Month: October 2016

Internet Governance

New Facebook Terror-tory: After Facebook recently revealed its plans to introduce to the American app store Free Basics—a zero-rated app that provides low income users with simplified content including news, health, weather, education, and Facebook access—speculation has mounted over the level of control the social media platform will have over the content these viewers can access, as well as the effectiveness of the app in bringing awareness of the internet.

Cutting Off Airbnb: In an effort to solve the state’s housing crisis, a new law makes it illegal in New York to advertise unoccupied apartments on Airbnb for durations of less than a month, but the home sharing company is now suing the state.

Privacy

R.I.P. Your Privacy: Google recently updated its privacy policy to specify that web-browsing data collected through its advertising network DoubleClick “may be” mixed in with personally identifiable information that Google stores through Gmail and other login accounts; the consequence of this new change is that ads can now target users based on their web searches, email content, and usernames.

This Eerie “Social Credit” System Will Determine Your Worth: The Communist Party in China has plans to create a system by 2020 called “Internet Plus,” which would monitor, collect, and analyze data on every citizen’s public and private interactions and then assign a “credit score” that would represent that person’s trustworthiness; good behavior will earn you rewards, but bad behavior will subject you to punishment, such as random inspections and increased daily supervision.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Hacking Away at Your Heart: In a report disputed by St. Jude Medical Inc. as a scheme to prompt a stock price drop, private research-based investment firm Muddy Waters has stated that implantable cardiac devices created by St. Jude are susceptible to hacking; the report points to tests where hackers could induce cardiac arrest by sending shocks to a patient’s heart from 10 feet away.

Internet Apocalypse: Last Friday, hackers used a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) to infiltrate one of the largest internet management companies in the US, leading to a shutdown of major websites throughout the country and some parts of Europe; the same software had been used in the two biggest DDoS attacks recorded, and researchers believe that such attacks are becoming more sophisticated.

Intellectual Property

Stopping Pirated Videos in Real Time: Cisco has developed a technology called Streaming Piracy Prevention that would allow content providers to automatically cut off live feeds of pirated videos, bypassing the usual notice-and-takedown procedure.

Free Expression and Censorship

YouTube Filter Possessed? For those who opt in to using the “Restricted Mode” filtering option on YouTube, several videos that are part of a series created by Prager University entitled “PragerU” and which feature prominent professors and thinkers discussing issues such as abortion, the Islamic State, and race from a conservative point of view, do not show up, despite that these videos have over 1 million views each and do not contain violent or sexual material.

Burying the Hatchet: A Harvard study, which analyzed political articles that were published and edited on Wikipedia over the past 15 years, has found that providing such a forum with specific guidelines for public contribution and debate has caused the contributors to become less partisan over time, suggesting that perhaps Wikipedia helps “de-radicalize” far-leaning individuals and makes the online community more moderate as a whole.

Practice Note

The Ghost of “Repeat Infringers” Past: The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled on a 10-year-old case between major record labels and now bankrupt website MP3Tunes, expanding the previous definition of “repeat infringers” which applied to only those who posted or uploaded copyrighted material several times, to now include those who also may unknowingly and repeatedly download copyrighted material for personal use.

On the Lighter Side

MIT’s Spooky Nightmare Machine: Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created an artificial intelligence project that uses a deep learning algorithm to generate horror images from normal photographs of things like cities, famous landmarks, and faces.

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Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law and Founding Academic Director, CLIP

N. Cameron Russell
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Editorial Fellows, CLIP
Nadia Kashem
Meghna Prasad

Internet Governance

Ethiopia Unplugs the Internet: The government of Ethiopia has shut down access to the internet in certain regions, after protests organized through social media killed almost 100 people; the protests were sparked by public outrage over the Ethiopian government’s marginalization and persecution of the Oromo and Amhara people.

Hopping over Netflix’s Virtual Borders: Netflix, which has country-exclusive licensing agreements for its movies and shows, is winning the fight against “unblocking companies” that allow their customers to bypass Netflix’s geo-restrictions to access content not available in certain areas.

Privacy

British Security Agencies Spy on Citizens: The UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal has ruled that British security agencies have illegally amassed large amounts of cell phone and internet usage data and other confidential information for the past 17 years without sufficient care or protection, in a failure of adherence to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which protects the right to privacy.

Stealing Data over Skype: Even without any malware, a Skype user can steal the other caller’s passwords and other private information with up to 91.7% accuracy simply by listening to the keystrokes over a VoIP connection, if he has some information about the victim’s computer and typing style—or with 42% accuracy without this information.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Hackers Coming into Your Home: Because of weak passwords and software vulnerabilities, hackers are increasingly targeting routers in people’s homes, obtaining access to devices such as IP cameras and digital video recorders.

The Aftermath of Being Hacked: After a company is hacked, the company or its employees may face significant regulatory fines, possible prison sentences, business failure from information leaked to competitors, lawsuits from its customers or suppliers, and damage to its reputation, which can cause far greater losses than can regulatory fines or lawsuits.

Intellectual Property

eBook Pirate Caught: The Spanish police conducted a raid and captured a man in Valencia who had illegally uploaded over 11,000 literary works to a server and also possessed a hard drive with infringing works on it; his uploaded works are said to have been used by over 400 websites and he is thought to have cheated the copyright owners out of at least 400,000 euros.

Patent Trolling: A Harvard research study has shown that one of the world’s largest patent-holding companies, Intellectual Ventures, currently owns nearly 500 patents that were originally assigned to private and state universities, despite some of these institutions having endorsed principles against licensing their patents to those who “rely primarily on threats of infringement to generate revenue.”

Free Expression and Censorship

Russian Media Censored by UK Treasury? Russian TV channel “Russia Today,” a broadcaster of conspiracy theories and the Kremlin’s anti-US views to English-speaking countries, has accused the UK government of impinging on its freedom of speech after NatWest, a member of the primarily state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland Group, decided to close the bank accounts of Russia Today’s broadcasters; the move, which has been denied by the UK’s Treasury, has been condemned by Russian MPs, the foreign ministry, and human rights officials.

No Porn for California: On Wednesday, several porn websites blocked access to Californians, who were instead greeted with a message to vote against Proposition 60 on next month’s ballot, since it would give any California citizen the right to sue producers and distributors of pornographic material whose performers failed to use protection; these websites have also said that if Proposition 60 passes, they may block California users altogether to protect themselves from litigation.

Practice Note

Censorship of Social Media: In a case where a Virginia man’s comments criticizing his municipal government were repeatedly hidden from a post made by the county on its official Facebook page, an appeals court has ruled for the first time that a government’s Facebook page is considered a limited public forum and, therefore, such speech is subject to First Amendment protection, so long as it relates to a matter of public interest and does not violate any terms of the social media policy.

On the Lighter Side

Meet Kengaro, the Sweating Robot: Researchers at the University of Tokyo have created a robot that can do push-ups for 11 minutes without burning its motors, by releasing water that flows into its bones and then evaporates onto the surface to cool the motors, mimicking the way that humans sweat to cool down.

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Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law and Founding Academic Director, CLIP

N. Cameron Russell
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Editorial Fellows, CLIP
Nadia Kashem
Meghna Prasad

Internet Governance

Behold, Greater Trans-Pacific Speeds! In a move toward building up infrastructure mirrored by many tech companies, Google, Facebook, Pacific Light Data Communications, and TE Subcom are working together to build a giant submarine cable connecting Los Angeles to Hong Kong; the cable will have 12,800 km of fiber and a cable capacity of approximately 120 Tbps—the largest capacity of any trans-Pacific route—and will allow faster and more reliable connections by increasing bandwidth.

New Protections for Prepaid Debit Cards: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued new rules, going into effect in October 2017, that will provide most prepaid debit cards with some of the same protections given to regular debit and credit cards, including free access to account information, limited liability for fraudulent transactions, and greater transparency.

Privacy

Please Leave Your Apple Watch Behind: The UK has banned ministers from wearing Apple Watches during cabinet meetings because of concerns that the smart watches could be hacked by Russian cyber spies to record conversations through the microphone, steal user data such as passwords, and even track a user’s hand motions to steal PIN numbers inputted into ATM machines.

Police Surveillance of Social Media: Geofeedia—a Chicago-based online surveillance company that collects data from twelve major social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram—has allowed law enforcement agencies and more than 500 other similar clients to search for a user’s social media content by inputting a specific location rather than words or hashtags.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

DARPA Considers Blockchain: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research unit of the DoD, may introduce blockchain technology to secure sensitive data; this technology would create a record any time a network or database has been altered, thus preventing hackers from secretly modifying a system.

Hackers Targeting Banks: Financial institutions that use SWIFT, a payment network commonly used to transfer large sums of money, are still being targeted by a hacking group months after the Bangladesh Central Bank nearly lost $1 billion to different hackers.

Intellectual Property

NFL Crackdown: In a move to promote “meaningful reach and engagement” with fans, the NFL will prohibit teams from posting to social media any GIFs or video footage of football games, including highlights and anything shot in stadiums; teams may face fines ranging from up to $25,000 to $100,000 depending on the number of previous violations.

Scam to De-Index Sites from Google: At least twenty-five lawsuits have been filed in the past year as part of a scam to de-index websites from Google’s search engine, whereby a plaintiff files a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement or defamation against a “dummy defendant,” who agrees to an injunction, and a record of that approved injunction is then sent to Google, which de-indexes the site.

Free Expression and Censorship

Life Imprisonment for Open Source Code: Saeed Malekpour, a Canadian resident, continues to serve a life sentence—which was initially a death sentence—in Iran for creating an open source code for sharing photos online, which some Iranians used to upload pornography; the government charged him with creating propaganda that threatened the country’s Islamic ideals and national security, while the third parties’ acts were deemed irrelevant.

Practice Note

Deleting Browsing History: In a recent case concerning a possible breach of confidence, where an employee joined a competitor company and was given a consent order to maintain all records relating to his original company, a Canadian court ruled that the employee did not violate the order when he deleted his personal browsing history.

On the Lighter Side

New Consent Model: Alibaba Group Holdings has announced a new payment system, VR Pay, which will allow people using virtual reality goggles to enter virtual shopping malls and pay for purchases by nodding their heads rather than having to take off the goggles.

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Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law and Founding Academic Director, CLIP

N. Cameron Russell
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Editorial Fellows, CLIP
Nadia Kashem
Meghna Prasad

Internet Governance

ICANN Acquires IANA: In a symbolic move toward web decentralization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an organization that counts several governments and corporations as its members, has acquired ownership of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the database that stores all Internet domain names; although this move will not have many tangible implications, it will put more faith in foreign governments and corporations that the internet belongs not to the United States, but rather to everyone.

Self-Driving Cars: California has approved a new bill that will allow driverless cars to be tested in certain locations without requiring human oversight; Uber-owned Otto has already signed up for the tests, and Apple and Google have also expressed interest.

Privacy

Government Surveillance of Emails: Yahoo has been accused of helping the NSA and the FBI conduct mass surveillance of individuals by scanning incoming users’ emails for a list of specific words and characters—a practice that may be legal under current laws expiring at the end of the year.

Wanted for Theft: The FBI has covertly arrested a Maryland man working as a secret NSA contractor, who allegedly took classified computer code developed by the NSA to hack into computer systems of rival nations such as Russia and North Korea; although it is unlikely that the man sought to be a martyr for transparency and it is also unclear whether he had any political motives, the leak falls in the wake of the Edward Snowden scandal.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

New Credit Card Security: Two French banks, Société Générale and Group BPCE, will soon introduce a new credit card that employs Motion Code, a system in which a screen powered by a three-year lithium battery will be installed into the waterproof card and will display an hourly changing security code to prevent fraud and render information stolen online by thieves useless.

Your Body Can Transmit Data: Researchers at the University of Washington have created a system that transforms the human body into a transmitter of passwords and encryption keys by passing electromagnetic signals from a fingerprint sensor or touchpad into receivers on the body, thereby preventing the information from being leaked into the air and becoming vulnerable to security threats.

Intellectual Property

Supreme Court to Hear The Slants Case: The Supreme Court will rule on whether the 1946 Lanham Act—which prohibits the trademarking of offensive terms—violates the constitutional right to free speech, in a case involving a Portland-based Asian-American band called The Slants who were denied a trademark for their band name; this case follows the controversy surrounding the Washington Redskins who were stripped of their trademark registration by the US Patent and Trademark Office in a 2014 decision and whose appeal the Supreme Court has refused to hear earlier this week.

Copyrighted Computer Codes: In what may be a violation of the First Amendment, writers can potentially face jail time and other penalties for publishing books about methods of improving computer security, under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), even though such research and publication of copyrighted computer code obtained without authorization may be permitted as fair use under copyright law.

Free Expression and Censorship

Did the NYT Violate the First Amendment? After the New York Times published three pages of Donald Trump’s 1995 income tax returns for New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, several news sources reported that the First Amendment would most likely protect the Times, although more specifically, the fact that they were state returns and received anonymously could further shield the publication from liability.

Amazon Bans Incentivized Reviews: To protect the integrity of its 5-star review system, Amazon is now prohibiting incentivized reviews—which are reviews that users write on behalf of companies in return for money or free or discounted products; Amazon has also sued individuals and businesses that offer fake review services.

Practice Note

UK Hacking Offense Prosecuted in the US: Though Parliament had intended the Computer Misuse Act 1990 to have global effect, i.e., allowing a UK-based hacker to be prosecuted in the UK despite the computer being located outside the UK, the extradition proceedings of Lauri Love—a British hacker with autism who accessed the computers of various US governmental agencies and who now faces a possible 99-year prison sentence in the US—is an example of the UK not using the CMA to prosecute and instead deferring to a foreign government.

On the Lighter Side

Let’s Take a Selfie: Mastercard is rolling out a new feature called “Identity Check Mobile” which will allow users of the Mastercard app to circumvent inputting a password and instead verify their identity with either a fingerprint or a selfie; for the selfie feature, users will first need to take a photo of themselves, which will be stored on the Mastercard servers, and will then need to blink to assure that an identity thief is not simply using a photo to gain access to their account.

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Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law and Founding Academic Director, CLIP

N. Cameron Russell
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Editorial Fellows, CLIP
Nadia Kashem
Meghna Prasad