The California Consumer Privacy Act is a lesson in missed opportunities. It was passed in haste, to stop a ballot initiative that would have been even more restrictive: In September 2017, Alastair Mactaggart and Mary Ross proposed a statewide ballot initiative entitled the “California Consumer Privacy Act.” Ballot initiatives are a process under California law … Read More “Another California Data Privacy Law” »
Category: laws
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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” »
Communities across the United States are starting to ban facial recognition technologies. In May of last year, San Francisco banned facial recognition; the neighboring city of Oakland soon followed, as did Somerville and Brookline in Massachusetts (a statewide ban may follow). In December, San Diego suspended a facial recognition program in advance of a new … Read More “Modern Mass Surveillance: Identify, Correlate, Discriminate” »
Rebecca Wexler has an interesting op-ed about an inadvertent harm that privacy laws can cause: while law enforcement can often access third-party data to aid in prosecution, the accused don’t have the same level of access to aid in their defense: The proposed privacy laws would make this situation worse. Lawmakers may not have set … Read More “How Privacy Laws Hurt Defendants” »
Interesting essay arguing that we need better legislation to protect cybersecurity whistleblowers. Congress should act to protect cybersecurity whistleblowers because information security has never been so important, or so challenging. In the wake of a barrage of shocking revelations about data breaches and companies mishandling of customer data, a bipartisan consensus has emerged in support … Read More “The Importance of Protecting Cybersecurity Whistleblowers” »
The major tech companies, scared that states like California might impose actual privacy regulations, have now decided that they can better lobby the federal government for much weaker national legislation that will preempt any stricter state measures. I’m sure they’ll still do all they can to weaken the California law, but they know they’ll do … Read More “Major Tech Companies Finally Endorse Federal Privacy Regulation” »
The California legislature unanimously passed the strongest data privacy law in the nation. This is great news, but I have a lot of reservations. The Internet tech companies pressed to get this law passed out of self-defense. A ballot initiative was already going to be voted on in November, one with even stronger data privacy … Read More “California Passes New Privacy Law” »
This story of leaked Australian government secrets is unlike any other I’ve heard: It begins at a second-hand shop in Canberra, where ex-government furniture is sold off cheaply. The deals can be even cheaper when the items in question are two heavy filing cabinets to which no-one can find the keys. They were purchased for … Read More “Cabinet of Secret Documents from Australia” »
New paper: “Policy measures and cyber insurance: a framework,” by Daniel Woods and Andrew Simpson, Journal of Cyber Policy, 2017. Abstract: The role of the insurance industry in driving improvements in cyber security has been identified as mutually beneficial for both insurers and policy-makers. To date, there has been no consideration of the roles governments … Read More “A Framework for Cyber Security Insurance” »