersecurity research program with our guest, Angelos Keromytis, associate professor at Columbia and Program Manager for the Information Innovation Office at DARPA. Angelos paints a rich picture of a future in which we automate attribution across networks and international boundaries and then fuse bits of attribution data as though they were globules of the Terminator reassembling into human form. …
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Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast – Interview with Jason Healey
Is the internet really worth it? Our guest for episode 91, Jason Healey of the Atlantic Council and Columbia University, recaps a study finding that, even with a worst-case Clockwork Orange Internet, the economic benefits of networking still outweigh the losses from security failures – though the closer we get to the worst case, the more likely we are to get Leviathan Internet, where the inherently controlling aspects of the network are embraced by governments around the world.
Our post-Thanksgiving news roundup is dominated by leftovers – edible and otherwise. Larry Klayman and Judge Leon have apparently run out of time to challenge the now-deceased NSA metadata program, Michael Vatis and I note, while Section 702 has survived a rare judicial challenge.
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Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast – Interview with Charlie Savage

Our guest for episode 90 is Charlie Savage, New York Times reporter, talking about Power Wars, his monumental new book on the law and politics of terrorism in the Obama (and Bush) administrations. I pronounce it superb, deeply informative, and fairly unbiased, “for a…