Internet Governance
Full Fibre Ahead! The United Kingdom has embarked on a mission to provide full fibre broadband coverage and 5G access to every resident by 2033; legislation and financial incentives will both be utilized to achieve this objective – all new homes must be equipped with full fibre broadband and £3-5 billion will be budgeted for reaching rural areas.
NSA Takes on Russian Hackers: NSA and Cyber Command Chief Paul Nakasone has unveiled the Russia Small Group, a specialized team dedicated to tackling Russian cyberattacks; the chief also has his sights on China, citing both countries’ election meddling, fueling of social tensions, and stealing classified information.
Privacy
Missouri Live-Streamed: Uber and Lyft are suspending a driver for live-streaming passengers without their knowledge or consent; the taping, however, was legal under Missouri’s one-party consent laws where only one party needs to give permission to record communications.
Politicians and Crooks? The ACLU said Thursday that Amazon’s facial recognition system erroneously matched the photos of twenty-eight Congressmen, including six members of the Congressional Black Caucus, with mugshots of criminals in a test; Amazon’s spokeswoman responded that Amazon recommends using a higher confidence threshold of 95 or above to those using facial recognition for law enforcement activities.
Hands Off My DNA: 23andMe, a popular DNA testing company that provides postal saliva tests, partnered with Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline in order to explore drug treatments for health issues such as Parkinson’s disease; while this partnership will allow the drug research community to access valuable DNS data on an unprecedented scale, some are concerned that the customers of 23andMe are being exploited.
Information Security and Cyberthreats
Cyberattacks Incoming: The US Department of Homeland Security warned on Wednesday that hacktivists, cryptominers, and state-sponsored hackers are trying to exploit flaws in Oracle and SAP platforms which are heavily relied upon by US companies and consumers who use cloud services; a report from security companies recommends several prevention strategies which includes disabling unused APIs and unnecessary internet-facing logins.
Intellectual Property
The “Transportation Visionary”: Lyft was sued on Tuesday by a retired Georgia Tech professor who claimed that Lyft’s business model infringes on his ride-sharing patent filed in 2001; the complaint states that Lyft’s model is “indistinguishable” from Dickerson’s and crucial to its operations.
Free Expression and Censorship
Oxford Study on Global Social Media Manipulation: A new study from the University of Oxford surveys social media manipulation by government actors and their growing influence over it; the number of countries with formally organized social media manipulation campaigns has risen from 28 last year to 48 in 2018, where efforts to eliminate fake news may be used to increase censorship and shape online discourse.
The Community Strikes: Alex Jones stated on Wednesday that YouTube removed four Infowars videos and slapped his channel with a “community strike” that forbids him from broadcasting live on YouTube for 90 days; one of the removed videos featured Jones’ criticism of an online cartoon series called “Drag Tots” in which he compared the creators of the series to Satanists.
Discriminatory Ads: Facebook signed an agreement with the state of Washington promising to stop allowing advertisers to exclude protected classes such as races, religions, and sexual orientations from targeted ads within 90 days; Facebook is already facing a lawsuit from civil rights groups alleging that its ad-targeting tools violate the federal Fair Housing Act.
Practice Note
Operational Impacts of CaCPA – Part I: The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 will come into effect on January 1, 2020; serving as a resource, the IAPP has begun a series of articles addressing the law’s scope, notice and transparency obligations, data disclosure requirements, consumers’ new rights of erasure, and consumers’ new cause of action.
On The Lighter Side
So Real You Can Almost Taste It: In honor of National Scotch Day (July 27), the Macallan Distillery has brought a 4D virtual experience to New York City’s Grand Central Terminal; the virtual reality presentation showcases the distillery’s Easter Elchies Estate and tempts the palate.
Announcements
Job and Fellowship Opportunities
From time-to-time, CLIP-ings will highlight career opportunities in the information law field. Please note the following:
Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution is seeking a Project Lead to join their Data Policy Project Team in San Francisco.
The Forum’s Data Policy project aims to define, through a process of international multi-stakeholder dialogue and cooperation baseline norms, principles and protocols for the collection, appropriate use, and protection of data. The Project Lead will be an integral part of the Data Policy project team and contribute to the successful delivery of the data policy project and workstreams.
For more information and the online application, click here.
http://chk.tbe.taleo.net/chk06/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=WEFORUM&cws=41&rid=337
The Second Northeast Privacy Scholars Workshop is calling for submissions.
Jointly organized by the Innovation Center for Law and Technology at New York Law School and the Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham University School of Law, and generously sponsored by Microsoft, the Workshop offers privacy scholars from diverse fields the opportunity to receive extensive, constructive commentary on their works in progress.
For more information, see here. Online submissions are due September 7th, 2018 by 5pm Eastern.
The Ringer Copyright Honors Program with the U.S. Copyright Office is accepting applications.
The Ringer Honors Program is a distinguished public service opportunity for attorneys in the early stages of their career who have strong interest and a demonstrated record of academic or practical success in copyright law.
For more information, see here. Applications are open through September 15th, 2018.
Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law
Founding Academic Director, Fordham CLIP
N. Cameron Russell
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP
Mindy Nam
William Ioas
Editorial Fellows, Fordham CLIP