The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School is a leader in the study of the law and policy around the Internet and other emerging technologies.
CIS in the news.
"Albert Gidari, director of privacy for Stanford University Law School’s Center for Internet and Society in California, thoroughly disagrees with his colleagues on the east coast. He told Quartz (in an email, of course) that the Massachusetts decision was “nonsense” and that this question didn’t even really need resolving.
"What measures can authorities undertake in order to avoid cases like the recent Equifax leaks? Should credit bureaus be tested for security breaches by authorities on a regular basis? If so, would the CFPB play a larger role in regulation and enforcement of bureaus?
"“Lawyers should be emphatically paying attention,” said Andrew Bridges, who represents tech firms in copyright disputes at Fenwick & West. “I think that any company that provides any kind of platform these days need to be absolutely on top of this stuff.”"
"It's not surprising that Russia or any other outside entity would try to influence U.S. elections, said Richard Forno, assistant director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity.
"Brian Nussbaum, assistant professor at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs at the State University of New York at Albany, said in the report that “the real question is the tier below these large global cities.”
“The NYPD [New York Police Department] has 35,000 police officers, which is almost three times the size of the FBI, so they have the capacity to specialize and work on these things in ways that even the top 20 cities in terms of population don’t.”"
"This could prove a problem for automakers as well as customers. “What you call something can be a kind of implicit promise that the feature is capable of behaving safely under certain circumstances,” says Ryan Calo, who specializes in cyber law and robotics at the University of Washington’s School of Law. A judge or jury could interpret Autopilot or ProPilot as a pledge that a vehicle can, well, pilot itself, regardless of the fine print."
""If Facebook has no reason to think that it should retain the data (subpoena, court order), then it can make choices about what appears on its platform," said Danielle Citron, a professor of law at the University of Maryland, where she teaches and writes about information privacy.
""Contrary to Rosenstein's inflammatory digs, strong encryption does help prevent crime, such as identity theft -- something 'responsible' companies need to worry about at a time when massive data breaches regularly dominate the headlines," said Riana Pfefferkorn, a cryptography fellow at Stanford Law School.
"Congress may finally be hacking away at national legislation that would firmly delineate who is responsible for regulating what about autonomous cars, but California has a big role to play here. “California is special,” says Bryant Walker Smith, a legal scholar with the University of South Carolina School of Law who studies self-driving vehicles.
"“I've worked with this statute for 20 years and I learn something new every time I look at it,” Albert Gidari, the Director of Privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society who has previously represented Google and Facebook on ECPA issues. “It's exceedingly complex.”"
"However, it's important to remember that this is a processing platform, Bryant Walker Smith, an assistant law professor at the University of South Carolina and an expert on the law of driverless vehicles, told TechRepublic. It may have the processing power, speed, and reliability needed for more sophisticated automated driving, but it is not in and of itself an automated driving system, he added.
"“The past two years have seen some real strides,” said Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland and the author of the book, “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace.”
Citron noted that Google and Bing now agree to keep “nonconsensual pornography” out of name searches, and Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft and Reddit ban the practice. “This allows victims to report content as abuse and if reports are legitimate (and not an anti-porn group) it will be removed,” she said via e-mail."
"To learn more about what the motives behind this kind of behavior might be, I spoke to University of Maryland law professor Danielle Citron. She’s the author of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, a 2014 book that explores mob shaming, internet stalking, and other forms of online abuse — much of it orchestrated by people who frequent /pol/ and similar forums.
"Henry Farrell, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, said he is more concerned about Russian efforts to hack state elections' systems.
"I think the threat to election machines is substantially more significant," he said."
"In large part, the SELF DRIVE Act should assuage companies’ concerns that their science projects could be sidelined by legislators. Even with a green light to build outside the current regulations, though, manufacturers won’t flood our roads with robocars the day after such a bill becomes law.
"“These ads are racist propaganda, pure and simple,” said Malkia Cyril, a Black Lives Matter activist in Oakland, Calif., and executive director for the nonprofit Center for Media Justice. “Whether they appear to be in support or in opposition to black civil rights is irrelevant. Their aim is to subvert democracy for everyone by using anti-black stereotypes — an idea as old as America.”"
"Professor Scott J. Shackelford from Indiana University, states, “Equifax is quickly becoming a case study of what not to do in response to a data breach, from withholding vital information from customers and regulators to charging customers to protect their breached data and directing them to a phishing site.”"
"“ECPA should also be updated to enable countries that commit to baseline privacy, due process, and human rights principles to make direct requests to US providers,” argued Google director of law enforcement and information security, Richard Salgado."
"Just as the US Patent Office problematically gave out patents in the past for computers doing simple things like counting votes or counting calories, the office seems prepared to give out patents on "using machine learning in obvious and expected ways." Companies like Google and Microsoft are seeking to acquire, and in some cases have acquired, patents on "fundamental machine-learning techniques," Nazer writes."
"But technology has slightly changed since then. Elizabeth Joh, a University of California, Davis, law professor who studies policing and surveillance, told me most people don’t realize the data they create when using everyday devices could someday be used against them by law enforcement. In fact, they probably don’t know much about their data at all. “Number one, we’re not really aware most of the time how much information we’re providing to these third parties,” Joh said.