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.
In recent weeks, Johannesburg’s computer network was held for ransom by a hacker group called Shadow Kill Hackers. This was the second time in three months a ransomware attack has hit South Africa’s largest city. This time, however, hackers didn’t pose the usual threat. Read more about Hackers are now targeting councils and governments, threatening to leak citizen data
Fifty years ago, a UCLA computer science professor and his student sent the first message over the predecessor to the internet, a network called ARPANET. Read more about 5 milestones that created the internet, 50 years after the first network message
Facial recognition technology, once a darling of Silicon Valley with applications for policing, spying and authenticating identities, is suddenly under fire. Read more about What Happens When Employers Can Read Your Facial Expressions?
Thursday evening, the Attorney General, the Acting Homeland Security Secretary, and top law enforcement officials from the U.K. and Australia sent an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg. The letter emphasizes the scourge of child abuse content online, and the officials call on Facebook to press pause on end-to-end encryption for its messaging platforms. Read more about Content Moderation for End-to-End Encrypted Messaging
Not long ago, Consumer Reports launched an investigation into Facebook and discovered something surprising. Read more about Why You Can’t Really Consent to Facebook’s Facial Recognition
[Stanford's Daphne Keller is a preeminent cyberlawyer and one of the world's leading experts on "intermediary liability" -- that is, when an online service should be held responsible for the actions of this user. She brings us a delightful tale of Facebook's inability to moderate content at scale, which is as much of a tale of the impossibility (and foolishness) of trying to support 2.3 billion users (who will generate 2,300 one-in-a-million edge-cases every day) as it is about a specific failure. Read more about That time my husband reported me to the Facebook police: a case study
This past week, with some fanfare, Facebook announced its own version of the Supreme Court: a 40-member board that will make final decisions about user posts that Facebook has taken down. The announcement came after extended deliberations that have been described as Facebook’s “constitutional convention.” Read more about Facebook Restricts Speech by Popular Demand
Submission to the Australian Independent National Security Legislation Monitor's review of the Assistance and Access Act 2018. Read more about Submission to the Australian Independent National Security Legislation Monitor
The client shows his lawyer a video he says he took on his cell phone. It shows the defendant saying things that, if seen by the jury, will be a slam dunk for the client’s case. The attorney includes the video in her list of evidence for trial, but the defendant’s lawyers move to strike. They claim it’s a fake. What’s the plaintiff’s lawyer—and the judge—to do?
Welcome to trial practice in the new world of "deepfake" videos. Read more about Too Good to Be True?
