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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.

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

Our interview is with Sultan Meghji, CEO of Neocova. We cover the large Chinese investment in quantum technology and what it means for the United States. It’s possible that Chinese physicists are even better than American physicists at extracting funding from their government. Indeed, it looks as though some quantum tech, such as the use of entangled particles to identify eavesdropping, may turn out to have dubious military value. But not all. Sultan thinks the threat of special purpose quantum computing to break encryption poses a real, near-term threat to US financial institutions’ security.

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Continue Reading Episode 282: Has China opened a quantum hype lead over the US?

Episode 198 — Interview with Shane Harris

It turns out that the most interesting policy story about Kaspersky software isn’t why the administration banned its products from government use. It’s why the last administration didn’t.  Shane Harris is our guest for the podcast, delving into the law and politics of the Kaspersky ban.  Along the…

Interview with Susan Hennessey and Andrew McCarthy

Episode 195 features an interview with Susan Hennessey of Lawfare and Andrew McCarthy of the National Review.  They walk us through the “unmasking” of US identities in intelligence reports — one of the most divisive partisan issues likely to come up in the re-enactment of section 702 of…

Episode 190: Interview with United States Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

In our 190th episode Stewart Baker has a chance to interview United States Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has a long history of engagement with technology and security issues.  In this episode, we spend a remarkably detailed half-hour with him, covering the cybersecurity waterfront, from the…

Episode 187:  Interviewing Tom Bossert

I had a chance to talk to Tom Bossert, President Trump’s Homeland Security Adviser, on the record, and we’re releasing the conversation as a bonus episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast. The talk ranges from Peggy Noonan’s observations on White House staff work to the vast improvement in the West Wing’s…