Something
strange. Feeling guilty? Nah. Rich enough? Maybe. Hoping the
cops stop chasing them? Probably.
Shade
(Troldesh) ransomware shuts down and releases decryption keys
Catalin
Cimpanu reports:
The
operators of the Shade
(Troldesh) ransomware have
shut down over the weekend and, as a sign of goodwill, have released
more than 750,000 decryption keys that past victims can now use to
decrypt their files.
Security
researchers from Kaspersky Lab have confirmed
the
validity of the leaked keys and are now working on creating a free
decryption tool.
[From
the article:
While
the Shade gang explained why they released the decryption keys, they
did not explain why they shut down. Several theories have started to
form among ransomware experts, yet none are based on actual tangible
threat intelligence.
So
they can’t use the same faulty arguments again and again. Please!
Seattle,
Washington—On Tuesday, April 28, at 9 am, Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and
Stanford cybersecurity scholar Riana
Pfefferkorn will
ask a federal appeals court to embrace the public’s First Amendment
right to access judicial records and unseal a lower court’s ruling
denying a government effort to force Facebook to break the encryption
of its Messenger service.
Media
widely reported in 2018 that a federal court in Fresno, California,
denied
a
government request that would have required Facebook to compromise
the security and privacy promised to users of its Messenger
application. But the court’s order and details about the legal
dispute have been kept
secret, preventing
people from learning about how DOJ sought to break Facebook’s
encryption, and why a federal judge rejected those efforts.
ACLU
Surveillance and Cybersecurity Counsel Jennifer Granick will argue
on
behalf of EFF, ACLU, and Pfefferkorn that the public has a right to
know when and how law enforcement tries to compel a company—one
that hosts millions of people’s private communications—to
circumvent its own security features
and hand over the contents of its users’ voice calls and other
private conversations. This is especially important now, as the
Justice Department has repeatedly said that it wants access to
encrypted communications, a position that endangers people’s
privacy and undermines the security of everyone’s information.
The
court will hear the argument remotely via videoconference, which will
be livestreamed for the public on the website of the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
WHO:
ACLU Attorney Jennifer Granick
WHAT:
Oral arguments in ACLU
Foundation v. DOJ
WHEN:
Tuesday April 28 9 am
It’s
for your protection...
China
is installing surveillance cameras outside people's front doors ...
and sometimes inside their homes
The
morning after Ian Lahiffe returned to Beijing, he found a
surveillance camera being mounted on the wall outside his apartment
door. Its lens was pointing right at him.
After
a trip to southern China, the 34-year-old Irish expat and his family
were starting their two-week home quarantine, a mandatory measure
enforced by the Beijing government to stop the spread of the novel
coronavirus.
He
said he opened the door as the camera was being installed, without
warning.
"(Having
a camera outside your door is) an incredible erosion of privacy,"
said Lahiffe. "It just seems to be a massive data grab. And I
don't know how much of it is actually legal."
Although there
is no official announcement stating that cameras must be fixed
outside the homes of people under quarantine, it has been happening
in some cities across China since at least February, according to
three people who recounted their experience with the cameras to CNN,
as well as social media posts and government statements.
China
currently has no specific national law to regulate the use of
surveillance cameras, but the devices are already a regular part of
public life: they're often there watching when people cross the
street, enter a shopping mall, dine in a restaurant, board a bus or
even sit in a school classroom.
(Ditto)
Companies
equip cameras with AI to track social distancing and mask-wearing
Stores and
workplaces eager to avoid spreading the novel coronavirus are
equipping existing security cameras with artificial intelligence
software that can track compliance with health guidelines, including
social distancing and mask-wearing. Several companies told Reuters
the software will be crucial to staying open as concerns about
COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus, persist around
the world. It will allow
them to show not only workers and customers, but also insurers and
regulators, that they are monitoring and enforcing safe practices.
“The last
thing we want is for the governor to shut all our projects down
because no one is behaving,” said Jen Suerth, vice president at
Chicago-based Pepper Construction, which introduced software from
SmartVid.io this month to detect workers grouping at an Oracle
project in Deerfield, Illinois.
(Related)
How
Virus Surveillance And Civil Liberties Could Collide
Law360:
“…“Do you give up a little liberty to get a little protection?”
[per Dr. Anthony Fauci]… The answer seems to be yes in at least 23
countries, where dozens of “digital contact tracing” apps have
already been downloaded more than 50 million times. Authorities in
Australia, India, the United Kingdom and Italy are also deploying
drones with video equipment and temperature sensors. According to
experts like Fauci, such widespread public health surveillance is
essential to containing the deadly coronavirus that’s killed more
than 50,000 Americans and infected nearly three million people around
the world. But the devil is in the details for groups like the
American
Civil Liberties Union and
Amnesty International. For example, in an April 8 report, the ACLU
said engineers and tech experts agree that cellphone
location data cannot accurately identify contacts within six feet,
the generally accepted radius of COVID-19 transmission. The group
noted, however, that such data could
be accurate enough to place a person near a “bank, bar, mosque,
clinic or other privacy-sensitive location.”
“Location
data contains an enormously invasive and personal set of information
about each of us, with the potential to reveal such things as
people’s social, sexual, religious and political associations,”
the ACLU report states. “The potential for invasions of privacy,
abuse and stigmatization is enormous.” But considering the rash
of constitutional litigation already filed by churches and other
groups over social distancing orders, legal experts say it’s only
a matter of time before public health surveillance is tested in
court. There will be judicial review, but the response will depend
on the nature of the surveillance. “I think, definitely, there
will be cases,” said Eric Posner, a law professor at the
University of Chicago. “There will be judicial review, but the
response will depend on the nature of the surveillance.”
Perspective.
Should they ignore the opportunities?
Tech
giants are profiting — and getting more powerful — even as the
global economy tanks
The
global pandemic gives Silicon Valley titans a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to expand their power, crush rivals and change their
political fortunes.
…
the
global coronavirus pandemic is prompting a dramatic reversal of
fortune for the tech giants. Amazon and Facebook are capitalizing on
the fact that they are viewed as essential services for a public in
lockdown, while Google and Apple are building
tools that
will enable state health departments to provide a critical public
service, tracing
the course of
potential new covid-19 infections.
The
pace of the probes
against
these companies has slowed as regulators and lawyers are forced to
work from home. Emboldened tech lobbyists are fighting to delay the
enforcement of a new privacy law this summer in California, saying
they can’t comply by the July deadline due to the upheaval.
Permanent
(non-medical) change due to the pandemic? Was it illegal before?
German
minister backs creating legal right to work from home
AP:
“Germany’s labor minister wants to enshrine into law the right
to work from home if it is feasible to do so, even after the
coronavirus pandemic subsides. Labor Minister Hubertus Heil told
Sunday’s edition of the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that he aims to
put forward such legislation this fall. He said initial estimates
suggest the proportion of the work force working from home has risen
from 12% to 25% during the virus crisis, to around 8 million people.
“Everyone who wants to and whose job allows it should be able to
work in a home office, even when the corona pandemic is over,” Heil
was quoted as saying. “We are learning in the pandemic how much
work can be done from home these days.”…”
I agree (but
then, who cares.)
Georgia
Copyright Loss at High Court Could Jolt Many States
Bloomberg
Law:
“Georgia lost a close U.S. Supreme Court case over the state’s
ability to copyright its annotated legal code, in a ruling heralded
by public access advocates over dissent that lamented its disruptive
impact on states’ existing business arrangements. Copyright
protection doesn’t extend to annotations in the state’s official
annotated code, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote
for
a 5-4 majority on Monday that crossed ideological lines. Justices
Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh
joined Roberts. The high court clarified the scope of the
“government edits doctrine,” which had previously barred
copyright in materials created by judges. The doctrine’s logic
also applies to materials created by legislatures, Roberts wrote.
Because Georgia’s annotations are authored by an arm of the
legislature in the course of its official duties, the doctrine bars
copyright here, too. The “animating principle” behind the
doctrine, Roberts wrote, “is that no
one can own the law.”
Public.Resource.Org,
the pro-access organization that won the dispute, is pleased that the
court “rejected the possibility that a full understanding of the
law could be made available only to those who can afford to pay for
‘first-class’ access,” said Goldstein & Russell’s Eric
Citron,
who represented the group. He said they’re looking forward to
helping states expand access to their legal codes and they hope this
leads to greater public engagement with the law. It’s an important
ruling not just for copyright law but for civil liberties, said Ropes
and Gray’s Marta
Belcher.
She was lead counsel on a brief
supporting
the access group, filed on behalf of the Center for Democracy and
Technology and the Cato Institute…”
For legal
scholars… The law, according to Google.
Citation
Databases for Legal Scholarship
Beatty,
John, Citation Databases for Legal Scholarship (February 26, 2020).
39 Legal Reference Services Quarterly 56 (2020); University at
Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2019-014.
Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3577192
“Traditional
citation sources, such as Web of Science, index limited numbers of
law journals. Consequently, although not designed for generating
scholarship citation metrics, many law scholarship citation studies
use law-specific databases like Westlaw or LexisNexis to gather
citations. This article compares citation metrics derived from Web
of Science and Westlaw to metrics derived from Google Scholar and
HeinOnline’s citation tools. The study finds that HeinOnline and
Westlaw generate higher metrics than Web of Science, and Google
Scholar generates higher metrics than both.
However, metrics from all four sources are highly correlated, so
rankings generated from any may be very similar.”
Forensics 101
Find
the Date When a Web Page was First Published on the Internet
(Related)
Find
the Exact Date When a Google Maps Image was Taken
