The Cyberlaw Podcast

If there really is another crypto war in Washington, then this week’s podcast features several war correspondents and at least one victim of PTSD.  Our guest is Melanie Teplinsky, former cybersecurity lawyer at Steptoe, adjunct professor at American University’s Washington College of Law, advisory board member for Crowdstrike, and a regular columnist on privacy and security issues for the Christian Science Monitor.  

We cover crypto news from Davos to the New York legislature.  We also discuss my latest policy provocation, designed to unveil yet another example of European hypocrisy where privacy, data protection, and the United States are concerned.  Inspired by the still-stalled Safe Harbor talks, I announce plans to award a Europocrisy Prize for filings that force European data protection authorities to assess the adequacy of surveillance law in important European trading partners who aren’t the United States, such as China, Russia, Saudia Arabia, and Algeria.  Amazingly, in twenty years of bitter attacks on US privacy adequacy, that’s never been done. 

We dig into several developments in the world of litigation.  Michael Vatis and Alan Cohn discuss several new cases:  a lawsuit claiming that fake emails should be covered by a forgery insurance policy, a hacked casino’s effort to recover from the security consultant that incorrectly told the casino its security problems had been solved, and a Minnesota decision that shoots down still more creative arguments for injury from the breach plaintiff’s bar.   

Michael tells us why the FBI isn’t apologizing for running a child porn site for two weeks in order to catch pedophiles.  And I predict with a bit of enthusiasm that the Senate Judiciary Committee will add more conditions to the Judicial Redress Act, as Congressional patience with Europocrisy begins to wear thin.   

Finally, Alan reveals that the Obama administration has just created the worst Schedule C job in government.  

Direct download: Podcast_98.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:38pm EDT

Back for a rematch, John Lynch and I return to the “hackback” debate in episode 97, with Jim Lewis of CSIS providing color commentary. John Lynch is the head of the Justice Department’s computer crime section. We find more common ground than might be expected but plenty of conflict as well. I suggest that Sheriff Arpaio in Arizona may soon be dressing hackers in pink while deputizing backhackers, while Jim Lewis focuses on the risk of adverse foreign government reactions. We also consider when it’s lawful to use “web beacons” and whether trusted security professionals should be given more leeway to take action outside their customers’ networks. In response to suggestions that those who break into hacker hop points might be sued by the third parties who nominally own those hop points, I suggest that those parties could face counterclaims for negligence. We close with a surprisingly undogmatic discussion of Justice Department “no-action letters” for computer security practitioners considering novel forms of active defense. 

In the news roundup, Alan Cohn and I consider whether Twitter should worry about being sued for providing material support to ISIS.  Answer:  Yes, at least a little.  Tim Cook, too, for that matter.  

Meredith Rathbone leads us through the Wassenaar wilderness, providing glimpses of a promised land.  And Maury Shenk brings good news for sane corporate security programs from the unlikeliest of sources – the European Court of Human Rights.   

Maury reports incremental progress on cybersecurity in the only law-writing process that makes Congress’s adoption of the Cyber Security Act look expeditious.  

As always, the Cyberlaw Podcast welcomes feedback.  Send an e-mail to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com or leave a message at +1 202 862 5785. 

 
 

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

Direct download: PC_97.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:57pm EDT

How do you graduate as a conservative with two Harvard degrees? We learn this and much more from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), our guest for episode 96 . We dive deep with the Senator on the 215 metadata program and its USA FREEDOM Act replacement. We ask what the future holds for the 702 program, one of the most important counterterrorism programs and just entering yet another round of jockeying over renewal; Sen. Cotton has already come out in favor of making the program permanent. To round things out, Sen. Cotton assesses the risks of Going Dark for our intelligence community and the difficulties that the Safe Harbor negotiations pose for US intelligence.

In the news roundup, evidence mounts that someone has hacked the Ukrainian electric grid.  Michael isn’t ready to point the finger at Russia yet; but I pretty much am. Whoever gets the blame, this probably means another aspirational cyberwar norm down the tubes.

In the United Kingdom, US tech firms are lobbying against a security bill, but Maury Shenk questions whether they’re mainly complaining about rules that are already part of UK law.

In the US, administration officials and Silicon Valley are happy talking about cooperation to discourage terrorist use of social media, but Michael isn’t sure what will come of the effort. I unveil a half-baked proposal to activate a Mom Squad, on the theory that the best weapon against radicalization of adolescents is letting their parents know what they’re up to. Michael reminds me that the government can’t tell Mom without getting a search warrant for private content, just as my daughter calls to say she’s been reading my blog and I need an intervention.

File this one in the bulging folder labeled “Privacy protects the privileged”: Volkswagen says it can’t comply with US government investigative demands because of the privacy of its employees – apparently including the privacy of employees who lied to US investigators. Maury and I explore VW’s data protection justifications, all of which seem, well, arguable.

And in short takes, as predicted, Justice wants to moot the Klayman/Leon victory over NSA. Meanwhile, NSA's General Counsel makes his maiden public statement in Lawfare, and says a few things that the Cruz campaign will welcome. Defense counsel are making explosive charges against the FBI’s handling of a child porn investigation. And in the tastiest privacy irony of the week, the EU’s otherwise pointless "cookie notice" requirement turns out to be great news for malware distributors, if no one else. Where would we be without the steady hand of wise European data protection officials?

Finally, after weeks of cajoling, our listeners have come through. We have entries in the iTunes podcast reviews, and we’re averaging five stars. Many thanks!

As always, the Cyberlaw Podcast welcomes feedback. Send an e-mail to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com or leave a message at +1 202 862 5785.

Download the ninety-sixth 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.

 

Direct download: Podcast_96.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:09pm EDT

We’re back from hiatus with a boatload of news and a cautiously libertarian technologist guest in Nick Weaver of the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley.  To start Episode 95 of the podcast, Michael Vatis and I plumb the meaning of the Cyber Security Act’s passage.  The big news?  Apparently Santa is real, state laws prohibiting employer access to social media credentials may have been preempted, at least a bit, and ISPs just got new authority to monitor traffic to find bits that threaten other people.  Now if we could just find something useful to do with the defensive measures provision … 

Maury Shenk and Alan Cohn dig into the latest deal moving a new European data protection regulation forward – and the slow-motion disaster around the Safe Harbor. 

Maury and Michael note that the encryption debate just won’t stay dead, no matter how much Silicon Valley keeps pounding the stake into its heart.  In addition to the FBI, tech companies are seeing a whole bunch of new eyes gleaming in the dark – China’s new security law, Pakistan’s fight with Blackberry, the new UK legislation, and Brazil’s shot across Whatsapp’s bow.  In every case, government has crowded Silicon Valley hard for more cooperation on access to customer data – but without (quite) insisting on a built-in backdoor.   

Speaking of governments, Michael tells us that regulators closed 2015 with a bang, with HIPAA, COPPA, and order-enforcement fines up to $100 million.  And Alan points to the CFTC’s new testing rules, which I contend may have smuggled something close to strict security liability into the Federal Register.   

Michael brings us up to date on the never-ending turmoil over what access in excess of authorization means under the CFAA.  None of us are surprised that courts think it includes access in violation of a court order

The interview with Nick Weaver explores the charms and evils of bulk surveillance, not to mention its inevitability.  Nick analyzes the two Silicon Valley business models – which he shorthands as selling shiny stuff and selling people’s souls.  (Guess which model he disapproves of.)  Which leads us to the question of tracking terrorists as though we wanted to sell them beheading videos.  Call it Son of 702.  Which leads me to ask how soon it will be before the government blocks the sale of an online ad network to China on national security grounds.

Direct download: Podcast_95.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:26am EDT

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