Software liability
Our last episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast (No. 446) was a long interview on the U.S. national cybersecurity strategy with Chris Inglis, until recently the national cybersecurity director. So this episode 447 focuses only on the most controversial recommendation in the strategy – liability for certain security flaws. Nick Weaver, Maury Shenk and I explore the pros and cons of what’s become known as cybersecurity’s third rail.
Turning to the U.K., Maury brings us up to date on the pending Online Safety Bill. Signal has threatened to “walk” out of the U.K. if the bill’s protections for children threaten its end-to-end encryption ideology. Far from being deterred, members of Parliament are pushing for a tougher bill, and the government is being forced to accommodate them with tough criminal penalties for Big Tech execs who do not take their obligations sufficiently seriously.
Is the Biden administration getting ready to impose restrictions on outbound U.S. investment in critical Chinese industries? The Wall Street Journal says it is, but Justin Sherman thinks that the administration may just be meeting Congress’s requirements for a briefing on the topic. Meanwhile, I wonder whether we’ve got this tech control thing backwards. If ASPI , the Australian think tank, is right, the U.S. has already lost the lead to China in 37 of 44 critical new technologies, so what we really need to worry about is Chinese restrictions on U.S. access to its technology.
Maury and I explore “woke AI,” the notion that the “ethical guardrails” built into ChatGPT and other engines are simply disguised forms of political bias. Maury notes that Justice Gorsuch has questioned whether AI engines might have the protection of section 230. That seems like a legally dubious proposition to us, but don’t underestimate the willingness of Big Tech’s lawyers to argue the point.
TikTok suffered a setback on the Hill last week, as Republicans passed out of committee a bill effectively banning the app. It was a party line vote, showing how what had been a bipartisan issue is now fraying into partisanship, at least in the House. In the Senate, though, Senat
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