Bits and Bytes

Hacking the hackers. Companies are getting more aggressive in responding to attacks, but the law limits how far they can go.

Remedying flaws in the ECPA. Viet Dinh, former AAG at DOJ looks at updating the ECPA and bringing it into the modern era. "line that no longer makes any sense given that data storage costs have become de minimis. And ECPA says nothing whatsoever about how to resolve disputes that cross jurisdictional lines, such as when U.S. law enforcement officials seek email communications stored on a server in a foreign country. There is broad agreement among consumers, technology companies, law enforcement officials, and other stakeholders that reform is badly needed. But interested parties have diverged about the best way to accomplish this goal."

China wants to re-write the rules on cyberspace. "As social media helped topple regimes in the Middle East and northern Africa, a senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army publicly warned that an Internet dominated by the U.S. threatened to overthrow China’s Communist Party. Ye Zheng and a Chinese researcher, writing in the state-run China Youth Daily, said the Internet represented a new form of global control, and the U.S. was a “shadow” present during some of those popular uprisings. Beijing had better pay attention."