An Interview with Jonathan Zittrain

Jonathan Zittrain, who holds a surfeit of titles at Harvard, is our guest for episode 136. Among other topics, we explore the implications of routine doxing of political adversaries. Along the way I extract kind words from Jonathan for Sarah Palin and welcome him to the club of those who think mass doxxers are evil punks.  It’s a wide-ranging, informative, and un-ideological performance of the sort we’ve come to expect from Jonathan.

In the news, I note that the FBI seems to be getting reinforcements in the Great Crypto War, as European prosecutors prepare the battlefield with complaints about Islamic State use of Western encryption.

We’re seeing the rise of a new kind of security disclosure mandate, Katie Cassel tells us. First DOD and now Treasury are requiring their industry to disclose not just personal data breaches but the details of security breaches. But only Treasury was clever enough to do it without new regulatory authority.

NHTSA proposes some pretty thin cybersecurity guidance for vehicles, says Michael Vatis, and a couple of Senate Dems predictably call for tougher mandatory standards.

In more dog-bites-man news, European data protectionists have more hassles for US tech companies; this time it’s WhatsApp and Yahoo in the crosshairs.

Michael leads a tour of the FCC’s new “opt-in” privacy rules for ISPs. I make a bold prediction about how the privacy fight will shake out, and Michael—remarkably—thinks I may be right.

Katie explains HHS’s latest fine for a company that allowed file-sharing of medical files on one of its servers. Mike Daugherty, time to call your office.

Would the revolting magistrates have scuppered the FBI's effort to extract Huma's emails from Weiner's computer? Michael and I debate Orin Kerr's suggestion that there's a legal problem with expanding the search (or the seizure) to a new and different investigation. We mostly disagree with Orin.

And in continuing Rule 41 news, I narrowly escape an NFL taunting penalty while reporting that a whopping 23 out of 535 lawmakers are whining about expanded searches of pedophile computers.

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