Computer Security in the age of Covid. So there is a 50% chance you have been hit!

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/half-of-all-organizations-experienced-cyber-security-incidents-during-the-remote-working-period/

Half of All Organizations Experienced Cyber Security Incidents During the Remote Working Period

Half of all organizations experienced security incidents associated with remote working during the lockdown period, according to a report by Tessian. The “Securing the Future of Hybrid Working” report also found that phishing remained the most prevalent threat facing employees working remotely. While remote working was a predisposing factor for cyberattacks, the Tessian report found that most employees prefer hybrid working environments, with just 11% exclusively preferring office work.

Isn’t this a crime in most places by now?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-victims-arent-reporting-attacks-to-police-thats-causing-a-big-problem/?&web_view=true

Ransomware victims aren't reporting attacks to police. That's causing a big problem

… while ransomware is one of the most high-profile forms of cyberattack, Europol's report warns that it remains an under-reported crime as many organisations still aren't coming forward to law enforcement after falling victim.

Several law enforcement agencies across Europe say they've only heard of ransomware cases via reports in local media.

The report suggests that approaching police to start a criminal investigation was "not generally a priority" for victims, who are more concerned with maintaining business continuity and limiting reputational damage. For some, the idea of getting law enforcement involved could be seen as a risk to their reputation.

That's why some businesses are choosing to engage with what Europol describes as "private sector security firms" to investigate attacks or negotiate ransom payments, instead of approaching the authorities.

Perspective. Fortunately, humans did not have to read all these emails.

https://ciso.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/microsoft-blocked-13-billion-malicious-emails-in-2019/78486273

Microsoft blocked 13 billion malicious emails in 2019

Microsoft blocked over 13 billion malicious and suspicious mails in 2019, of which more than 1 billion were phishing credential attacks.

… according to Microsoft's annual Digital Defense Report.

Do precedents swim the Atlantic?

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/06/ecj-limits-government-spying-on-citizens-mobile-and-internet-data-.html

EU’s top court limits government spying on citizens’ mobile and internet data

… The European Court of Justice (ECJ), the EU’s highest legal authority, ruled Tuesday that member states cannot collect mass mobile and internet data on citizens.

Forcing internet and phone operators to carry out the “general and indiscriminate transmission or retention of traffic data and location data” is against EU law, the court explained in its ruling.

Will the US (or the rest of the EU) adopt these guidelines?

https://www.insideprivacy.com/data-privacy/french-supervisory-authority-publishes-final-version-of-cookie-guidelines-says-it-will-start-enforcing-them-in-april-2021/

French Supervisory Authority Publishes Final Version of Cookie Guidelines, Says It Will Start Enforcing Them in April 2021

On October 1, 2020, the French Supervisory Authority (“CNIL”) published the final version of its Guidelines on cookies and other tracking technologies (hereafter, “guidelines” – see announcement here, and guidelines here, in French), as well as an adjoining set of best practice recommendations (in French) with examples on how to implement the guidelines. In this blog post, we summarize the key points mentioned in the CNIL’s guidelines.

Let me ‘splain.

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-10-explanations-data-based-users-ai.html

Do explanations for data-based predictions actually increase users' trust in AI?

In recent years, many artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics researchers have been trying to develop systems that can provide explanations for their actions or predictions. The idea behind their work is that as AI systems become more widespread, explaining why they act in particular ways or why they made certain predictions could increase transparency and consequently users' trust in them.

Researchers at Bretagne Atlantique Research Center in Rennes and the French National Center for Scientific Research in Toulouse have recently carried out a study that explores and questions this assumption, with the hope of better understanding how AI explainability may actually impact users' trust in AI. Their paper, published in Nature Machine Intelligence, argues that an AI system's explanations might not actually be as truthful or transparent as some users assume them to be.

… More information: Erwan Le Merrer et al. Remote explainability faces the bouncer problem, Nature Machine Intelligence (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-020-0216-z

“Should” is a question for later...

https://slate.com/technology/2020/10/artificial-intelligence-job-interviews.html

Should Robots Be Conducting Job Interviews?

… Odds are, if you’re applying for the kinds of jobs that attract lots of applicants, you’re going to be interviewed by one eventually. It’s so prevalent that Fast Company ran an article telling readers about “4 things you must do to prep for an AI-powered job interview,” while LinkedIn runs a free A.I. video interview practice tool. And as much as the companies behind them tell me otherwise, you might not love it.

What if my AI is ‘better’ than your AI? Are you negligent?

https://www.bespacific.com/legal-analytics/

Legal Analytics

Alschner, Wolfgang, Legal Analytics (July 28, 2020). Forthcoming, AI and the Law in Canada, T. Scassa & F. Martin-Bariteau, eds. LexisNexis Canada, 2020, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3662196

“Lawyers across the world are beginning to use statistics, machine learning and data science to review contracts, investigate case law or predict judicial outcomes. This ability to mine law as data is known as legal analytics. Legal analytics promises to render legal analysis scalable as lawyers can quickly peruse hundreds, thousands or even millions of legal texts that would take months to read. Legal information thereby not only becomes more accessible, but legal services can be provided more efficiently and effectively helping to close the access-to-justice gap. Data and algorithms power such legal analytics. But whereas algorithms are often open source, access to legal documents such as statutes or cases in bulk is surprisingly restricted as data is often concentrated among a few large legal service providers. Creating a healthy eco-system for legal analytics to thrive thus requires open legal data, while protecting sensitive private information, as well as innovation and competition among providers.”

(Related)

https://www.bespacific.com/a-short-happy-guide-to-advanced-legal-research/

A Short & Happy Guide to Advanced Legal Research

Long, Ann Walsh, A Short & Happy Guide to Advanced Legal Research (Table of Contents and Chapter 6 on The Ethics of Online Legal Research) (August 11, 2020). A Short and Happy Guide to Advanced Legal Research (West Academic 2020) ISBN: 9781640207486, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3671870 – “Legal research and writing are the skills every practicing lawyer relies on to be successful, but every practicing lawyer also needs to be aware of the ethical issues associated with online legal research. This chapter will explore the ethical duty lawyers have to their clients while conducting legal research online. ABA Model Rule 1.1 imposes a duty of competence upon all lawyers and defines competent representation to include “the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.” Because conducting research is often an essential part of the “thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation,” this ethical component applies directly to legal research.

Today’s lawyers also need to understand whether litigation analytics and/or AI will be cost and time efficient for their client’s issue in order to be both competent and thorough. A lawyer’s duty of competence now includes a duty regarding technology, which includes new legal research technologies using artificial intelligence and litigation analytics. Lawyers must “keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology.” Thirty-seven jurisdictions have adopted an “ethical duty of technology competence” as part of their rules of professional conduct, and Florida and North Carolina now require specific technology Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credits. While there is not a consensus on what “technology” is — it can range from using email to creating smart contracts — conducting legal research online requires an understanding of the associated risks to your clients. The attached excerpt includes the table of contents for the book and the chapter on the ethics of online legal research. The chapter discusses the duty of competence related to AI and litigation analytics, cloud-based services and third-party vendors, preventing the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of client information, and reasonable fees…”

Or, they could collect my dumb questions…

https://www.bespacific.com/structuring-techlaw/

Structuring Techlaw

Crootof, Rebecca and Ard, BJ, Structuring Techlaw (July 30, 2020 – Published September 14, 2020). Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3664124 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3664124 – “Technological breakthroughs challenge core legal assumptions and generate regulatory debates. Practitioners and scholars usually tackle these questions by examining the impacts of a particular technology within conventional legal subjects — say, by considering how drones should be regulated under privacy law, property law, or the law of armed conflict. While individually useful, these siloed analyses mask the repetitive nature of the underlying questions and necessitate the regular reinvention of the regulatory wheel. An overarching framework — one which can be employed across technologies and across subjects — is needed. The fundamental challenge of tech-law is not how to best regulate novel technologies, but rather how to best address familiar forms of uncertainty in new contexts. Accordingly, we construct a three-part framework, designed to encourage a more thoughtful resolution of tech-law questions. It:

1. delineates the three types of tech-fostered legal uncertainty, which facilitates recognizing common issues;

2. requires a considered selection between permissive and precautionary approaches to technological regulation, given their differing distributive consequences; and

3. highlights tech-law-specific considerations when extending extant law, creating new law, or reassessing a legal regime.

This structure emphasizes the possibility of considered and purposeful intervention in the iterative and co-constructive relationship between law and technology. By making it easier to learn from the rich history of prior dilemmas and to anticipate future issues, this framework enables policymakers, judges, and other legal actors to make more just and effective regulatory decisions going forward…”

Perspective.

https://www.bespacific.com/crs-seminars-on-disruptive-technologies-videos/

CRS Seminars on Disruptive Technologies: Videos

CRS via LC – CRS Seminars on Disruptive Technologies: Videos, Updated October 5, 2020. “New technologies, and those that represent an evolutionary improvement of an existing tool or process, that exhibit the potential to have large-scale effects on social and economic activity are often referred to as “disruptive” technologies. They can disrupt existing markets, practices, and processes by displacing and replacing incumbent technologies and actors. The emergence of smartphones through the convergence of mobile phone and computing technologies, for example, profoundly affected the telecommunications sector—including its relevant market actors, service offerings, and hardware and software infrastructures. It has also impacted how individuals and groups communicate through voice, text, images, and video; consume and create media; access and disseminate information; and engage in leisure activities. The positive and negative short-, medium-, and long-term effects emerging technologies may have are difficult to predict and present a range of issues for Congress. Since the development trajectories and potential outcomes of emerging technologies are uncertain—some that show great promise may ultimately fail to develop as expected and others may have unintended yet profound impacts—systematic data to help guide policy development and legislation is sparse. To support Congress in examining these opportunities and issues, CRS has held a series of seminars for Congress designed to provide an opportunity for congressional staff to better understand the possible impacts of disruptive technologies of interest. In the seminars held to date, over 30government and private-sector experts discussed technical, economic, policy, and legal aspects of eight disruptive technology topics: advanced battery energy storage, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, commercial spaceflight, cybersecurity, gene editing, and quantum information science. This report describes each of the seminars in the series and provides links to videos of them that are available on the CRS website…”

Just in case.

https://www.bespacific.com/thingiverse/

Thingiverse

“Thingiverse is a free library of files for printing in 3D. Search or browse for a thing you want and there’s a good chance someone has already designed a model and posted a free version for downloading. Thingiverse has been around a while but I just got my first 3D printer so now I am singing its praises. Some models are easier to print than others, but the files are standard 3D format so you can easily edit, modify, or improve it any way you want. It’s like having a public library of e-things instead of e-books. Its existence is one of the reasons I got a 3D printer.”