We begin this episode with Paul Rosenzweig describing major progress in teaching AI models to do text-to-speech conversions. Amazon flagged its new model as having “emergent” capabilities in handling what had been serious problems – things like speaking with emotion, or conveying foreign phrases. The key is the size of the training set, but Amazon was able to spot the point at which more data led to unexpected skills. This leads Paul and me to speculate that training AI models to perform certain tasks eventually leads the model to learn “generalization” of its skills. If so, the more we train AI on a variety of tasks – chat, text to speech, text to video, and the like – the better AI will get at learning new tasks, as generalization becomes part of its core skill set. It’s lawyers holding forth on the frontiers of technology, so take it with a grain of salt.

Cristin Flynn Goodwin and Paul Stephan join Paul Rosenzweig to provide an update on Volt Typhoon, the Chinese APT that is littering Western networks with the equivalent of logical land mines. Actually, it’s not so much an update on Volt Typhoon, which seems to be aggressively pursuing its strategy, as on the hyperventilating Western reaction to Volt Typhoon. There’s no doubt that China is playing with fire, and that the United States and other cyber powers should be liberally sowing similar weapons in Chinese networks. But the public measures adopted by the West do not seem likely to effectively defeat or deter China’s strategy. 

The group is less impressed by the New York Times’ claim that China is pursuing a dangerous electoral influence campaign on U.S. social media platforms. The Russians do it better, Paul Stephan says, and even they don’t do it well, I argue. 

Paul Rosenzweig reviews the House China Committee report alleging a link between U.S. venture capital firms and Chinese human rights abuses. We agree that Silicon Valley VCs have paid too little attention to how their investments could undermine the system on which their billions rest, a state of affairs not likely to last much longer. 

Paul Stephan and Cristin bring us up to date on U.S. efforts to disrupt Chinese and Russian hacking operations.

We will be eagerly waiting for resolution of the European fight over Facebook’s subscription fee and the move by websites to “Pay or Consent” privacy terms fight. I predict that Eurocrats’ hypocrisy will be tested by an effort to rule for elite European media sites, which already embrace “Pay or Consent” while ruling against Facebook. Paul Rosenzweig is confident that European hypocrisy is up to the task. 

Cristin and I explore the latest White House enthusiasm for software security liability. Paul Stephan explains the flap over a UN cybercrime treaty, which is and should be stalled in Turtle Bay for the next decade or more.  

Cristin also covers a detailed new Google TAG report on commercial spyware. 

And in quick hits, 

• House Republicans tried and failed to find common ground on renewal of FISA Section 702

• I recommend Goody-2, the ‘World’s ‘Most Responsible’ AI Chatbot

• Dechert has settled a wealthy businessman’s lawsuit claiming that the law firm hacked his computer

• Imran Khan is using AI to make impressively realistic speeches about his performance in Pakistani elections

• The Kids Online Safety Act secured sixty votes in the U.S. Senate, but whether the House will act on the bill remains to be seen

Download 492nd Episode (mp3)

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

On the latest episode of The Cyberlaw Podcast, guest host Brian Fleming, along with panelists Jane Bambauer, Gus Hurwitz, and Nate Jones, discuss the latest U.S. government efforts to protect sensitive personal data, including the FTC’s lawsuit against data broker Kochava and the forthcoming executive order restricting certain bulk sensitive data flows to China and other countries of concern. Nate and Brian then discuss whether Congress has a realistic path to end the Section 702 reauthorization standoff before the April expiration and debate what to make of a recent multilateral meeting in London to discuss curbing spyware abuses. Gus and Jane then talk about the big news for cord-cutting sports fans, as well as Amazon’s ad data deal with Reach, in an effort to understand some broader difficulties facing internet-based ad and subscription revenue models. Nate considers the implications of Ukraine’s “defend forward” cyber strategy in its war against Russia. Jane next tackles a trio of stories detailing challenges, of the policy and economic varieties, facing Meta on the content moderation front, as well as an emerging problem policing sexual assaults in the Metaverse. Bringing it back to data, Gus wraps the news roundup by highlighting a novel FTC case brought against Blackbaud stemming from its data retention practices. In this week’s quick hits, Gus and Jane reflect on the FCC’s ban on AI-generated voice cloning in robocalls, Nate touches on an alert from CISA and FBI on the threat presented by Chinese hackers to critical infrastructure, Gus comments on South Korea’s pause on implementation of its anti-monopoly platform act and the apparent futility of nudges (with respect to climate change attitudes or otherwise), and finally Brian closes with a few words on possible broad U.S. import restrictions on Chinese EVs and how even the abundance of mediocre AI-related ads couldn’t ruin Taylor Swift’s Super Bowl.  

Download 491st Episode (mp3)

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

It was a week of serious cybersecurity incidents paired with unimpressive responses. As Melanie Teplinsky reminds us, the U.S. government has been agitated for months about China’s apparent strategic decision to hold U.S. infrastructure hostage to cyberattack in a crisis. Now the government has struck back at Volt Typhoon, the Chinese threat actor pursuing that strategy. It claimed recently to have disrupted a Volt Typhoon botnet by taking over a batch of compromised routers. Andrew Adams explains how the takeover was managed through the court system. It was a lot of work, and there is reason to doubt the effectiveness of the effort. The compromised routers can be re-compromised if they are turned off and on again. And the only ones that were fixed by the U.S. seizure are within U.S. jurisdiction, leaving open the possibility of DDOS attacks from abroad. And, really, how vulnerable is our critical infrastructure to DDOS attack? I argue that there’s a serious disconnect between the government’s hair-on-fire talk about Volt Typhoon and its business-as-usual response.

Speaking of cyberstuff we could be overestimating, Taiwan just had an election that China cared a lot about. According to one detailed report, China threw a lot of cyber at Taiwanese voters without making much of an impression. Richard Stiennon and I mix it up over whether China would do better in trying to influence the 2024 outcome here.  

While we’re covering humdrum responses to cyberattacks, Melanie explains U.S. sanctions on Iranian military hackers for their hack of U.S. water systems. 

For comic relief, Richard lays out the latest drama around the EU AI Act, now being amended in a series of backroom deals and informal promises. I predict that the effort to pile incoherent provisions on top of anti-American protectionism will not end in a GDPR-style triumph for Europe, whose market is now small enough for AI companies to ignore if the regulatory heat is turned up arbitrarily. 

The U.S. is not the only player whose response to cyberintrusions is looking inadequate this week. Richard explains Microsoft’s recent disclosure of a Midnight Blizzard attack on the company and a number of its customers. The company’s obscure explanation of how its technology contributed to the attack and, worse, its effort to turn the disaster into an upsell opportunity earned Microsoft a patented Alex Stamos spanking. 

Andrew explains the recent Justice Department charges against three people who facilitated the big $400m FTX hack that coincided with the exchange’s collapse. Does that mean it wasn’t an inside job? Not so fast, Andrew cautions. The government didn’t recover the $400m, and it isn’t claiming the three SIM-swappers it has charged are the only conspirators.

Melanie explains why we’ve seen a sudden surge in state privacy legislation. It turns out that industry has stopped fighting the idea of state privacy laws and is now selling a light-touch model law that skips things like private rights of action.

I give a lick and a promise to a “privacy” regulation now being pursued by CFPB for consumer financial information. I put privacy in quotes, because it’s really an opportunity to create a whole new market for data that will assure better data management while breaking up the advantage of incumbents’ big data holdings. Bruce Schneier likes the idea. So do I, in principle, except that it sounds like a massive re-engineering of a big industry by technocrats who may not be quite as smart as they think they are. Bruce, if you want to come on the podcast to explain the whole thing, send me an email!

Spies are notoriously nasty, and often petty, but surely the nastiest and pettiest of American spies, Joshua Schulte, was sentenced to 40 years in prison last week. Andrew has the details.

There may be some good news on the ransomware front. More victims are refusing to pay. Melanie, Richard, and I explore ways to keep that trend going. I continue to agitate for consideration of a tax on ransom payments.

I also flag a few new tech regulatory measures likely to come down the pike in the next few months. I predict that the FCC will use the TCPA to declare the use of AI-generated voices in robocalls illegal. And Amazon is likely to find itself held liable for the safety of products sold by third parties on the Amazon platform. 

Finally, a few quick hits:

• Amazon has abandoned its iRobot acquisition, thanks to EU “competition” regulators, with the likely result that iRobot will cease competing

• David Kahn, who taught us all the romance of cryptology, has died at 93 

• Air Force Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh is taking over Cyber Command and NSA from Gen. Nakasone 

• And for those suffering from Silicon Valley Envy (lookin’ at you, Brussels), 23andMe offers a small corrective. The company is now a rare “reverse unicorn” – having fallen in value from $6 Billion to practically nothing

Download 490th Episode (mp3)

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.