Over at Lawfare, Susan Landau has an excellent essay on the risks posed by software used to collect evidence (a Breathalyzer is probably the most obvious example). Bugs and vulnerabilities can lead to inaccurate evidence, but the proprietary nature of software makes it hard for defendants to examine it. The software engineers proposed a three-part … Read More “Risks of Evidentiary Software” »
Category: courts
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In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court just narrowed the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: In a ruling delivered today, the court sided with Van Buren and overturned his 18-month conviction. In a 37-page opinion written and delivered by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court explained that the “exceeds authorized access” language … Read More “The Supreme Court Narrowed the CFAA” »
Virginia is about to get a data privacy law, modeled on California’s law. Powered by WPeMatico
I just co-authored a paper on the legal risks of doing machine learning research, given the current state of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: Abstract: Adversarial Machine Learning is booming with ML researchers increasingly targeting commercial ML systems such as those used in Facebook, Tesla, Microsoft, IBM, Google to demonstrate vulnerabilities. In this paper, … Read More “Adversarial Machine Learning and the CFAA” »
This is interesting: Facebook Inc. in 2018 beat back federal prosecutors seeking to wiretap its encrypted Messenger app. Now the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking to find out how. The entire proceeding was confidential, with only the result leaking to the press. Lawyers for the ACLU and the Washington Post on Tuesday asked a … Read More “How Did Facebook Beat a Federal Wiretap Demand?” »
A federal court has ruled that violating a website’s terms of service is not “hacking” under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The plaintiffs wanted to investigate possible racial discrimination in online job markets by creating accounts for fake employers and job seekers. Leading job sites have terms of service prohibiting users from supplying fake … Read More “Clarifying the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act” »
Robert Chesney teaches cybersecurity at the University of Texas School of Law. He recently published a fantastic casebook, which is a good source for anyone studying this. Powered by WPeMatico
This law journal article discusses the role of class-action litigation to secure the Internet of Things. Basically, the article postulates that (1) market realities will produce insecure IoT devices, and (2) political failures will leave that industry unregulated. Result: insecure IoT. It proposes proactive class action litigation against manufacturers of unsafe and unsecured IoT devices … Read More “Securing the Internet of Things through Class-Action Lawsuits” »
The New Yorker has published the long and interesting story of the cybersecurity firm Tiversa. Watching “60 Minutes,” Boback saw a remarkable new business angle. Here was a multibillion-dollar industry with a near-existential problem and no clear solution. He did not know it then, but, as he turned the opportunity over in his mind, he … Read More “The Story of Tiversa” »
This wasn’t a small operation: A Pakistani man bribed AT&T call-center employees to install malware and unauthorized hardware as part of a scheme to fraudulently unlock cell phones, according to the US Department of Justice. Muhammad Fahd, 34, was extradited from Hong Kong to the US on Friday and is being detained pending trial. An … Read More “AT&T Employees Took Bribes to Unlock Smartphones” »