Wednesday, August 14, 2019


A list for the toolkit.
The Best Web Browsers for Privacy and Security
Life Hacker: “Your web browser knows a lot about you, and tells the sites you visit a lot about you as well—if you let it. We’ve talked about which browsers are best at ad-blocking, but in this guide, we’re going to focus on the browsers that you’ll want to use to better conceal everything you’re up to from all the advertisers that want to track your digital life…”




Worth a try?
Time for a Cyber-Attack Exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act
Recently, a federal judge in New York dismissed the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) civil lawsuit against Russia, Wikileaks, and others stemming from the 2016 cyber-attack on the DNC. While much of the media attention has focused on the judge’s decision that, under the First Amendment, Wikileaks and other “second-level participants” could not be held liable for publishing documents stolen from the DNC, there has been scant attention paid to how and why the Russian government—the “primary wrongdoer,” according to the Judge—was found not legally liable for the cyberattack.
The decision should concern all Americans who care about protecting our nation from state-sponsored cyber-attacks. While the United States government has certain tools to punish state-sponsored cyberattacks against American targets—including sanctions, diplomatic action and sometimes criminal indictment—these options cannot force a foreign state to pay compensation for the damage caused by cyberattacks. Only civil liability for sovereign cyberattacks can impose monetary costs for such attacks.
In finding Russia not liable, the court relied on the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (“FSIA”)—a statute enacted decades before the internet existed in its current form. The FSIA provides foreign states immunity from civil suits in U.S. courts in all but a few circumstances. It’s clear that we need to update and amend the FSIA to reflect the modern reality of state-sponsored hacking by adding a cyber-attack exception to sovereign immunity.




It’s what they don’t say that gets them in trouble.
Facebook’s human-AI blend for audio transcription is now facing privacy scrutiny in Europe
Yesterday Bloomberg reported that Facebook uses human contractors to transcribe app users’ audio messages — yet its privacy policy makes no clear mention of the fact that actual people might listen to your recordings.
A page on Facebook’s help center also includes a “note” saying “Voice to Text uses machine learning” — but does not say the feature is also powered by people working for Facebook listening in.
A spokesperson for Irish Data Protection Commission told us: “Further to our ongoing engagement with Google, Apple and Microsoft in relation to the processing of personal data in the context of the manual transcription of audio recordings, we are now seeking detailed information from Facebook on the processing in question and how Facebook believes that such processing of data is compliant with their GDPR obligations.”




Unethical lawyers? Inconceivable!
Ethical 'Fails': Social Media Pitfalls and In-House Counsel
perhaps the most important question in an era in which attorneys are just one viral post or inflammatory tweet away from the unemployment line or even the disciplinary board, is whether in-house lawyers are using social media ethically and responsibly. As with their counterparts in private firms and government entities, there is no shortage of “cautionary tales for the Digital Age” originating from corporate legal departments.



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