J.R.McHale

The Interview: [The Most Wanted Man in the World](http://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-snowden/) — James Bamford in Wired

Two Companion Pieces in WIRED: [I Left the NSA Clues, But They Couldn’t Find Them](http://www.wired.com/2014/08/snowden-breadcrumbs/) and [A Day With Edward Snowden](http://www.wired.com/2014/08/scott-dadich-snowden/)

Dan Geer, CISO for In-Q-Tel, a not-for-profit investment firm that invests in technology that supports the missions of the CIA and broader U.S. intelligence community (i.e., the CIA’s venture arm), garnered [headlines](http://www.wired.com/2014/08/cia-0day-bounty/) this past week for the proposal that the U.S. intelligence community corner the market on security vulnerabilities and then disclose them. His presentation at Black Hat 2014, however, is well worth watching in its entirety, as he touches on policy proposals on a wider variety of topics including:
>Mandatory Vulnerability Reporting: 16:46
Net Neutrality: 22:20
Product Liability for Software: 25:31
Cyber Attack Counterstrikes: 32:12
Fallbacks/Resiliency: 33:28
Vulnerability Finding: 38:44
Right to be Forgotten: 40:15
Internet Voting: (only in [Transcript](http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt))
Software Abandonment: 44:47
Convergence of Cyberspace and “Meatspace”: 47:04

> “A robust privacy debate should ask who needs our data and why, while proposing institutional arrangements for resisting the path offered by Silicon Valley. Instead of bickering over interpretations of Facebook’s privacy policy as if it were the US constitution, why not ask how our sense of who we are is shaped by algorithms, databases and apps, which extend political, commercial and state efforts to make us – as the dystopian Radiohead song has it – ‘fitter, happier, more productive’? This question stands outside the privacy debate, which, in the hands of legal academics, is disconnected from broader political and economic issues. The intellectual ping pong over privacy between corporate counsels and legal academics moonlighting as radicals always avoids the most basic question: why build the ‘private spaces’ celebrated by Mr Zuckerberg if our freedom to behave there as we wish – and not as companies or states nudge us to – is so limited?” — from Evgeny Morozov’s [OpEd](http://evgenymorozov.tumblr.com/post/94364369710/my-ft-oped-on-privacy-subjectivity-and-facebook) in the Financial Times

[Another Reminder That Anonymity Tools Aren’t Foolproof](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/your-secrets-are-only-as-secure-as-the-security-tools-you-use) – Vice’s MotherBoard: “Tails, the operating system favoured by journalists, activists, and Edward Snowden for its high degree of privacy protection, has been shown to have critical vulnerabilities in its code. By exploiting these, attackers could peal away a Tails user’s cloak of anonymity. It’s just the latest reminder that tools touted as ‘anonymous’ are not infallible.”

[Back Doors in Apple’s Mobile Platform for Law Enforcement, Bosses, Spies (Possibly)](http://boingboing.net/2014/07/23/back-doors-in-apples-mobile.html) — Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing: “Jonathan Zdziarski’s HOPE X talk, ‘Identifying Backdoors, Attack Points, and Surveillance Mechanisms in iOS Devices’, suggests that hundreds of millions of Iphone and Ipad devices ship from Apple with intentional back-doors that can be exploited by law enforcement, identity thieves, spies, and employers.”

[Tor Break Talk Axed from Black Hat Conference](http://www.zdnet.com/tor-break-talk-axed-from-black-hat-conference-7000031854/) — ZDNet: “A proposed talk by two Carnegie Mellon University researchers demonstrating how to de-anonymise Tor users on a budget of US$3,000 has been axed from the Black Hat USA 2014 conference in Las Vegas next month. The talk, ‘You don’t have to be the NSA to Break Tor: Deanonymizing Users on a Budget’ by speakers, Alexander Volynkin and Michael McCord, from Carnegie Mellon University’s Computer Emergency Response Team, had reportedly been highly anticipated by punters.”

[Visit the Wrong Website, and the FBI Could End Up in Your Computer](http://www.wired.com/2014/08/operation_torpedo/) — Wired: “Security experts call it a ‘drive-by download’: a hacker infiltrates a high-traffic website and then subverts it to deliver malware to every single visitor. It’s one of the most powerful tools in the black hat arsenal, capable of delivering thousands of fresh victims into a hackers’ clutches within minutes . . . For the last two years, the FBI has been quietly experimenting with drive-by hacks as a solution to one of law enforcement’s knottiest Internet problems: how to identify and prosecute users of criminal websites hiding behind the powerful Tor anonymity system.”

[Putin Sets $110,000 Bounty for Cracking Tor as Anonymous Internet Usage in Russia Surges](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-29/putin-sets-110-000-bounty-for-cracking-tor-as-anonymous-internet-usage-in-russia-surges.html) — Bloomberg.

>“Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to be an entrepreneur in 1985 when almost any dot com name you wanted was available? . . . The internet was a wide open frontier then . . . Looking back now it seems as if waves of settlers have since bulldozed and developed every possible venue, leaving only the most difficult and gnarly specks for today’s newcomers . . . But, but . . here is the thing. In terms of the internet, nothing has happened yet. The internet is still at the beginning of its beginning. If we could climb into a time machine and journey 30 years into the future, and from that vantage look back to today, we’d realize that most of the greatest products running the lives of citizens in 2044 were not invented until after 2014 . . . There has never been a better time [to start something on the internet] with more opportunities, more openings, lower barriers, higher benefit/risk ratios, better returns, greater upside, than now. Right now, this minute . . . It is the best time EVER in human history to begin. You are not late.”

— [**Kevin Kelly**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly_%28editor%29) at **Medium**. [**Read the whole thing**](https://medium.com/message/you-are-not-late-b3d76f963142).

> “[T]he ‘Internet’ in ‘Internet.org’ is not a natural resource that looks and costs the same everywhere based on its inherent features. It is a result of complex, controversial policy decisions over the use and ownership of communication infrastructure. These decisions follow years of lobbying and clever manipulation of national and international bodies by telecom operators, and are a direct consequence of various privatization and liberalization reforms in those countries. Facebook, because of its own long-term interest in expanding its advertising reach in the developing world, can make that Internet more accessible. But to accept its bargain is to abandon the fight to create different institutional arrangements — say, to rein in the power of telecom operators and provide cheaper, more equitable services.” — from Morozov’s [OpEd](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/opinion/sunday/evgeny-morozov-facebooks-gateway-drug.html) in The New York Times

Brad Smith, executive vice president and general counsel at Microsoft, speaking at the Brookings Institution on [“The Future of Global Technology, Privacy and Regulation”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SaaCNcUjB0) in light of the Snowden revelations.

>”We need to recognize that we do need, in my opinion, a broad based legal and regulatory model when it comes to company use of personal information . . . . Imagine a bank that doesn’t take good care of its customers’ money. Do you think it has a bright future? What do you think of a tech company that doesn’t take good care of its customers information. I believe that over the long term the world will expect and even insist that we pay as much attention to the personal information of consumers as banks do to their money. And the sooner we get started on that, and the faster we come together to have [a] kind of broad based conversation . . . . . the more successful we will be.”

Total time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.
Brad Smith’s main presentation: 03:50 to 48:35
Moderator questions: 49:47 to 1.05:11
Audience questions: beginning 1.05:50

**Related:** [Personal Privacy Is Only One of the Costs of NSA Surveillance](http://www.wired.com/2014/07/the-big-costs-of-nsa-surveillance-that-no-ones-talking-about/) — Wired:
>”American firms in the cloud computing sector are feeling the pressure as consumers and corporate clients reconsider using third-party storage companies in the U.S. for their data. Companies like Dropbox and Amazon Web Services reportedly have lost business to overseas competitors like Artmotion, a Swiss hosting provider. The CEO of the European firm reported that within a month after the first revelations of NSA spying went public, his company’s business jumped 45 percent. Similarly, 25 percent of respondents in a survey of 300 British and Canadian businesses earlier this year said they were moving their data outside the US as a result of NSA spying. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has estimated that repercussions from the spying could cost the U.S. cloud computing industry some $22 to $35 billion over the next few years in lost business.”

> #### Cyber Law, Tech and Policy