Latest in Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast
In this episode, Nick Weaver and I discuss new Internet regulations proposed in the UK. He’s mostly okay with its anti-nudge code for kids, but not with requiring proof of age to access adult material. I don’t see the problem; after all, who wouldn’t want to store their passport information with Pornhub?
Our News Roundup is hip deep in China stories. The inconclusive EU-China summit gives Matthew Heiman and me a chance to explain why France understands—and hates—China’s geopolitical trade strategy more than most.
Our News Roundup leads with the long, slow death of Section 230 immunity. Nick Weaver explains why he thinks social media’s pursuit of engagement has led to a poisonous online environment, and Matthew Heiman replays the astonishing international consensus that Silicon Valley deserves the blame—and the regulation—for all that ails the Internet.
In today’s News Roundup, Klon Kitchen adds to the North Korean Embassy invasion by an unknown group. Turns out some of the participants fled to the U.S. and lawyered up, but the real tipoff about attribution is that they’ve given some of the data they stole to the FBI. That rules out CIA involvement right there.
In our interview, Elsa Kania and Sam Bendett explain what China and Russia have learned from the American way of warfighting—and from Russia’s success in Syria. The short answer: everything. But instead of leaving us smug, I argue it ought to leave us worried about surprise. Elsa and Sam both try to predict where the surprises might come from. Yogi Berra makes an appearance.
The Cyberlaw Podcast is a weekly interview series and discussion on the latest events in technology, security, privacy, and government.
If you get SMS messages on your phone and think you have two-factor authentication, you’re kidding yourself. That’s the message Nick Weaver and David Kris extract from two stories we cover in this week’s episode of The Cyberlaw Podcast—the Justice Department’s indictment of a couple of kids whose hacker chops are modest but whose social engineering skills are remarkable.
If the surgeon about to operate on you has been disciplined for neglecting patients, wouldn’t you like to know? Well, the mandarins of the European Union privacy lobby beg to differ. Google has been told by a Dutch court not to index that story, and there seems to have been a six-month lag in disclosing even the court ruling. That’s part of this week’s News Roundup. Gus Hurwitz and I are appalled.
So says the remarkable Jeff Jonas, CEO of Senzing. And he’s got a claim to be doing just that. A data scientist before data science was cool, Jeff has used his technical skills and an intuitive grasp of complex data problems to stop card counters in Las Vegas and terrorists targeting the U.S., and then to launch an initiative making voter registration more accurate and widespread.