Stewart Baker
Lawfare
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Past articles by Stewart:
Rethinking Responsible Disclosure for Cryptocurrency Security
Cryptocurrency security really is worse than other digital technologies, and there’s a good chance it always will be. → Read More
Legal Tetris and the FBI’s ANOM Program
It turns out that running a fake encryption company leaves a lot for the lawyers to sort out. → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: This Episode Could Be Worth $1,000 To The ACLU
We begin the episode with a review of the massive Kaseya ransomware attack. Dave Aitel digs into the technical aspects while Paul Rosenzweig and Matthew Heiman explore the policy and political implications. But either way, the news is bad. Then we come to the Florida “deplatforming” law, which a Clinton appointee dispatched in a cursory opinion last week. I’ve been in a small → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: The Trustbusters Come for Big Tech
This episode offers an economical overview of the six antitrust reform bills reported out of the House Judiciary Committee last week. Michael Weiner and Mark MacCarthy give us the top line for all six (though only four would make substantial new policy). We then turn quickly to the odd-couple alliances supporting and opposing the bills, including my brief cameo appearance, in → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: Transatlantic Drift
The Biden administration is pissing away one of the United States’ most important counterterrorism intelligence programs. At least that’s my conclusion from this episode’s depressing review of the administrations halting and delusion-filled approach to the transatlantic data crisis. The EU thinks time is on its side, and it’s ignoring Jamil Jaffer’s heartfelt plea to be a → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: The Biden Cybersecurity Executive Order—CISA as CISO
Our interview is with Brandon Wales, acting head of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Jen Daskal, deputy general counsel for Cyber and Technology Law at DHS. We dig deep into the latest Executive Order on cybersecurity. There’s a lot to say. → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: Computers Will Soon Be Hacking Us. If They Aren't Already.
Bruce Schneier joins us to talk about artificial intelligence (AI) hacking in all its forms. He’s particularly interested in ways AI will hack humans, essentially preying on the rough rules of thumb programmed into our wetware—that big-eyed, big-headed little beings are cute and need to have their demands met or that intimate confidences should be reciprocated. AI may not even → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: The Robot Apocalypse and You
Our interview is with Kevin Roose, author of Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation that debunks most of the comforting stories we use to anaesthetize ourselves to the danger that artificial intelligence and digitization poses to our jobs. Luckily, he also offers some practical and very personal ideas for how to avoid being caught in the oncoming robot → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: The Cybersecurity Benefits of Desk Drawers
The Cyberlaw Podcast discusses issues at the intersection of technology and the law. Download the 359th Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: Cybersecurity Issues on the Congressional Agenda
Our interview is with Mark Montgomery and John Costello, both staff to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. The commission, which issued its main report more than a year ago, is swinging through the pitch, following up with new white papers, draft legislative language and enthusiastic advocacy for its recommendations in Congress, many of which were adopted last year. That makes → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: Conservative Catfight
They used to say that a conservative was a liberal who’d been mugged. Today’s version is that a conservative who’s comfortable with business regulation is a conservative who’s been muzzled by Silicon Valley. David Kris kicks off this topic by introducing Justice Thomas’s opinion in a case over Trump’s authority to block users he didn’t like. → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: Who Minds the Gap
Our interview is with Kim Zetter, author of the best analysis to date of the weird messaging from the National Security Agency (NSA) and Cyber Command about the domestic “blind spot” or “gap” in their cybersecurity surveillance. → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: Can Editorial Middleware Cut the Power of the Big Platforms?
The latest episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast. → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: When Will Cyberattacks on the Grid Become the New Normal?
In the news roundup, David Kris digs into rumors that Chinese malware attacks may have caused a blackout in India at a time when military conflict was flaring on the two nation’s Himalayan border. This leads us to Russia’s targeting of the U.S. grid and to uneasy speculation on how well our regulatory regime is adapted to preventing successful grid attacks. The Biden → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: NSA’s Pre-History is a Love Story
This episode features an interview with Jason Fagone, journalist and author of The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies. I wax enthusiastic about Jason’s book, which features remarkable research, a plot like a historical novel, and deep insights into what I call the National Security Agency’s (NSA) → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: “This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends”
Our interview this week is with Nicole Perlroth, The New York Times reporter and author of This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race. It’s wide-ranging, occasionally confrontational and a great tour of the issues raised in the book about 0-day exploits, U.S. responsibility for the global cyber arms race and the colorful personalities whose hard → Read More
The Hidden Cost of Undoing the Travel Ban
The final iteration of the travel ban reflected data-driven assessments by the Department of Homeland Security, which worked to encourage deeper cooperation from other governments. → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: Cybersecurity: A British Perspective
The U.S. has never really had a “cyberczar.” Arguably, though, the U.K. has. The head of the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) combines the security roles of the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. To find out how cybersecurity issues look from that perspective, we interview Ciaran Martin, the → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: What Gives With Electrical Grid Security?
It’s a story that has everything, except a reporter able to tell it. A hostile state attacking the U.S. power grid is a longstanding and quite plausible national security concern. The Trump administration was galvanized by the threat, even seizing Chinese power equipment at the port to do a detailed breakdown and then issuing an executive order and follow-up rulings designed → Read More
The Cyberlaw Podcast: China and the CIA: A Wilderness of Mirror Imaging
In this episode, I interview Zach Dorfman about his excellent reports in Foreign Policy about U.S.-Chinese intelligence competition in the last decade. Zach is a well-regarded national security journalist, a senior staff writer at the Aspen Institute’s Cyber and Technology program and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. We dive deep → Read More