1. Monthly archive
  2. October 2017

October 2017

Sponsor 

New York University School of Law

Date 
Fri, 11/03/2017 - 13:00

Privacy Localism: A New Research Agenda Information Law Institute New York University School of Law November 3, 2017 8 am http://www.law.nyu.edu/centers/ili/events/privacy-localism The election of Donald Trump is widely expected to bring a dramatic retreat from Obama administration support for privacy regulation at the federal level. Republican commissioners on the Federal Communications Commission have already indicated their intention to pursue reversal of many Obama administration policies and last April the President signed legislation repealing the FCC privacy rule. With such changes underway, state and local regulators, particularly those in populous “blue” states, such as New York, California and Washington, are poised to take on an increasingly important role. Recent local initiatives include draft ordinances that require local police departments to publish surveillance impact reports describing the capabilities and safeguards of powerful new surveillance technologies as a condition of deploying them. City officials are also paying more attention to the data privacy implications of smart city initiatives. At the state-level, officials are resisting requests by the Trump administration to access state voter registration databases. Academic experts on administrative law, privacy, federalism, and local governance will be joined by policymakers, industry representatives and privacy advocates to present and discuss a variety of perspectives on the legal, empirical and policy implications of this trend toward “privacy localism.”


Don’t confuse volume of news with importance

Every outlet and journalist wants to plant a flag; this story has proven to be a good way to do that. The result is that stories may be overhyped as important, just as happened with the Clinton e-mails and the WikiLeaks revelations. That builds a sense of growing scandal when what’s actually happening is the picture is being fleshed out. When you overlay that with an audience looking for a growing scandal — either from Clinton before the election or Trump after — that effect is magnified. And media outlets are rewarded for hyping things more than they ought to.

Again, none of this is to argue that there weren’t serious revelations uncovered and reported both before and after Election Day. It is, instead, to argue for more caution in evaluating the importance of a story you see on the Internet. Which, at this point, is admittedly a bit like arguing that we ought to close the doors of barns built in 1832 so that long-dead farmers don’t lose their long-dead horses.

New Cyber Shield Act Would Create IoT Cybersecurity Seal of Approval

Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep Ted Lieu (D-CA) have teamed up to introduce a bill to boost IoT cybersecurity by creating a voluntary self-certification program under the Department of Commerce. The Cyber Shield Act would establish a voluntary cybersecurity program for the Internet of Things things, with input from an advisory committee comprising "academia, industry, consumer advocates, and the public" on benchmarks for security for consumer devices from baby monitors, cameras and cell phones to laptops and tablets. The goal is to have manufacturers hold themselves to "industry-leading cybersecurity and data security standards, guidelines, best practices, methodologies, procedures, and processes" for the reward of branding their products as such. Manufacturers would self-certify that their products met the benchmarks, and then could display a "Cyber Shield" label, like a "Good CyberHouseprotecting" seal of approval.

The committee will advise the Secretary of Commerce, who could elect not to treat a product as certified unless it was tested and accredited by an independent laboratory. The secretary would have two years from the enactment of the legislation to establish the cybersecurity benchmarks. The program would get a going over by the Commerce inspector general every two years staring not more than four years after enactment.

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