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.
"Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington, said this clearly violates a user's expectation of what will happen based on the design of the site.
"“In comparison to the automotive industry today, the automated driving industry will likely bear a bigger slice of a smaller pie of total crash costs,” writes Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of Southern California and an expert on the law of self-driving cars."
""The Supreme Court appropriately understood the importance of the internet to the way politics and free expression occur right now," says Neil Richards, a professor at Washington University Law School, who specializes in First Amendment law. "We cannot have a functioning First Amendment that doesn't take First Amendment activity in a digital context into account.""
"And yet, according to Danielle Citron, author of the book Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, there are 21 crimes that have to do explicitly with speech—things like threats, extortion, aiding and abetting, and conspiracy. None of these types of speech are protected by the First Amendment. “If the First Amendment’s a house, where inside speech is protected, threats can’t walk in the door. Neither can extortion. Neither can solicitation of a crime,” Citron says. In other words, not all speech is covered by the First Amendment's proverbial roof."
"Richard Salgado, director of law enforcement and international security at Google, said in response to questions from Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) that ECPA “is pretty aged” and updates to the law are “quite urgent.” ECPA overhaul “increases privacy protections and enhances law enforcement access” to data stored abroad, he said."
"According to Danielle Citron, a professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, and a leader in the fight against online harassment and revenge porn, there need to be repercussions for harmful online behaviour, just as there are consequences for the offline equivalent.
"It's true that we are in the early stages of learning about the harm that can result from online behaviour, but we should view what happens online and off the same way."
"When you pass a law, you create legality where there wasn’t,” says Malkia Cyril of the Center for Media Justice, a Bay Area nonprofit. “We create the legal framework where they can be legally abused.”
Cyril is opposed to police body cameras, and is skeptical that use policies, such as those arbitrated through CCOPS legislation, will be enough to rein in the abuse of surveillance in over-policed communities.
“Whether or not you have a use policy, does not mean there’s a way to enforce a use policy,” Cyril says."
""This court decision is a disaster for families of incarcerated people, a large percentage of whom are low-income and people of color," Malkia Cyril, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice, a nonprofit digital rights group, told Motherboard.
"Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who tracks self-driving cars, said the Delphi-Transdev project would be among the first to carry passengers on roads without human backup drivers.
"But the information provided by TigerSwan could have helped police forces overcome that prohibition. Elizabeth Joh, a private security legal scholar at the University of California, Davis, referred to such techniques as a “potential end run on the basic constitutional restraints we place upon police.”"
"Finding child porn is one thing; courts have typically deferred to law enforcement on such matters, said Scott Shackelford, an associate professor of business law and ethics who chairs the cybersecurity program at Indiana University in Bloomington.
But if the feds’ data snooping extends beyond illicit pictures, “it poses some prickly issues on (the) FBI’s engagement with (Best Buy) employees,” Shackelford said."
"On the other side of the argument, Catherine Crump, acting director of Samuelson Law for the Berkeley School of Law, focused her argument on the dangers of providing a backdoor to any device to the government and expect it to only be used by the “good guys.”
She drew a parallel between handing the FBI a second master key to iPhones and recent worldwide WannaCry ransomware attack, which was launched using leaked National Security Agency (NSA) exploits.
"Crump also made that point. “The problem with that is that you cannot build a back door that works only for the U.S. government, good guys, or other people with good motives.”"
"Morgan Weiland, an affiliate scholar with Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, says the blocked tweeters’ complaint could air key questions if it ends up in court. Does the public forum concept apply in privately run social media? Does it matter if an account is a politician’s personal account, not an official one?"
""The question of whether the President’s Twitter feed is a public forum is a more complicated question," says Neil Richards, a professor at Washington University's Law school, specializing in First Amendment theory. "The law here is famously muddled, because it’s trying to prevent the government from discriminating against people who speak on public streets and parks, but it’s trying to fight the urge to make everything a public forum.""
"Malkia Cyril, executive director at the Center for Media Justice, said: “Communities of color across the United States depend on an open Internet to thrive. From resisting police violence to demanding fair wages – the political voice and economic opportunity that the Internet enables must remain protected by Title II net neutrality. Trump’s FCC seeks to wall these communities off from the power of the internet as a mobilizing tool and an equalizer.
"“It’s playing whack-a-mole,” said Richard Forno, who directs the graduate cybersecurity program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “The bad guys are not constrained by the law. That’s why they’re bad guys.”"
""Are politicians reacting quickly enough? No, but they never do." Bryant Walker-Smith, Associate Professor of Law, University of South Carolina, said."
"But the information provided by TigerSwan could have helped police forces overcome that prohibition. Elizabeth Joh, a private security legal scholar at UC Davis, referred to such techniques as a “potential end run on the basic constitutional restraints we place upon police.”"
"As a longtime political activist, Malkia Cyril knows how smartphones helped fuel Black Lives Matter protests with outraged tweets and viral videos. But now Cyril is having second thoughts about her iPhone.
Is it a friend or a foe?