World on the Brink with Dmitri Alperovitch
The Cyberlaw Podcast
Okay, yes, I promised to take a hiatus after episode 500. Yet here it is a week later, and I'm releasing episode 501. Here's my excuse. I read and liked Dmitri Alperovitch's book, "World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century." I told him I wanted to do an interview about it. Then the interview got pushed into late April because that's when the book is actually coming out. So sue me. I'm back on hiatus. The conversation in the episode begins with Dmitri's background in cybersecurity and geopolitics, beginning with his emigration from the Soviet...
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Who’s the Bigger Cybersecurity Risk – Microsoft or Open Source?
The Cyberlaw Podcast
There’s a whiff of Auld Lang Syne about episode 500 of the Cyberlaw Podcast, since after this it will be going on hiatus for some time and maybe forever. (Okay, there will be an interview with Dmitri Alperovich about his forthcoming book, but the news commentary is done for now.) Perhaps it’s appropriate, then, for our two lead stories to revive a theme from the 90s – who’s better, Microsoft or Linux? Sadly for both, the current debate is over who’s worse, at least for cybersecurity. Microsoft’s sins against cybersecurity are laid bare in , Paul Rosenzweig reports. ...
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Taking AI Existential Risk Seriously
The Cyberlaw Podcast
This episode is notable not just for cyberlaw commentary, but for its imminent disappearance from these pages and from podcast playlists everywhere. Having promised to take stock of the podcast when it reached episode 500, I’ve decided that I, the podcast, and the listeners all deserve a break. So I’ll be taking one after the next episode. No final decisions have been made, so don’t delete your subscription, but don’t expect a new episode any time soon. It’s been a great run, from the dawn of the podcast age, through the ad-fueled podcast boom, which I...
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The Fourth Antitrust Shoe Drops, on Apple This Time
The Cyberlaw Podcast
The Biden administration has been aggressively pursuing antitrust cases against Silicon Valley giants like Amazon, Google, and Facebook. This week it was Apple’s turn. The Justice Department (joined by several state AGs) filed a accusing Apple of improperly monopolizing the market for “performance smartphones.” The market definition will be a weakness for the government throughout the case, but the complaint does a good job of identifying ways in which Apple has built a moat around its business without an obvious benefit for its customers. The complaint focuses on Apple’s...
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Social Speech and the Supreme Court
The Cyberlaw Podcast
The Supreme Court is getting a heavy serving of first amendment social media cases. Gus Hurwitz covers two that made the news last week. In the , Justice Barrett spoke for a unanimous court in spelling out the very factbound rules that determine when a public official may use a platform’s tools to suppress critics posting on his or her social media page. Gus and I agree that this might mean a lot of litigation, unless public officials wise up and simply follow the Court’s broad hint: If you don’t want your page to be treated as official, simply say up top that it isn’t official....
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Preventing Sales of Personal Data to Adversary Nations
The Cyberlaw Podcast
This bonus episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast focuses on the national security implications of sensitive personal information. Sales of personal data have been largely unregulated as the growth of adtech has turned personal data into a widely traded commodity. This, in turn, has produced a variety of policy proposals – comprehensive privacy regulation, a weird proposal from Sen. Wyden (D-OR) to ensure that the US governments cannot buy such data while China and Russia can, and most recently an Executive Order to prohibit or restrict commercial transactions affording China, Russia, and...
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The National Cybersecurity Strategy – How Does it Look After a Year?
The Cyberlaw Podcast
Kemba Walden and Stewart revisit the National Cybersecurity Strategy a year later. Sultan Meghji examines the ransomware attack on Change Healthcare and its consequences. Brandon Pugh reminds us that even large companies like Google are not immune to having their intellectual property stolen. The group conducts a thorough analysis of a "public option" model for AI development. Brandon discusses the latest developments in personal data and child online protection. Lastly, Stewart inquires about Kemba's new position at Paladin Global Institute, following her departure from the role of Acting...
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Regulating personal data for national security
The Cyberlaw Podcast
The United States is in the process of rolling out a for personal data transfers. But the rulemaking is getting limited attention because it targets transfers to our rivals in the new Cold War – China, Russia, and their allies. old office is drafting the rules, explains the history of the initiative, which stems from endless Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States efforts to impose such controls on a company-by-company basis. Now, with an as the foundation, the Department of Justice has published an that promises what could be years of slow-motion regulation. Faced with a...
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Are AI models learning to generalize?
The Cyberlaw Podcast
We begin this episode with describing major progress in 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,...
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Death, Taxes, and Data Regulation
The Cyberlaw Podcast
On the latest episode of The Cyberlaw Podcast, guest host Brian Fleming, along with panelists and discuss the latest U.S. government efforts to protect sensitive personal data, including the and the restricting certain bulk sensitive data flows to China and other countries of concern. Nate and Brian then discuss before the April expiration and debate what to make of a recent . Gus and Jane then talk about the , as well as , in an effort to understand some broader difficulties facing internet-based ad and subscription revenue models. Nate considers the implications of in its war against...
info_outlineThe Supreme Court is getting a heavy serving of first amendment social media cases. Gus Hurwitz covers two that made the news last week. In the first, Justice Barrett spoke for a unanimous court in spelling out the very factbound rules that determine when a public official may use a platform’s tools to suppress critics posting on his or her social media page. Gus and I agree that this might mean a lot of litigation, unless public officials wise up and simply follow the Court’s broad hint: If you don’t want your page to be treated as official, simply say up top that it isn’t official.
The second social media case making news was being argued as we recorded. Murthy v. Missouri appealed a broad injunction against the US government pressuring social media companies to take down posts the government disagrees with. The Court was plainly struggling with a host of justiciability issues and a factual record that the government challenged vigorously. If the Court reaches the merits, it will likely address the question of when encouraging the suppression of particular speech slides into coerced censorship.
Gus and Jeffrey Atik review the week’s biggest news – the House has passed a bill to force the divestment of TikTok, despite the outcry of millions of influencers. Whether the Senate will be quick to follow suit is deeply uncertain.
Melanie Teplinsky covers the news that data about Americans’ driving habits is increasingly being sent to insurance companies to help them adjust their rates.
Melanie also describes the FCC’s new Cyber Trust Mark for IOT devices. Like the Commission, our commentators think this is a good idea.
Gus takes us back to more contest territory: What should be done about the use of technology to generate fake pictures, especially nude fake pictures. We also touch on a UK debate about a snippet of audio that many believe is a fake meant to embarrass a British Labour politician.
Gus tells us the latest news from the SVR’s compromise of a Microsoft network. This leads us to a meditation on the unintended consequences of the SEC’s new cyber incident reporting requirements.
Jeffrey explains the bitter conflict over app store sales between Apple and Epic games.
Melanie outlines a possible solution to the lack of cybersecurity standards (not to mention a lack of cybersecurity) in water systems. It’s interesting but it’s too early to judge its chances of being adopted.
Melanie also tells us why JetBrains and Rapid7 have been fighting over “silent patching.”
Finally, Gus and I dig into Meta’s high-stakes fight with the FTC, and the rough reception it got from a DC district court.