News Roundup

Today’s news roundup begins with Maury Shenk and Brian Egan offering their views about the Supreme Court oral argument in the Microsoft-Ireland case. We highlight some of the questions that may tip the Justices’ hand.

Brian and I dig into the Democrats reply memo on the Carter Page FISA applications. I’m mostly unshocked by the outcome of the dueling memos, though I find one sentence of the application utterly implausible. I also foresee a possible merging of the Clinton-Obama Trump-smearing scandal with the Trump-Russia collusion scandal—call it the scandularity!

In other Russia news, the Justice Department is standing up a task force on all things cyber. Jim Lewis and I disagree about whether Russian hacking of the electoral infrastructure is likely to be a serious problem in 2018. We agree that the Twitter bot war on the American body politic will continue, since it seems to be a pretty cheap hobby for Putin’s favorite supplier of catered meals. Indeed, he seems to have gotten into the business as a way of squelching online protests that his school lunches were lousy. I suggest that Michelle Obama probably wishes she’d heard about that tactic sooner.

Google has announced an Advanced Protection program for people who think they may be high value targets for government cyberespionage. In a Cyberlaw Podcast first, I offer a product review. Short version: I’m still using it, despite some flaws in what looks like a beta program, but as a supply chain buff, I can’t help wondering who the hell Feitian Technologies is and what ties they have to the Chinese government.

March 1 is D-Day for Apple moving the crypto keys for Chinese iPhones' cloud data to China.

And Keeper continues to pursue its misguided libel suit against Ars Technica. Ars Technica’s answering brief is here. While security researchers have been wasting their time on politically correct whining about the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, libel suits are turning into far more effective tools for chilling security research.

Finally, for fans of the podcast in the Washington area, Steptoe is thinking of hiring a part-time intern to handle much of the organizational work associated with the podcast. If you’re interested, keep an eye on Steptoe.com/careers, which is where we’ll post the position if this idea bears fruit.

As always The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback.  Send your questions, suggestions for interview candidates or topics to [e-mail] or leave a message at [phone].

Download the 205th Episode (mp3).

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The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.