Latest in Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast
There’s a fine line between legislation addressing deepfakes and legislation that is itself a deep fake. Nate Jones reports on the only federal legislation addressing the problem so far. I claim that it is well short of a serious regulatory effort—and pretty close to a fake law.
I talk about the photographs of Congresswoman Katie Hill and whether the rush to portray her as a victim of revenge porn raises questions about revenge porn laws themselves. Paul Rosenzweig, emboldened by twin tweets – from President Trump calling Never-Trumpers like him “human scum” and from Mark Hamill welcoming him to the Rebel Scum Alliance – takes issue with me.
Our interview is with Alex Joel, former Chief of the Office of Civil Liberties, Privacy, and Transparency at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Alex is now at the American University law school’s Tech, Law, and Security Program. We share stories about the difficulties of government startups and how the ODNI carved out a role for itself in the Intelligence Community (hint: It involved good lawyering).
In this episode I cross swords with John Samples of the Cato Institute on Silicon Valley’s efforts to disadvantage conservative speech and what to do about it. I accuse him of Panglossian libertarianism; he challenges me to identify any way in which bringing government into the dispute will make things better.
In our 279th episode of The Cyberlaw Podcast, the Blockchain Group takes over the podcast. Host Alan Cohn is joined by Gary Goldsholle, Will Turner, and Evan Abrams to discuss:
Joel Trachtman thinks it’s a near certainty that the World Trade Organization agreements will complicate U.S. efforts to head off an Internet of Things cybersecurity meltdown, and there’s a real possibility that a U.S. cybersecurity regime could be held to violate our international trade obligations.
Camille Stewart talks about a little-known national security risk: China’s propensity to acquire U.S. technology through the bankruptcy courts and the many ways in which the bankruptcy system isn’t set up to combat improper tech transfers. Published by the Journal of National Security Law & Policy, Camille’s paper is available here.
In this bonus episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast, Alex Stamos of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute talks about the Institute’s recent paper on the risk of Chinese social media interference with Taiwan’s upcoming presidential election. It’s a wide-ranging discussion of everything from a century of Chinese history to the reasons why WeChat lost a social media competition in Taiwan to a Japanese company.