Law Commons^™

Fair Warnings From Ofac’S Settlements With Cryptocurrency Service Providers: Compliance Should Include Lifetime-Of-The-Relationship, In-Process Geolocational Checks, Sarah Jane Hughes

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In 2022, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced numerous settlements with cryptocurrency exchanges. These settlements serve as “fair warnings” to all cryptocurrency service providers who are “U.S. persons” or who offer services to U.S. persons. The term “U.S. persons” is defined in 31 C.F.R. §560.314 as “any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States.”

This article focuses on these “fair warnings” as they have accumulated from prior settlements and from OFAC’s published guidance …

Collective Data Rights And Their Possible Abuse, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Law And Politics Of Ransomware, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

What do Lady Gaga, the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, the city of Valdez in Alaska, and the court system of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul all have in common? They have all been victims of ransomware attacks, which are growing both in number and severity. In 2016, hackers perpetrated roughly four thousand ransomware attacks a day worldwide, a figure which was already alarming. By 2020, however, ransomware attacks reached a staggering number, between 20,000 and 30,000 per day in the United States alone. That is a ransomware attack every eleven seconds, each of which cost victims …

“The Virus Of Liberty”: John Perry Barlow, Internet Law, And Grateful Dead Studies, Joseph A. Tomain

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In 2019, the Duke Law and Technology Review published a special issue titled, "The Past and Future of the Internet: A Symposium for John Perry Barlow." This essay examines the legal scholarship in the Barlow symposium and frames it in the interdisciplinary terms of Grateful Dead studies. Part I focuses on the two Barlow essays that formed the basis of the symposium. Part II connects issues raised by the Barlow symposium to Grateful Dead studies. The essay concludes that Barlow's legacy should inspire others to engage both the cultural and political paths with “groundless hope,” because protecting the “inexplicable pleasures …

Indiana Law’S Lubin, Sun Help Advise Kosovo Government On Country’S Cybersecurity Act, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

No abstract provided.

Maryland’S Digital Tax And The Itfa’S Catch-22, David Gamage, Darien Shanske, Christopher Moran

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In this installment of Academic Perspectives on SALT, the authors examine whether statelevel taxes on digital advertising — like Maryland’s new tax — are barred by the Internet Tax Freedom Act and discuss how the act’s prohibition against “discriminatory” taxes on electronic commerce should be construed narrowly.

Public Policy And The Insurability Of Cyber Risk, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In June 2017, the food and beverage conglomerate Mondelez International became a victim of the NotPetya ransomware attack. Around 1,700 of its servers and 24,000 of the company’s laptops were suddenly and permanently unusable. Commercial supply and distribution disruptions, theft of credentials from many users, and unfulfilled customer orders soon followed, leading to losses that totaled more than $100 million. Unfortunately, Zurich, which had sold the company a property insurance policy that included a variety of coverages, informed Mondelez in 2018 that cyber coverage would be denied under the policy based on the “war exclusion clause.” This case, now pending, …

Developments In The Laws Affecting Electronic Payments And Financial Services, Sarah Jane Hughes, Steve Middlebrook, Tom Kierner

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This survey year offered developments too numerous to cover, as often is the case. We debated which developments to include and decided to showcase different types of products and services, different providers, and different regulators. Part II views issues related to stimulus payments arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Part III reports on litigation over whether retailers must offer gift cards printed in Braille. Part IV looks at recent actions of the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") related to payment processors and others. Part V describes amendments to the "remittance" regulation promulgated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB"). Part VI focuses …

Hacking For Intelligence Collection In The Fight Against Terrorism: Israeli, Comparative, And International Perspectives, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

תקציר בעברית: הניסיון של המחוקק הישראלי להביא להסדרה מפורשת של סמכויות השב״כ במרחב הקיברנטי משקף מגמה רחבה יותר הניכרת בעולם לעיגון בחקיקה ראשית של הוראות בדבר פעולות פצחנות מצד גופי ביון ומודיעין ורשויות אכיפת חוק למטרות איסוף מודיעין לשם סיכול עבירות חמורות, ובייחוד עבירות טרור אם בעבר היו פעולות מסוג אלה כפופות לנהלים פנימיים ומסווגים, הרי שהדרישה לשקיפות בעידן שלאחר גילויי אדוארד סנודן מחד והשימוש הנרחב בתקיפות מחשב לביצוע פעולות חיפוש וחקירה לסיכול טרור מאידך, מציפים כעת את הדרישה להסמכה מפורשת. במאמר זה אבקש למפות הן את השדה הטכנולוגי והן את השדה המשפטי בכל האמור בתקיפות מחשבים למטרות ריגול ומעקב. …

Do Blockchain Technologies Make Us Safer? Do Cryptocurrencies Necessarily Make Us Less Safe?, Sarah Jane Hughes

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This essay is based on a presentation made on January 24, 2020 at the invitation of the Texas Journal of International Law and the Strauss Center for National Security at the University of Texas. That presentation focused on the two questions mentioned in the title of this essay – Do Blockchain Technologies Make Us Safer? And Do Cryptocurrencies Necessarily Make Us Less Safe? The essay presents answers to the two questions: “yes” and “probably yes.” This essay begins with some level-setting on different types of blockchain technologies and of cryptocurrencies, and gives some background materials on global and national responses …

Examining The Anomalies, Explaining The Value: Should The Usa Freedom Act’S Metadata Program Be Extended?, Susan Landau, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Edward Snowden’s disclosure of National Security Agency (“NSA”) bulk collection of communications metadata was a highly disturbing shock to the American public. The intelligence community was surprised by the response, as it had largely not anticipated a strong negative public reaction to this surveillance program. Controversy over the bulk metadata collection led to the 2015 passage of the USA FREEDOM Act. The law mandated that the intelligence community would collect the Call Detail Records (“CDR”) from telephone service providers in strictly limited ways, not in bulk, and only under order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The new program initially …

"We Only Spy On Foreigners": The Myth Of A Universal Right To Privacy And The Practice Of Foreign Mass Surveillance, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The digital age brought with it a new epoch in global political life, one neatly coined by Professor Philip Howard as the “pax technica.” In this new world order, government and industry are “tightly bound” in technological and security arrangements that serve to push forward an information and cyber revolution of unparalleled magnitude. While the rise of information technologies tells a miraculous story of triumph over the physical constraints that once shackled mankind, these very technologies are also the cause of grave concern. Intelligence agencies have been recently involved in the exercise of global indiscriminate surveillance, which purports to go …

Developments In The Law Affecting Electronic Payments And Financial Services, Sarah Jane Hughes, Stephen T. Middlebrook

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Regulating Cryptocurrencies In The United States: Current Issues And Future Directions, Sarah Jane Hughes, Stephen T. Middlebrook

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article explores the state of virtual currencies and their regulation in and by the United States and the States. It offers thoughts on which models of regulation might suit virtual currencies best. It also surveys recent enforcement actions brought by the Departments of Treasury, Justice and Homeland Security against providers of virtual currencies or comparable electronic stored value. It concludes that issuers and users of virtual currencies are not being realistic if they think that the United States will not regulate virtual currencies for some purposes.

Nato, Cyber Defense, And International Law, David P. Fidler, Richard Pregent, Alex Vandurme

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Cybersecurity threats pose challenges to individuals, corporations, states, and intergovernmental organizations. The emergence of these threats also presents international cooperation on security with difficult tasks. This essay analyzes how cybersecurity threats affect the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which is arguably the most important collective defense alliance in the world.1 NATO has responded to the cyber threat in policy and operational terms (Part I), but approaches and shifts in cybersecurity policies create problems for NATO— problems that NATO principles, practices, and politics exacerbate in ways that will force NATO to address cyber threats more aggressively than it has done so …

Access For All: A Review Of “Law Libraries, Government Transparency, And The Internet,” A Presentation By Daniel Schuman Of The Sunlight Foundation At The All-Sis Meeting, July 22, 2012, Susan David Demaine

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Attendees at the ALL-SIS Breakfast and Business Meeting at the AALL Annual Meeting had the pleasure of hearing from Daniel Schuman of the Sunlight Foundation speak on “Law Libraries, Government Transparency, and the Internet.” The Sunlight Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase access to federal government information resources through advocacy and the development of information technology tools.

Friends, Gangbangers, Custody Disputants, Lend Me Your Passwords, Aviva Orenstein

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Whenever parties seek to introduce out-of-court statements, evidentiary issues of hearsay and authentication will arise. As methods of communication expand, the Rules of Evidence must necessarily keep pace. The rules remain essentially the same, but their application vary with new modes of communication. Evidence law has been very adaptable in some ways, and notoriously conservative, even stodgy, in others. Although statements on Facebook and other social media raise some interesting questions concerning the hearsay rule and its exceptions, there has been little concern about applying the hearsay doctrine to such forms of communication. By contrast, such new media have triggered …

A Better Way Forward For State Taxation Of E-Commerce, David Gamage, Devin J. Heckman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

We propose a novel solution for states that wish to tax interstate e-commerce – based on fully and adequately compensating remote vendors for all tax compliance costs. We argue that our proposed solution is compatible with the Quill framework for when states can constitutionally impose burdens on remote vendors. We argue that unlike our proposed solution, the recent state attempts to tax interstate e-commerce through so-called “Amazon laws” are unconstitutional, ineffective, or both. We thus urge the states to adopt our proposed approach as the best way forward for state taxation of interstate e-commerce.

Red Skies In The Morning—Professional Ethics At The Dawn Of Cloud Computing, Sarah Jane Hughes, Roland L. Trope

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The article evaluates risks to clients’ confidential and privileged information when lawyers or law firms store such information in any cloud computing “space” against the requirements of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct and the New York Rules of Professional Conduct. It also evaluates pertinent liability provisions of some of the more commonly used cloud computing services (Amazon.com and Google) against the lawyer’s responsibilities. An interesting portion covers the latest thinking from NIST on cloud computing benefits and risks.

Ebay's Second Life: When Should Virtual Earnings Bear Real Taxes?, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Millions of people participate in virtual worlds. The popular virtual world Second Life is designed to be a platform for commerce. This essay argues that profits received in the form of Linden dollars (Second Life's currency) should be taxed in much the same way profits received via PayPal, a widely used electronic-payment system, are. Although Second Life profits could instead be taxed once the taxpayer cashes out, that would create a special exception for Second Life that does not exist for platforms such as eBay, which would facilitate abuse and distort economic activity.

Government Data Mining: The Need For A Legal Framework, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The article examines the government's growing appetite for collecting personal data. Often justified on the basis of protecting national security, government data mining programs sweep up data collected through hundreds of regulatory and administrative programs, and combine them with huge datasets obtained from industry. The result is an aggregation of personal data - the "digital footprints" of individual lives - never before seen. These data warehouses are then used to determine who can work and participate in Social Security programs, who can board airplanes and enter government buildings, and who is likely to pose a threat in the future, even …

The Changing Face Of Privacy Protection In The European Union And The United States, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Among the wide variety of national and multinational legal regimes for protecting privacy, two dominant models have emerged, reflecting two very different approaches to the control of information. The European Union has enacted a sweeping data protection directive that imposes significant restrictions on most data collection, processing, dissemination, and storage activities, not only within Europe, but throughout the world if the data originates in a member state. The United States has taken a very different approach that extensively regulates government processing of data, while facilitating private, market-based initiatives to address private sector data processing.

Under the EU data protection directive, …

Book Review. Telecom Regulation Monitor (S. Gieman And E. Herman, Eds.), Juliet Casper Smith

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Law In Cyberspace, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.