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Full-Text Articles in Computer Law

Platforms, Encryption, And The Cfaa: The Case Of Whatsapp V Nso Group, Jonathon Penney, Bruce Schneier Jan 2022

Platforms, Encryption, And The Cfaa: The Case Of Whatsapp V Nso Group, Jonathon Penney, Bruce Schneier

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

End-to-end encryption technology has gone mainstream. But this wider use has led hackers, cybercriminals, foreign governments, and other threat actors to employ creative and novel attacks to compromise or workaround these protections, raising important questions as to how the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the primary federal anti-hacking statute, is best applied to these new encryption implementations. Now, after the Supreme Court recently narrowed the CFAA’s scope in Van Buren and suggested it favors a code-based approach to liability under the statute, understanding how best to theorize sophisticated code-based access barriers like end-to-end encryption, and their circumvention, is now …


Politics Of Adversarial Machine Learning, Kendra Albert, Jonathon Penney, Bruce Schneier, Ram Shankar Siva Kumar Jan 2020

Politics Of Adversarial Machine Learning, Kendra Albert, Jonathon Penney, Bruce Schneier, Ram Shankar Siva Kumar

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In addition to their security properties, adversarial machine-learning attacks and defenses have political dimensions. They enable or foreclose certain options for both the subjects of the machine learning systems and for those who deploy them, creating risks for civil liberties and human rights. In this paper, we draw on insights from science and technology studies, anthropology, and human rights literature, to inform how defenses against adversarial attacks can be used to suppress dissent and limit attempts to investigate machine learning systems. To make this concrete, we use real-world examples of how attacks such as perturbation, model inversion, or membership inference …


Ethical Testing In The Real World: Evaluating Physical Testing Of Adversarial Machine Learning, Kendra Albert, Maggie Delano, Jonathon Penney, Afsaneh Ragot, Ram Shankar Siva Kumar Jan 2020

Ethical Testing In The Real World: Evaluating Physical Testing Of Adversarial Machine Learning, Kendra Albert, Maggie Delano, Jonathon Penney, Afsaneh Ragot, Ram Shankar Siva Kumar

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper critically assesses the adequacy and representativeness of physical domain testing for various adversarial machine learning (ML) attacks against computer vision systems involving human subjects. Many papers that deploy such attacks characterize themselves as “real world.” Despite this framing, however, we found the physical or real-world testing conducted was minimal, provided few details about testing subjects and was often conducted as an afterthought or demonstration. Adversarial ML research without representative trials or testing is an ethical, scientific, and health/safety issue that can cause real harms. We introduce the problem and our methodology, and then critique the physical domain testing …


Can Cyber Harassment Laws Encourage Online Speech?, Jonathon Penney Jan 2018

Can Cyber Harassment Laws Encourage Online Speech?, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Do laws criminalizing online harassment and cyberbullying "chill" online speech? Critics often argue that they do. However, this article discusses findings from a new empirical legal study that suggests, counter-intuitively, that while such legal interventions likely have some dampening effect, they may also facilitate and encourage more speech, expression, and sharing by those who are most often the targets of online harassment: women. Relevant findings on this point from this first-of-its-kind study are set out and discussed along with their implications.


The Cycles Of Global Telecommunication Censorship And Surveillance, Jonathon Penney Jan 2015

The Cycles Of Global Telecommunication Censorship And Surveillance, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Internet censorship and surveillance is on the rise globally and cyber-warfare increasing in scope and intensity. To help understand these new threats commentators have grasped at historical analogies often with little regard for historical complexity or international perspective. Unfortunately, helpful new works on telecommunications history have focused primarily on U.S. history with little focus on international developments. There is thus a need for further internationally oriented investigation of telecommunications technologies, and their history. This essay attempts to help fill that void, drawing on case studies wherein global telecommunications technologies have been disrupted or censored — telegram censorship and surveillance, high …


Code Is Law, But Law Is Increasingly Determining The Ethics Of Code: A Comment, Jonathon Penney Jan 2014

Code Is Law, But Law Is Increasingly Determining The Ethics Of Code: A Comment, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

“Code is Law”, the aphorism Larry Lessig popularized, spoke to the importance of computer code as a central regulating force in the Internet age. That remains true, but today, overreaching laws are also increasingly subjugating important social and ethics questions raised by code to the domain of law. Those laws — like the CFAA and DMCA — need to be curtailed or their zealous enforcement reigned; they deter not only legitimate research but also important related social and ethics questions. But researchers must act too: to re-assert control over the social, legal, and ethical direction of their fields. Otherwise, law …


Communications Disruption And Censorship Under International Law: History Lessons, Jonathon Penney Jan 2012

Communications Disruption And Censorship Under International Law: History Lessons, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

With Internet censorship on the rise around the world, a variety of tools have proliferated to assist Internet users to circumvent such censorship. However, there are few studies examining the implications of censorship circumvention under international law, and its related politics. This paper aims to help fill some of that void, with an examination of case studies wherein global communications technologies have been disrupted or censored — telegram cable cutting and censorship, high frequency radio jamming, and direct broadcast satellite blocking — and how the world community responded to that disruption or censorship through international law and law making. In …


'Canada' In Electronic Evidence, Steve Coughlan Jan 2010

'Canada' In Electronic Evidence, Steve Coughlan

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Canada is a bilingual and bi-jurisdictional country. Most provinces and territories are mainly English speaking and have common law as the basis for their legal system. The exception is the province of Quebec which is governed by civil law and where the majority speaks French. However, it must be noted that Quebec civil law has been substantially affected by common law, in particular with respect to discovery rules. The latter are closer to common law discovery rules than they are from, for instance, French civil law. Another important factor for the review of the management of digital evidence in Canada …