Law Commons^™

Civilians In Cyberwarfare: Casualties, Susan W. Brenner, Leo L. Clarke

Susan Brenner

This article is a sequel to Civilians in Cyberwarfare: Conscripts, to be published by the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law. Conscripts addresses the essential role of civilians as participants in cyberwarfare. Here, we explore the potential losses cyberwarfare might cause to civilian entities, including multi-national corporations, utilities, universities and local governments. We explain why cyberwarfare presents unique risks and requires unique executive responses. We also analyze how civilians should manage specific legal liability, political and reputational risks. Finally, we consider whether civilians can expect compensation if the federal government imposes new regulations, appropriates intellectual property, or even conscripts entire businesses …

Civilians In Cyberwarfare: Conscripts, Susan W. Brenner, Leo L. Clarke

Susan Brenner

Civilians will play an integral role in cyberwar because civilian-owned and –operated entities will be a primary target in cyberwarfare. An attacker’s goal in cyberwar is not to capture physical territory but to erode, even destroy, the target nation’s viability as an economy and, indeed, as a sovereign entity. To do that, a cyberattacker will target the companies that own and operate aspects of the victim nation’s critical infrastructure; those civilians will need to be incorporated into a defensive cyberwarfare response structure if such a response is to be effective. We explain why the use of civilians is essential and …

Biometrics, Retinal Scanning, And The Right To Privacy In The 21st Century, Stephen Hoffman

Stephen P. Hoffman

Biometric identification techniques such as retinal scanning and fingerprinting have now become commonplace, but near-future improvements on these methods present troubling issues for personal privacy. For example, retinal scanning can be used to diagnose certain medical conditions, even ones for which the patient has no symptoms or has any other way of detecting the problem. If a health insurance company scans the retinas of potential clients before they purchase coverage, they could be charged higher premiums for conditions that do not present any issues. Not only is this unfair, but the ease with which these scans can be conducted—including scanning …

The Rise, Fall And Rise Again Of The Genetic Foundation For Legal Parentage Determination, Yehezkel Margalit

Hezi Margalit

Recently, we have witnessed dramatic changes in the formation of the family and parenthood. One of the results of those shifts is a growing number of children growing up outside of the traditional marriage framework. Therefore, the dilemma of determining a child's parentage, which was usually resolved by a legal fiction as to the child's legal parents, is becoming increasingly problematic. It is appropriate that any discussion of the establishment of legal parentage should start with a study of the rise of the most popular modern model, the genetic model.

It is relevant to point out that from the beginning …