Cybersecurity

Daniel Solove on the tradeoff between privacy and security

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Daniel Solove, professor at the George Washington University Law School, discusses his new book Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security. He suggests that developments in technology do not create a mutually exclusive relationship between privacy and national security. Solove acknowledges the interest government has in maintaining security within our technological world; however, Solove also emphasizes the value of personal privacy rights and suggests that certain procedures, such as judicial oversight on governmental actions, can be implemented to preserve privacy. This oversight may make national security enforcement slightly less effective, but according to Solove, this is a worthwhile tradeoff to ensure privacy protections.

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Ronald Rychlak on online gambling laws

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Ronald Rychlak, Mississippi Defense Lawyers Association Professor of Law and Associate Dean at the University of Mississippi School of Law, discusses his new article in the Mississipi Law Journal entitled, The Legal Answer to Cyber-Gambling. Rychlak briefly comments on the history of gambling in the United States and the reasons usually given to prohibit or regulate gambling activity. He then talks about why it’s so difficult to regulate internet gambling and gives examples of how regulators have tried to enforce online gambling laws, which often involves deputizing middlemen — financial institutions. Rychlak also discusses his legal proposal: create an official framework to endorse, regulate, and tax online gambling entities.

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Joseph Menn on the hunt for internet crime lords

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Joseph Menn, a Financial Times technology reporter and the author of Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who Are Bringing Down The Internet, discusses cyber crime. Menn says that one of the main challenges of cybersecurity is that the internet was never intended for many of the things it’s used for today, like e-commerce or critical infrastructure management. He talks about the implications of the internet still being in beta form and comments on the recent Sony data breach and other similar cyber attacks. Menn also discusses his book, telling a few anecdotes about the people who go beyond computer screens in pursuit of internet crime lords.

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Gavin Andresen on Bitcoin

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Gavin Andresen, project lead of the open source, decentralized, and anonymous virtual currency project Bitcoin, talks about the project. Andresen explains how the peer-to-peer currency functions and talks about what allows Bitcoin to operate without a central bank, why it doesn’t have to rely on intermediaries, and how it overcomes the double-spending problem. He also discusses the project’s implications for government regulation, what attracted him to the project, and Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakomoto’s motivation for creating the currency.

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Kevin Poulsen on cyber crime

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Kevin Poulsen, a senior editor at Wired News, former hacker, and author of Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground, discusses his new book. Poulsen first talks about how he became interested in hacking and why he was eventually sent to prison for it. He then discusses his book, a true crime account of Max Butler, a white hat hacker turned black hat who went from security innovator to for-profit cyber criminal to hacker of other hackers, eventually taking over the cyber crime underground. Poulsen finally comments on cyber security policy, noting that while many security vulnerabilities exist today, he suspects that legislation is not the answer.

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Sean Lawson tempers cyber doom

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Sean Lawson, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah and a contributor to the Forbes.com security blog, The Firewall, discusses his new Mercatus Center working paper, Beyond Cyber-Doom: Cyberattack Scenarios and the Evidence of History. Cyber security may be the new black, but it’s been a significant policy issue since the 1980s. Lawson talks about the current cyber security discourse, commenting on widespread conflation of diverse cyber threats, over-emphasis on hypothetical doom scenarios, and their effect on policy proposals. He then looks to the history of disasters, including blackouts, the attacks of 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina, to help analyze effects of potential cyber disasters. Lawson also discusses incorrect doomsday predictions about strategic bombardment and air power theory during WWII, and he offers some conclusions and policy recommendations based on his research.

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Evgeny Morozov on the dark side of internet freedom

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Evgeny Morozov, a visiting scholar at Stanford University, a fellow at the New America Foundation, and a contributor to Foreign Policy, the Boston Review, and the Wall Street Journal, talks about his new book, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. Morozov first discusses misperceptions about the effectiveness of American broadcasts and pamphlets to promote democracy and liberty during the Cold War. He then suggests consequences of bringing such historical baggage to internet policymaking, pointing out that many people today have faulty assumptions about the power of internet freedom to effect change in places like China, Russia, and Iran.

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Duncan Hollis on cyber security

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Duncan Hollis, professor of law and associate dean at Temple University Beasely School of Law, discusses cyber security and his recommendation to counter cyber exploits — an electronic SOS. Hollis gives a brief history of online threats, notes the difference between cyber attack and cyber espionage, discusses the difficulty of deterring online exploits due to the anonymity of the internet, and talks about how governments and individuals have responded to cyber threats. He then outlines his proposal — a duty to assist others when they are under duress online — which was inspired by laws of the sea and an episode in which a U.S. Navy warship aided a North Korean vessel that was under attack by Somali pirates.

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Tim Stevens on cyber war

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Tim Stevens, PhD candidate in the Dept. of War Studies, King’s College London, where he researches the politics of cybersecurity and cyberwarfare, and regular contributor to The Guardian, Forbes’ cybersecurity blog The Firewall, and Current Intelligence discusses cyberwar. Stevens talks about the current cybersecurity climate; nuances between cyberespionage, cybercrime, and cyberwar; the balance between roles of government and private sector; and differences in cybersecurity attitudes in the U.K. and the U.S.

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Evgeny Morozov on democracy, the limits of social networks, and cybersecurity

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Evgeny Morozov, Yahoo! Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and contributing editor for Foreign Policy, discusses the limits of social networks in promoting democracy. The discussion also turns to Morozov’s experience as a promoter of online freedom in Eastern Europe and cybersecurity.

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