This paper argues that the “going dark” debate ought to be considered in context of the larger debate over government access to data. Encryption is not the only game in town: just as law enforcement can pursue a number of different alternatives to mandating encryption backdoors, so too can privacy advocates take steps beyond encrypting their data to ensure their privacy. Acknowledging these substitutes—both for law enforcement and for privacy seekers—generates a number of insights. For example, comprehensive reform may make more sense than serial reforms, since it would allow for issue linkage and deal-making.
C4ISRNET recently published an interesting and useful four-part series exploring what U.S. Cyber Command will need to operate on its own, separate from the National Security Agency.
In a July 11 posting, Paul Rosenzweig argued that cyber cooperation with bad actors is always a bad idea, specifically referring to the President’s incomprehensible idea to form with Russia “an impenetrable Cyber Security unit [with Russia] so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded.”
According to published news reports, the Australian government plans to “introduce draft legislation that will attempt to force technology companies to break into end-to-end encrypted messages.”
A still unidentified Democratic Party donor paid for the factually challenged dossier that almost sunk the Donald Trump campaign. The dossier was created (and perhaps written) with the support and assistance of unregistered foreign agents of the Russian government, according to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The offer by an obscure music publicist to Donald Trump Jr. to share compromising information on the Clinton campaign was, as will be shown below, most likely a Russian operation. I conclude that Russia’s interference in the 2016 election was not to help Trump but to throw the American political system into chaos and threaten its foundations.
interview with Herbert Linvia Freeman Spogli Institute News
Thursday, July 13, 2017
Hoover Institution fellow Herb Lin discusses how the publishing of hacking tools stolen from the US National Security Agency (NSA) by Shadow Brokers effects cybersecurity. Lin discusses how we can defend ourselves against cyberattacks.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday backtracked on his push for a cyber security unit with Russia, tweeting that he did not think it could happen, hours after his proposal was harshly criticized by Republicans who said Moscow could not be trusted.
Nearly a dozen companies operating nuclear power plants across the United States may have been targeted by hackers working for a foreign government, probably Russia, in the last few weeks, multiple reports said Thursday.
Senators have moved to bar the Pentagon from using software produced by a Russian-origin cybersecurity firm, underscoring suspicions of its ties to the Russian government.
