Wednesday, July 24, 2019


Computer Security training.
Phishing Emails Have Become Very Stealthy. Here Are 5 Ways to Spot Them Every Time
Most phishing emails appear completely legitimate, often by imitating a company's logo using high-quality graphics and including opt-out instructions. For this reason, it's quite common for recipients to be fooled, and even large companies have fallen prey to these scams. SiteLock has published a round-up of some recent phishing examples to demonstrate the prevalence of these scams and how to protect against them.




Some IoT background.
Now Available: IoT Webinar Series — Cyberthreats in the Internet of Things
On July 16, 2019, Nathan Salminen, Allison Holt, and Paul Otto from the Hogan Lovells Privacy and Cybersecurity and Litigation teams presented a webinar, “Cyberthreats in the Internet of Things” where they explored some techniques that can be used to exploit potential vulnerabilities in connected devices and how those types of events impact organizations from a regulatory and litigation perspective.
The speakers discussed unique litigation and technical risks related to the IoT ecosystem and some of the technical aspects of hacking threats to connected devices, how those threats may differ from other cyberthreats, and the legal implications of such threats.
To view the webinar recording and to download the presentation slides, please click here.




These fines add up. At what point will Facebook notice them?
Facebook to pay separate $100 million SEC fine over Cambridge Analytica scandal
It's a fraction of the FTC settlement.


(Related)
Opinion | We Need a New Government Agency to Fight Facebook
… . As Tony Romm reported in The Washington Post this week, the F.T.C. had originally conceived of significantly tougher punishments for Facebook, including fines exceeding tens of billions of dollars as well as direct liability for the company’s c.e.o., Mark Zuckerberg. The report lays out the nuance of the settlement negotiation process, and what I found striking was how it seemed as if — despite being the party in violation of the rules — Facebook appeared to have the upper hand:
Internally, the agency knew that it wasn’t guaranteed to get a multibillion dollar fine and other new commitments from a federal judge. Adding to the trouble, the agency, armed with a relatively small $306 million budget in 2018 that supported roughly 1,100 employees, had to confront the possibility that it might be outmatched in such litigation … A loss also could have immensely damaged the agency, perhaps setting a legal standard that curtailed the commission’s authority to police other tech giants for their privacy and security practices.
Facebook, in other words, is too big to fight. And so it received a fine that is roughly equivalent to a month of the company’s yearly revenue.




Costly, aren’t they?
Your business hit by a data breach? Expect a bill of $3.92 million
On Tuesday, IBM Security released its annual study, the Cost of a Data Breach Report, to estimate both the immediate and ongoing expense of a data breach. According to the company, the cost of a data breach has risen by 12 percent over the course of five years, and organizations can expect to pay an average of $3.92 million.


(Related) Possible appendix to the Computer Security budget request?
In Just One Evil Internet Minute, Over Two Phish Are Detected And $2.9 Million Is Lost To Cybercrime
RiskIQ, the global leader in attack surface management, released its annual “Evil Internet Minute” report today. The company tapped proprietary global intelligence and third-party research to analyze the volume of malicious activity on the internet, revealing that cybercriminals cost the global economy $2.9 million every minute last year, a total of $1.5 trillion.
RiskIQ’s Evil Internet Minute infographic can be found here: https://www.riskiq.com/infographic/evil-internet-minute-2019/




Not just no, hell no! I teach my students to generate encryption using the RSA algorithm in about 30 minutes. Anyone (terrorists, crooks, attorneys general) could do the same. According to the 2018 wiretap report (https://www.uscourts.gov/statistics-reports/wiretap-report-2018) only 146 of 2937 wiretaps encountered encryption. Roughly 5%.
US Attorney General Says Encryption Creates Security Risk
U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr said Tuesday that increased encryption of data on phones and computers and encrypted messaging apps are putting American security at risk.
Barr’s comments at a cybersecurity conference mark a continuing effort by the Justice Department to push tech companies to provide law enforcement with access to encrypted devices and applications during investigations.
There have been enough dogmatic pronouncements that lawful access simply cannot be done,” Barr said. “It can be, and it must be.”




I ask my students if they read the GDPR law and articles and immediately said, “There’s money to be made here!” If not, why not?
5 data privacy startups cashing in on GDPR
Aside from GDPR, Europe is also weighing up a new ePrivacy Regulation, which covers individuals’ privacy in relation to electronic communications. Elsewhere, countries and jurisdictions around the world are increasingly adopting their own privacy-focused regulations, with the likes of China and Russia already instilling local data residency requirements for citizens. And the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) designed to enhance privacy rights of consumers living in the state will take effect on Jan 1, 2020.
Amid all this turmoil, companies are emerging to capitalize on the growing demand for data privacy tools, both for regulatory compliance and consumer peace of mind. In the past month alone, at least five such companies have raised sizable sums of cash for various data privacy, protection, and compliance products. Here’s a quick look at the companies and what they do.




Do they actually go together?
Artificial Intelligence and Law: An Overview
Surden, Harry, Artificial Intelligence and Law: An Overview (June 28, 2019). Georgia State University Law Review, Vol. 35, 2019; U of Colorado Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 19-22. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3411869
Much has been written recently about artificial intelligence (AI) and law. But what is AI, and what is its relation to the practice and administration of law? This article addresses those questions by providing a high-level overview of AI and its use within law. The discussion aims to be nuanced but also understandable to those without a technical background. To that end, I first discuss AI generally. I then turn to AI and how it is being used by lawyers in the practice of law, people and companies who are governed by the law, and government officials who administer the law. A key motivation in writing this article is to provide a realistic, demystified view of AI that is rooted in the actual capabilities of the technology. This is meant to contrast with discussions about AI and law that are decidedly futurist in nature.”




Toward automating lawyers.
Legaltech startup Genie AI scores £2M seed for its ‘intelligent’ contract editor
Genie AI, a legaltech startup and Entrepreneur First alumni, has raised £2 million in funding. The round is a combination of equity and a U.K. government grant, and will be used to continue development of the company’s “intelligent” contract editor for law firms and an upcoming product targeting GDPR compliance.
… “Lawyers always tell us ‘I know I’ve done something like that before,’ but in large firms it’s a real pain to dig past drafting out of emails, document management systems and the minds of senior lawyers,” says Genie AI co-founder and CEO Rafie Faruq. “SuperDrafter solves this by automatically curating relevant knowledge from around the firm, and recommending clauses to lawyers as they draft, in real time.”
The broader idea is that SuperDrafter can enable lawyers to benefit from the “collective intelligence” — both past and present — of an entire law firm. It does this by machine reading thousands of documents confidentially and then analyses variations of the same clause to deuce market standards and allow lawyers to negotiate the best deal for their clients.




Toward automating courts.
E-Nudging Justice: The Role of Digital Choice Architecture in Online Courts
Sela, Ayelet, E-Nudging Justice: The Role of Digital Choice Architecture in Online Courts (March 18, 2019). 2019 Journal of Dispute Resolution 127 ( 2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3414176
Justice systems around the world are launching online courts and tribunals in order to improve access to justice, especially for self-represented litigants (SRLs). Online courts are designed to handhold SRLs throughout the process and empower them to make procedural and substantive decisions. To that end, they present SRLs with streamlined and simplified procedures and employ a host of user interface design and user experience strategies (UI/UX). Focusing on these features, the article analyzes online courts as digital choice environments that shape SRLs’ decisions, inputs and actions, and considers their implications on access to justice, due process and the impartiality of courts. Accordingly, the article begins to close the knowledge gap regarding choice architecture in online legal proceedings….”




Some AI background. All corporate AI is trivial?
Is This the AI We Should Fear?
We scientists want to understand intelligence as well as create machines that are intelligent. We want to create companion machines in ageing societies, machines that can teach our children math or serve as perceptive personal assistants. We’d like to build a robot that cooks an exotic meal for you with recipes from the internet or even teach you how to play bridge. We don’t just want to build machines that interact with humans in a superficial manner while pretending to be deep.
In sum, the AI which we now see is only the crust of a would-be intelligent entity, but this limited version is what corporate interest lies in. Indeed, this AI is only the tip of the machine-intelligence iceberg, and the corporate world does not seem to be interested in expanding its limits to do more, do better. And it’s likely they won’t until it makes commercial sense for them to do so.




Should not be interesting.
Big tech's antitrust wipeout: $33 billion erased from the value of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google after DOJ announces probe
The DOJ on Tuesday said it was launching a broad investigation into whether "online platforms" were illegally harming their competitors and stifling innovation.
Here's how things stood at 5:30 a.m. ET:
  • Alphabet: Down 0.96%, wiping $7.6 billion off its value
  • Amazon: Down 1%, a $9.8 billion hit to its market cap
  • Apple: Down 1.04%, a $6.8 billion drop in value
  • Facebook: Down 1.46%, erasing $8.4 billion in value

Put together, the losses represent around $33 billion of lost value for the tech companies.




Perspective. At that price, even I might buy one.
The Hottest Phones for the Next Billion Users Aren’t Smartphones
The hottest phones for the world’s next billion users aren’t made by smartphone leaders Samsung Electronics Co. or Apple Inc. In fact, they aren’t even smartphones.
Millions of first-time internet consumers from the Ivory Coast to India and Indonesia are connecting to the web on a new breed of device that only costs about $25. The gadgets look like the inexpensive Nokia Corp. phones that were big about two decades ago.



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