The Cyberlaw Podcast: This Episode Could Be Worth $1,000 To The ACLU

We begin the episode with a review of the massive Kaseya ransomware attack.

Dave Aitel digs into the technical aspects while Paul Rosenzweig and Matthew Heiman explore the policy and political implications. But either way, the news is bad.

Then we come to the Florida “deplatforming” law, which a Clinton appointee dispatched in a cursory opinion last week. I’ve been in a small minority who thinks the law, far from being a joke, is likely to survive (at least in part) if it reaches the Supreme Court. Paul challenges me to put my money where my mouth is. Details to be worked out, but if a portion of the law survives in the top court, Paul will be sending a thousand bucks to Trumpista nonprofit. If not, I’ll likely be sending my money to the ACLU.

Surprisingly, our commentators mostly agree that both NSA and Tucker Carlson could be telling the truth, despite the insistence of their partisans that the other side must be lying. NSA gets unaccustomed praise for its … wait for it … rapid and PR-savvy response. That’s got to be a first.

Paul and I conclude that Maine, having passed in haste the strongest state facial recognition ban yet, will likely find itself repenting at leisure.

Matthew decodes Margrethe Vestager’s warning to Apple against using privacy, security to limit competition.

And I mock Apple for claiming to protect privacy while making employees wear body cams to preserve the element of surprise at the next Apple product unveiling. Not to mention the 2-billion-person asterisk attached to Apple’s commitment to privacy.

Dave praises NSA for its stewardship of a popular open source reverse engineering tool, Ghidra.

And everyone has a view about cops using YouTube’s crappy artificial intelligence takedown engine to keep people from posting videos of their conversations with cops.

And more!

Download the 369th Episode (mp3)

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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.