Cyberwar and Cyberespionage

My paper “Ghost in the Network” is available from SSRN. It’s forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. I’m appending the abstract and (weirdly, but I hope it will become apparent why) the conclusion below. Comments welcomed. Abstract Cyberattacks are inevitable and widespread. Existing scholarship on cyberespionage and cyberwar is undermined by its futile [...]

Privacy, Security, and Cybercrime

In a forthcoming paper, I argue that security and privacy issues differ in important ways that are typically neglected by both scholars and courts. If you’re in Chicago at the end of the week, you can hear me drone on about the piece on a panel on cybercrime at a symposium at Northwestern University School [...]

Whereupon I Depress Lifehacker Readers

Because DVD ripping is illegal if you bypass DRM. Which, most of the time, you have to.

Petraeus and Privacy

The resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus, after a cyberharassment investigation brought his affair with biographer Paula Broadwell to light, has generated a fascinating upsurge in privacy worries. (Side note: I believe “working with my biographer” has now superseded “hiking the Appalachian Trail” as the top euphemism for infidelity). Orin Kerr has an excellent summary [...]

Research Project on State Information Laws

My friend Sasha Romanosky, a research fellow at the Information Law Institute at NYU and the co-author of a great paper on data breach notification laws, is looking for your help with a research project: Greetings, I am involved in a research project that examines state laws affecting the flow of personal information. This information could [...]

Censorship v3.1

I have a new essay up on SSRN, titled Censorship v3.1. It’s under consideration by the peer-reviewed journal IEEE Internet Computing. Here’s the abstract: Internet censorship has evolved. In Version 1.0, censorship was impossible; in Version 2.0, it was a characteristic of repressive regimes; and in Version 3.0, it spread to democracies who desired to [...]

When Cybersecurity Makes Things Worse

Adam Dachis has an interesting and worrisome post up at Lifehacker. (Disclosure: he kindly asked me for input into the post.) It thinks about a post-CISPA world, where privacy exists only at the behest of companies who hold our information. CISPA would immunize these firms for sharing information with the federal government, so long as [...]

The Myth of Perfection

As promised, The Myth of Perfection is now available at the Wake Forest Law Review Online.

(Im)Perfection

I have a short article coming out in the Wake Forest Law Review Online, about the pursuit of perfection in cyberlaw. Here’s the introduction: Cyberlaw is plagued by the myth of perfection. Consider three examples: censorship, privacy, and intellectual property. In each, the rhetoric and pursuit of perfection has proved harmful, in ways this Essay [...]

Wired, and Threatened

I have a short op-ed on how technology provides both power and peril for journalists over at JURIST. Here’s the lede: Journalists have never been more empowered, or more threatened. Information technology offers journalists potent tools to gather, report and disseminate information — from satellite phones to pocket video cameras to social networks. Technological advances have [...]