The Cyberlaw Podcast: The Shane Roundup

Today’s news roundup features Shane Harris of the Wall Street Journal, Brian Egan, and Alan Cohn discussing stories that Shane wrote last week. Out of the box, we work through the hall of mirrors that the Kaspersky hacking story has become.

The Russian hacking story is biting more companies than just Kaspersky. Turns out that Twitter deleted all the Russian trolling accounts and tweets when the Russians asked them to. Because privacy! I put in a plug for the rule that privacy always somehow ends up protecting the powerful – in this case Vladimir Putin and, of course, Twitter itself.

We also cover another Wall Street Journal story detailing North Korea’s use of (another) antivirus product to hack South Korea’s military – and US war plans.

Alan unpacks the Trump Administration’s most detailed statement to date on law enforcement and technology -- Deputy AG Rosenstein’s far-ranging speech on the topic.

Alan and I also touch on the emerging fight over 702 – and the media’s evergreen and credulous “discovery” that the far left and far right are surprisingly close on surveillance issues.

Alan spells out the case for Kirstjen Nielsen as Homeland Security Secretary, along with what some of her detractors are saying.

While Brian lays out the explosive theory behind the latest effort to tag Google and other social media giants with liability for assisting ISIS.

We close with two short hits.

I ask why, if Pornhub’s technology is that good, they’re starting with facial recognition.

And I can’t help noting that, for a while at least, security icon Apple thought that the best password hint was … the password itself! Thanks, Tim Cook! We’ll keep that in mind the next time you argue that the ability to hack every iPhone on the planet should be left with you and not the FBI.

As always The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Send your questions, suggestions for interview candidates or topics to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com or leave a message at +1 202 862 5785.

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The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.