The Cyberlaw Podcast

In our seventeenth episode of the Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast, Stewart Baker, Stephen Heifetz, Stephanie Roy, Michael Vatis, and Jason Weinstein discuss this week in NSA: No new scandal stories but the principal new release came from the US government and consisted of a FISA court ruling that took apart the only decision declaring NSA's section 215 metadata program illegal - Judge Leon's opinion in Klayman; the top story this week is the claim that the FCC is gutting net neutrality; the New York Times' story suggesting that the FBI may have used Anonymous to help compromise foreign nations' networks; the cell phone warrant case; the Aereo case; Magistrate Facciola's approach to warrants, and DOJ's method to appeal his latest ruling; and DHS' announcement that it has notified all critical infrastructure companies that they are considered critical. In our second half, we have an interview with two government CFIUS experts, Elana Broitman, a deputy assistant secretary at DOD and Shawn Cooley, who manages DHS's participation in CFIUS as well as Team Telecom.

Direct download: Episode17.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:14pm EDT

In our sixteenth episode of the Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast, Stewart Baker, Chris Conte, Michael Vatis, and Jason Weinstein discuss this week in NSA: Edward Snowden questions Putin; and the Bloomberg story that NSA exploited the Heartbleed vulnerability steadily loses altitude and believers; the SEC releases thoughtful and detailed set of cybersecurity questions for its examiners to use in dealing with the private sector; US magistrate Facciola calls for an amicus brief on cell-site data; Kentucky adopts a state breach notice law; the conviction of Andew "Weev" Auernheimer for the AT&T hack was overturned on appeal; the implications of giving first amendment protection to censored search results; and in bitcoin news, a more plausible candidate for Satoshi Nakamoto has emerged. In our second half, we have an interview with Alex Joel, the Civil Liberties Protection Officer of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Direct download: Episode16.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:39pm EDT

Stewart Baker, Maury Shenk, and Jason Weinstein discuss this week in NSA: The FBI and ACLU tangle over FOIA; Larry Klayman loses an appeal over Section 215 metadata collection; according to a Bloomberg article the NSA exploited the Heartbleed security flaw for years - the NSA conclusively denied the story immediately; this week in FTC: the District Court ruling in the Wyndham case was largely unsurprising; Whatsapp and Facebook are being locked into their current privacy policies; the commission fairly charges jerk.com with deceptive practices and orders them to delete data; the European Court of Justice makes news, striking down parts of the data retention directive that have long distinguished Europe as a far less privacy-protective jurisdiction than the United States; continuing the tutorial in class action tactics, the Target litigation is consolidated in Minnesota; the Justice Department and the FTC issue antitrust guidance designed to ease the fears of companies that sharing cybersecurity information will create antitrust liability; and international cyberdiplomacy is slowly recovering from the Snowden leaks. The US makes a creative response to Iran's DOS attacks on banks, and it tries candor on China. In our second half, we have an interview with Dan Sutherland, Associate General Counsel, National Protection and Programs Directorate at the US Department of Homeland Security.

Direct download: CyberBlogPodcast_15.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:23pm EDT

Stewart Baker, Michael Vatis, and Jason Weinstein discuss this week in NSA: A Reuters story claims that researchers showed something bad about the way NSA influenced the Dual EC encryption standard; a civil libertarian academic who was part of the President's expert's group NSA published a candid assessment of the agency - almost all of it positive; and Yahoo! has finally been able to encrypt its back-office communications; this week in Reruns: LabMD's latest filing; the banks that sued Target's security assessor have had second thoughts; Microsoft's search of Hotmail to protect its property yields a guilty plea; and Google's struggle with the most famous ten-second video performance in history ends abruptly; The Onion Router doesn't really turn your messages into spoofed news stories (cool as that would be); Federal magistrates impose limits on computer search warrants as a condition of signing them. In our second half, we have an interview with Benjamin Wittes, senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution and co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog.

Direct download: Episode_14.mp3
Category: -- posted at: 3:08pm EDT

Stewart Baker, Michael Vatis, and Jason Weinstein discuss this week in NSA: Proposal to replace NSA's 215 metadata program with one where the data remains with the telephone companies; the new chief judge at the FISA court; and China has promised to bolster its cybersecurity while protesting news that Huawei was hacked by NSA, this week in Target: Banks suing not just Target but also its security assessor, Microsoft admits to opening a subscriber's Hotmail account to track an employee who was leaking its business secrets, Bitcoin assets to be subject to capital gains calculations. In our second half, we have an interview with Michael Allen, former Majority Staff Director of the House Intelligence Committee and Founder & Managing Director of Beacon Global Strategies.

Direct download: Episode_13.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:50pm EDT

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