Year: 2013

Social Media Raises More 1st Amendment Questions in Court

December 28, 2013 Administrator Leave a comment Justice

Fear of juror Googling didn’t justify order to remove pages from lawyer website, appeals court says (ABA Journal, 4 Nov 2013) – A judge violated a lawyer’s First Amendment rights when he ordered the lawyer to take down references to asbestos wins on her website during a 2011 trial on similar issues, a California appeals court has ruled. The Second District Court of Appeal ruled on behalf of lawyer Simona Farrise last week, the Recorder reports. The order was a prior restraint on speech that violated the U.S. and California constitutions, according to the decision (PDF) by the California Second District Court of Appeal. The trial judge, Thomas Anderle of Santa Barbara County, had ordered Farrise to remove two pages from her website touting victories in asbestos cases against Ford Motor Co., one of the automaker defendants in the suit being tried before Anderle. The plaintiffs, Richard and Christie Steiner, had claimed asbestos exposure from Richard’s Steiner’s work on automobiles contributed to his lung cancer. One Web page subject to the order touted a $1.6 million verdict against Ford and others. The write-up asserted that “at least one jury managed to successfully navigate defendants’ courtroom confusion and find these companies at fault.” The other Web page, also ordered removed, described a $4.35 million verdict against Ford. Volkswagen Group of America had sought removal of the Web pages, citing the possibility that a juror would find it, and Ford Motor Co. joined in the motion. Anderle granted the request, though he also told jurors they could not Google the lawyers and could not conduct independent research. Jury instructions, coupled with the possibility of contempt for those who disobey, is the proper way to handle the issue, the appeals court said.

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/KROMKRATHOG.

Creative Commons’ New Features

December 26, 2013 Administrator Leave a comment Copyright

Creative Commons next generation licenses — Welcome version 4.0! (Creative Commons, 25 Nov 2013) – We proudly introduce our 4.0 licenses, now available for adoption worldwide. The 4.0 licenses — more than two years in the making — are the most global, legally robust licenses produced by CC to date. We have incorporated dozens of improvements that make sharing and reusing CC-licensed materials easier and more dependable than ever before. The 4.0 licenses are extremely well-suited for use by governments and publishers of public sector information and other data, especially for those in the European Union. This is due to the expansion in license scope, which now covers sui generis database rights that exist there and in a handful of other countries. Among other exciting new features are improved readability and organization, common-sense attribution, and a new mechanism that allows those who violate the license inadvertently to regain their rights automatically if the violation is corrected in a timely manner. You can find highlights of the most significant improvements on our website, track the course of the public discussion and evolution of the license drafts on the 4.0 wiki page, and view a recap of the central policy decisions made over the course of the versioning process.

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/lamnee.

Cyberattacks while driving? A Senator wants answers

December 23, 2013 Administrator Leave a comment Security

Senator wants cybersecurity answers from automakers (Tom’s Guide, 5 Dec 2013) – A U.S. senator has asked 20 automobile manufacturers how each plans to stave off wireless hacking attempts on vehicle computer systems, as well as prevent violations of driver privacy. “I write to request information regarding your company’s protections against the threat of cyberattacks or unwarranted invasions of privacy related to the integration of wireless, navigation and other technologies into and with automobiles,” wrote Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass, in a letter to Daniel Akerson , CEO of General Motors, on Monday (Dec. 2). Markey’s questions imply that he wants carmakers to apply computer-industry security processes, including implementation of anti-virus software, incident logging, incident-response planning, software vulnerability patching and third-party penetration testing – the last of which would stage real hacker attacks on mass-production vehicles. Markey, one of the half-dozen lawmakers on Capitol Hill who has demonstrated a clear understanding of computer technology, cited research done earlier this year by two Pentagon-funded “white hat” hackers. “In a recent study that was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA),” Markey wrote, “Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek demonstrated their ability to directly connect to a vehicle’s computer systems, send commands to different ECUs through the CAN and thereby control the engine, brakes, steering and other critical vehicle components.”

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/stockimages.

The Truth About Bitcoin

December 19, 2013 Administrator Leave a comment Finance

How the Bitcoin protocol actually works (by Michael Nielsen and recommended by Bruce Schneier, 6 Dec 2013) – Many thousands of articles have been written purporting to explain Bitcoin, the online, peer-to-peer currency. Most of those articles give a hand-wavy account of the underlying cryptographic protocol, omitting many details. Even those articles which delve deeper often gloss over crucial points. My aim in this post is to explain the major ideas behind the Bitcoin protocol in a clear, easily comprehensible way. We’ll start from first principles, build up to a broad theoretical understanding of how the protocol works, and then dig down into the nitty-gritty, examining the raw data in a Bitcoin transaction. Understanding the protocol in this detailed way is hard work. It is tempting instead to take Bitcoin as given, and to engage in speculation about how to get rich with Bitcoin, whether Bitcoin is a bubble, whether Bitcoin might one day mean the end of taxation, and so on. That’s fun, but severely limits your understanding. Understanding the details of the Bitcoin protocol opens up otherwise inaccessible vistas.

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Image courtesy of techinasia.com/bitcoin-illegal-thailand/cdn.btcpedia.com.

 

 

FBI Malware a Fourth Amendment Violation?

December 17, 2013 Administrator Leave a comment Privacy

FBI surveillance malware in bomb threat case tests constitutional limits (ArsTechnica, 6 Dec 2013) – The FBI has an elite hacker team that creates customized malware to identify or monitor high-value suspects who are adept at covering their tracks online, according to a published report. The growing sophistication of the spyware—which can report users’ geographic locations and remotely activate a computer’s camera without triggering the light that lets users know it’s recording—is pushing the boundaries of constitutional limits on searches and seizures, The Washington Post reported in an article published Friday. Critics compare it to a physical search that indiscriminately seizes the entire contents of a home, rather than just those items linked to a suspected crime. Former US officials said the FBI uses the technique sparingly, in part to prevent it from being widely known. The 2,000-word article recounts an FBI hunt for “Mo,” a man who made a series of threats by e-mail, video chat, and an Internet voice service to detonate bombs at universities, airports, and hotels across a wide swath of the US last year. After tracing phone numbers and checking IP addresses used to access accounts, investigators were no closer to knowing who the man was or even where in the world he was located. Then, officials tried something new. “The FBI’s elite hacker team designed a piece of malicious software that was to be delivered secretly when Mo signed onto his Yahoo e-mail account, from any computer anywhere in the world, according to the documents,” reporters Craig Timberg and Ellen Nakashima wrote. “The goal of the software was to gather a range of information—Web sites he had visited and indicators of the location of the computer—that would allow investigators to find Mo and tie him to the bomb threats.” “We have transitioned into a world where law enforcement is hacking into people’s computers, and we have never had public debate,” Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Washington Post, speaking of the case against Mo. “Judges are having to make up these powers as they go along.”

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/renjith krishnan.

British Gov: Want the Job?…How’s Your Firewall?

December 16, 2013 Administrator Leave a comment Security

Firms will need cyber “badge” to win some British govt business (Reuters, 12 Dec 2013) – Britain will announce on Thursday that firms wishing to bid for certain areas of government procurement will have to meet a new standard demonstrating basic levels of cyber security. The scheme forms part of the latest plank of Britain’s attempt to counter a growth in hostile cyber assaults, which has been earmarked as a top national security issue but whose progress has come in for severe criticism from lawmakers. The plans will include creation of a government-backed cyber standard for businesses which would be adopted for future procurement, while also designed to give insurers, investors and auditors something “they can bite on” when they weigh how good companies are at managing risks.

Is this a necessary precaution, a protectionist measure, an innovation killer, or all of the above?

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/Victor Habbick.