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.
"“If you install a private corporation’s microphone-enabled device in your house, you should count on the fact that third parties may well access the information these devices detect,” Catherine Crump, co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, said in an email.
"Net neutrality rules were actually in place by 2011 when this happened. But Google Wallet was in a complicated position. Verizon wasn’t exactly blocking web traffic; it was refusing access to a feature of the phone.
"“It’s clear that this is a PR stunt,” says Malkia Cyril, executive director and co-founder of the Center for Media Justice, an Oakland-based group focused on the role of surveillance technology in incarcerating people of color. “That said, even a PR stunt can get some of our people free.”
"Encryption is the best tool people have for defending against hackers, cybercriminals and government surveillance, said Riana Pfefferkorn, a cryptography fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Still, “your communications encryption choices are only worth as much as the trustworthiness of the people you're talking to,” she said.
"University of Maryland, Baltimore County's cybersecurity graduate program director Richard Forno echoed Williams' analysis and said even a simple Google search could cull results that warned about our dire state of federal cybersecurity decades earlier.
"Government reports like this just literally say the same thing year after year: 'here are a couple of recommendations on how we can fix things' and a year goes by, and it says the exact same thing," Forno said.
"Facebook has a responsibility to be transparent about how it plans to evaluate news organizations, said Morgan Weiland, an attorney and PhD candidate at Stanford whose research focuses on how the big tech platform companies are handling their role in distributing news.
"If they're going to build out a team like this, they need to be more explicit about how they understand their role or what kind of company they see themselves as," Weiland said.
She continued: "They're giving us a lot of mixed signals.""
"“While Google’s statement rejects building AI systems for information gathering and surveillance that violates internationally accepted norms, we are concerned about this qualification,” said Peter Asaro, a professor at The New School and one of the authors of an open letter that calls on Google to cancel its Maven contract.
"The report raised an issue for Tesla vehicles with Autopilot, as well as other vehicles with adaptive cruise control, said Bryant Walker Smith, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law. “Stationary objects are also a challenge for many adaptive cruise control systems and automated emergency braking systems,” he said."
"The problems with the damaged highway divider do not “absolve Tesla of responsibility”, said Ryan Calo, a University of Washington law professor and expert in autonomous cars. “That doesn’t mean they are off the hook.”
Tesla’s designers may not have anticipated this specific kind of crash, he added: “The technology is being deployed before there is a clear sense of … what is adequately safe.”"
"The principles about surveillance were not specific enough, according to Peter Asaro, an associate professor at The New School who organized a letter from academics against Project Maven.
"The international norms surrounding espionage, cyberoperations, mass information surveillance, and even drone surveillance are all contested and debated in the international sphere," he said. "Ultimately, how the company enacts these principles is what will matter more than statements such as this.""
"Pichai's pledge regarding weapons was "really strong," Peter Asaro, associate professor of media studies at the New School in New York, told Business Insider. Asaro coauthor a letter to Google's managementlast month, signed by hundreds of academics and researchers, demanding that Google cease developing military technologies as well as calling for a ban on authonomous weapons.
"“Axon also makes tasers, so you could imagine drones being equipped with tasers or with tear gas, rubber bullets, and other weaponry,” said Harlan Yu, the executive director of Upturn, a policy nonprofit that works on social justice and technology issues."
"A first step for the professors is to measure the cultural bias in the standard data sets that many researchers rely on to train their systems. From there, they will move to the question of how to build data sets and algorithms without that bias. “We can ask how to mitigate bias; we can ask how to have human oversight over these systems,” says Narayanan. “Does a visual corpus even represent the world? Can you create a more representative corpus?”"
"“Even if you think Spotify should be making content moderation decisions based on artists’ off-platform conduct, it’s pretty clear that they lack in-house competence and capacity to make fair judgments about that conduct,” said Annemarie Bridy, professor of law and affiliate scholar at the Stanford University Center for Internet and Society."
"“We are calling on Google not to make weapons because Google has a special relationship with the public in virtue of the kind of personal data they are collecting — through our email, through Google Maps, through Android systems, through internet searches and all sorts of things,” said Peter Asaro, an associate professor at Stanford who co-chairs the International Committee for Robot Arms Control."
"Technically, it’s true that the immunities contained in Section 230 don’t exempt tech companies from criminal liability or from their duties to shareholders, says Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland and author of the book Hate Crimes in Cyberspace. “It’s only supposed to immunize platforms from liability that treats them as a speaker or publisher,” Citron says."
"“This is an example of the growing trend of authoritarian use of technology to track and stalk immigrant communities,” said Malkia Cyril, the executive director of the Center for Media Justice. “It’s absolutely a violation of our democratic rights, and we are definitely going to fight back.”"
"But the FCC's authority here is shaky, and some legal experts (like Stanford Professor Barbara van Schewick) have argued that when the FCC rolled back its Title II authority over ISPs, it also dismantled its right to tell these states what to do:
"The bill is on firm legal ground.
"“This is a real challenge, and whether and how we respond to it will be one of the defining legacies of our time,” said Neil Richards, the Thomas and Karole Green Professor of Law and internationally renowned expert on privacy law and freedom of expression.
"But lately, startups have learned to use the internet to their advantage whenever possible. “The climate for startups has improved since 2010,” Elizabeth Townsend Gard. social entrepreneurship professor at Tulane University, said last week. “With today’s Internet tools, you can start a business much more quickly and less expensively, and can often do it without a lawyer, an accountant or a web designer.” She unveiled a podcast with students early this year in far less time than it took to launch a bigger business in 2015."