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Want to see cyber attribution and deterrence in action? In August, a hacker pulled the names of US military personnel and others out of a corporate network and passed them to ISIL. British jihadist Junaid Hussain exulted when ISIL released the names. “They have us on their ‘hit list,’ and we have them on ours too…,” he tweeted. On the whole, I’d rather be on theirs. Two weeks after his tweet, Hussain was killed in a US airstrike, and two months after that, the hacker was arrested in Malaysia (subscription required) on a US warrant.

We explore that story and more with Gen. Michael Hayden, the only person to serve as both Director of the National Security Agency and of the Central Intelligence Agency. Gen. Hayden explains why he differs with FBI director Comey on encryption and with the European Court of Justice on whether the US sufficiently respects privacy rights, along with other topics.…

Continue Reading Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast – Interview with Gen. Michael Hayden

Yesterday  I joined the National Constitution Center’s We the People podcast to debate the constitutional future of the Patriot Act’s Section 215 with Jeffrey Rosen, National Constitution Center, Bobby Chesney, Charles I. Francis Professor in Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Texas School of Law, and Deborah Pearlstein, associate professor…

That’s the possibility raised by Edward Jay Epstein in a (paywalled) Wall Street Journal op-ed.  Epstein offers some new evidence for his theory.  In particular he says that NSA investigators now know that Snowden’s tactics included breaking into two dozen compartments using forged or stolen passwords.  Once there, Snowden loosed an automated “spider” with…

With all the controversy surrounding the leaks regarding the PRISM program, there is at least one constituency that is likely rejoicing — Europe-based cloud computing companies.

For the past few years, cloud providers in Europe have tried to gain a competitive advantage over US-based providers in the European market by arguing that the Patriot Act…

It seems we can’t go a day without another bombshell in what we can now call the “Snowden Affair.” Many people are calling Edward Snowden a “whistleblower” for leaking two classified intelligence programs. But that term is usually reserved for someone who reveals government lies, law-breaking, or malfeasance. What Snowden revealed, though, are government…

The Federal Trade Commission is really on a roll these days. In the last few weeks alone it has: reached settlements with two companies, Compete, Inc. and Epic Marketplace, Inc., over the FTC’s charges that the two companies deceived consumers by misrepresenting their online data collection practices; released a blistering report criticizing the developers…