It’s been a news-heavy week, but we have the most fun in this episode with ChatGPT. Jane Bambauer, Richard Stiennon, and I pick over the astonishing number of use cases and misuse cases disclosed by the release of ChatGPT for public access. It is talented – writing dozens of term papers in seconds
surveillance
Episode 432: Toxified Tech
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…
Episode 407: An End to End-to-End Encryption?
Is the European Union (EU) about to rescue the FBI from Going Dark? Jamil Jaffer and Nate Jones tell us that a new directive aimed at preventing child sex abuse might just do the trick, a position backed by people who’ve been fighting the bureau on encryption for years.
The Biden administration is…
Episode 402: Rupert Murdochizing the Internet
The theme of this episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast is, “Be careful what you wish for.” Techlash regulation is burgeoning around the world. Mark MacCarthy takes us through a week’s worth of regulatory enthusiasm. Canada is planning to force Google and Facebook to pay Canadian news media for links. It sounds simple, but arriving…
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 400: Transatlantic Privacy Threepeat
With the U.S. and Europe united in opposing Russia’s attack on Ukraine, a few tough transatlantic disputes are being swept away – or at least under the rug. Most prominently, the data protection crisis touched off by Schrems 2 has been resolved in principle by a new framework agreement between the U.S. and the…
Episode 394: Cringe-Casting Since 2016
The Cyberlaw Podcast has decided to take a leaf from the (alleged) Bitcoin Bandits’ embrace of cringe rap. No more apologies. We’re proud to have been cringe-casting for the last six years. Scott Shapiro, however, shows that there’s a lot more meat to the bitcoin story than embarrassing social media posts. In fact,…
Episode 392: Regulatory Swagger Comes to Washington
All of Washington is back from Christmas break, and suddenly the Biden Administration is showing a sharp departure from the Obama and Clinton years where regulation of Big Tech is concerned. Regulatory swagger is everywhere.
Treasury regulatory objections to Facebook’s cryptocurrency project have forced the Silicon Valley giant to abandon the effort, Maury Shenk…
Episode 386: Does a Dead Horse Have a Right to Self-defense?
Federal district judge Robert Pitman has enjoined enforcement of Texas’s law regulating social media censorship. The ruling sparks a fight between me and Nate Jones that ranges from how much weight should be given to the speech rights of social media to the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict imposed by Facebook when it decided he…
Episode 385: International Tech Policy Week
This week we celebrated International Tech Policy Week, which happens every year around this time, when the American policymakers, the American execs who follow them, and the U.S. journalists who report on them all go home to eat turkey with their families and leave tech policy to the rest of the world.
Leading off…