Further Reading and Other Developments (17 July)

First things first, if you would like to receive my Technology Policy Update, email me. You can find some of these Updates from 2019 and 2020 here.

Speaking of which, the Technology Policy Update is being published daily during the week, and here are the Other Developments and Further Reading from this week.

Other Developments

• Acting Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Marco Rubio (R-FL), Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jim Risch (R-ID), and Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and John Cornyn (R-TX) wrote Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and Secretary of Defense Mike Esper “to ask that the Administration take immediate measures to bring the most advanced digital semiconductor manufacturing capabilities to the United States…[which] are critical to our American economic and national security and while our nation leads in the design of semiconductors, we rely on international manufacturing for advanced semiconductor fabrication.” This letter follows the Trump Administration’s May announcement that the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC) agreed to build a $12 billion plant in Arizona. It also bears note that one of the amendments pending to the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021“ (S.4049) would establish a grants program to stimulate semiconductor manufacturing in the US.
• Senators Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) sent a letter to Facebook “regarding its failure to prevent the propagation of white supremacist groups online and its role in providing such groups with the organizational infrastructure and reach needed to expand.” They also “criticized Facebook for being unable or unwilling to enforce its own Community Standards and purge white supremacist and other violent extremist content from the site” and posed “a series of questions regarding Facebook’s policies and procedures against hate speech, violence, white supremacy and the amplification of extremist content.”
• The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published the Pipeline Cyber Risk Mitigation Infographic that was “[d]eveloped in coordination with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)…[that] outlines activities that pipeline owners/operators can undertake to improve their ability to prepare for, respond to, and mitigate against malicious cyber threats.”
• Representative Kendra Horn (D-OK) and 10 other Democrats introduced legislation “requiring the U.S. government to identify, analyze, and combat efforts by the Chinese government to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic” that was endorsed by “[t]he broader Blue Dog Coalition” according to their press release. The “Preventing China from Exploiting COVID-19 Act” (H.R.7484) “requires the Director of National Intelligence—in coordination with the Secretaries of Defense, State, and Homeland Security—to prepare an assessment of the different ways in which the Chinese government has exploited or could exploit the pandemic, which originated in China, in order to advance China’s interests and to undermine the interests of the United States, its allies, and the rules-based international order.” Horn and her cosponsors stated “[t]he assessment must be provided to Congress within 90 days and posted in unclassified form on the DNI’s website.”
• The Supreme Court of Canada upheld the “Genetic Non-Discrimination Act” and denied a challenge to the legality of the statute brought by the government of Quebec, the Attorney General of Canada, and others. The court found:
  • The pith and substance of the challenged provisions is to protect individuals’ control over their detailed personal information disclosed by genetic tests, in the broad areas of contracting and the provision of goods and services, in order to address Canadians’ fears that their genetic test results will be used against them and to prevent discrimination based on that information. This matter is properly classified within Parliament’s power over criminal law. The provisions are supported by a criminal law purpose because they respond to a threat of harm to several overlapping public interests traditionally protected by the criminal law — autonomy, privacy, equality and public health.
• The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission published a report “analyzing the evolution of U.S. multinational enterprises (MNE) operations in China from 2000 to 2017.” The Commission found MNE’s operations in the People’s Republic of China “may indirectly erode the  United  States’  domestic industrial competitiveness  and  technological  leadership relative  to  China” and “as U.S. MNE activity in China increasingly focuses on the production of high-end technologies, the risk  that  U.S.  firms  are  unwittingly enabling China to  achieve  its industrial  policy and  military  development objectives rises.”
• The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Huawei filed their final briefs in their lawsuit before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit arising from the FCC’s designation of Huawei as a “covered company” for purposes of a rule that denies Universal Service Funds (USF) “to purchase or obtain any equipment or services produced or provided by a covered company posing a national security threat to the integrity of communications networks or the communications supply chain.” Huawei claimed in its brief that “[t]he rulemaking and “initial designation” rest on the FCC’s national security judgments..[b]ut such judgments fall far afield of the FCC’s statutory  authority  and  competence.” Huawei also argued “[t]he USF rule, moreover, contravenes the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the Due Process Clause.” The FCC responded in its filing that “Huawei challenges the FCC’s decision to exclude carriers whose networks are vulnerable to foreign interference, contending that the FCC has neither statutory nor constitutional authority to make policy judgments involving “national security”…[but] [t]hese arguments are premature, as Huawei has not yet been injured by the Order.” The FCC added “Huawei’s claim that the Communications Act textually commits all policy determinations with national security implications to the President is demonstrably false.”
• European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) Wojciech Wiewiórowski released his Strategy for 2020-2024, “which will focus on Digital Solidarity.” Wiewiórowski explained that “three core pillars of the EDPS strategy outline the guiding actions and objectives for the organisation to the end of 2024:
  • Foresight: The EDPS will continue to monitor legal, social and technological advances around the world and engage with experts, specialists and data protection authorities to inform its work.
  • Action: To strengthen the EDPS’ supervision, enforcement and advisory roles the EDPS will promote coherence in the activities of enforcement bodies in the EU and develop tools to assist the EU institutions, bodies and agencies to maintain the highest standards in data protection.
  • Solidarity: While promoting digital justice and privacy for all, the EDPS will also enforce responsible and sustainable data processing, to positively impact individuals and maximise societal benefits in a just and fair way.
• Facebook released a Civil Rights Audit, an “investigation into Facebook’s policies and practices began in 2018 at the behest and encouragement of the civil rights community and some members of Congress.” Those charged with conducting the audit explained that they “vigorously advocated for more and would have liked to see the company go further to address civil rights concerns in a host of areas that are described in detail in the report” including but not limited to
  • A stronger interpretation of its voter suppression policies — an interpretation that makes those policies effective against voter suppression and prohibits content like the Trump voting posts — and more robust and more consistent enforcement of those policies leading up to the US 2020 election.
  • More visible and consistent prioritization of civil rights in company decision-making overall.
  • More resources invested to study and address organized hate against Muslims, Jews and other targeted groups on the platform.
  • A commitment to go beyond banning explicit references to white separatism and white nationalism to also prohibit express praise, support and representation of white separatism and white nationalism even where the terms themselves are not used.
  • More concrete action and specific commitments to take steps to address concerns about algorithmic bias or discrimination.
  • They added that “[t]his report outlines a number of positive and consequential steps that the company has taken, but at this point in history, the Auditors are concerned that those gains could be obscured by the vexing and heartbreaking decisions Facebook has made that represent significant setbacks for civil rights.”
• The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) released a white paper titled “The Role of AI Technology in Pandemic Response and Preparedness” that “outlines a series of investments and initiatives that the United States must undertake to realize the full potential of AI to secure our nation against pandemics.” NSCAI noted its previous two white papers:
  • “The first white paper, “Privacy and Ethics Recommendations for Computing Applications Developed to Mitigate COVID-19,” analyzed how computing applications can supplement the United States’ manual contact tracing efforts and recommends privacy and ethics considerations in developing and fielding these applications.
  • The second white paper, “Mitigating Economic Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Preserving U.S. Strategic Competitiveness in AI,” offered recommendations for using AI to mitigate the economic impact of COVID-19, and protecting AI and other emerging technologies as strategic assets and sources of U.S. and allied economic strength.
• Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced that Chief Technology Officer Michael J.K. Kratsios has “been designated to serve as Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering” even though he does not have a degree in science. The last Under Secretary held a PhD. However, Kratsios worked for venture capitalist Peter Thiel who backed President Donald Trump when he ran for office in 2016.
• The United States’ Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) issued research “to develop a cyber security risk analysis methodology for communications-based connected railroad technologies…[and] [t]he use-case-specific implementation of the methodology can identify potential cyber attack threats, system vulnerabilities, and consequences of the attack– with risk assessment and identification of promising risk mitigation strategies.”
• In a blog post, a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) economist asserted cybercrime may be having a much larger impact on the United States’ economy than previously thought:
  • In a recent NIST report, I looked at losses in the U.S. manufacturing industry due to cybercrime by examining an underutilized dataset from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which is the most statistically reliable data that I can find. I also extended this work to look at the losses in all U.S. industries. The data is from a 2005 survey of 36,000 businesses with 8,079 responses, which is also by far the largest sample that I could identify for examining aggregated U.S. cybercrime losses. Using this data, combined with methods for examining uncertainty in data, I extrapolated upper and lower bounds, putting 2016 U.S. manufacturing losses to be between 0.4% and 1.7% of manufacturing value-added or between $8.3 billion and $36.3 billion. The losses for all industries are between 0.9% and 4.1% of total U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), or between $167.9 billion and $770.0 billion. The lower bound is 40% higher than the widely cited, but largely unconfirmed, estimates from McAfee.
• The Government Accountability Office (GAO) advised the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that it needs a comprehensive strategy for implementing 5G across the United States. The GAO concluded
  • FCC has taken a number of actions regarding 5G deployment, but it has not clearly developed specific and measurable performance goals and related measures–with the involvement of relevant stakeholders, including National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)–to manage the spectrum demands associated with 5G deployment. This makes FCC unable to demonstrate whether the progress being made in freeing up spectrum is achieving any specific goals, particularly as it relates to congested mid-band spectrum. Additionally, without having established specific and measurable performance goals with related strategies and measures for mitigating 5G’s potential effects on the digital divide, FCC will not be able to assess the extent to which its actions are addressing the digital divide or what actions would best help all Americans obtain access to wireless networks.
• The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued “Time Guidance for Network Operators, Chief Information Officers, and Chief Information Security Officers” “to inform public and private sector organizations, educational institutions, and government agencies on time resilience and security practices in enterprise networks and systems…[and] to address gaps in available time testing practices, increasing awareness of time-related system issues and the linkage between time and cybersecurity.”
• Fifteen Democratic Senators sent a letter to the Department of Defense, Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), and U.S. Cyber Command, urging them “to take additional measures to fight influence campaigns aimed at disenfranchising voters, especially voters of color, ahead of the 2020 election.” They called on these agencies to take “additional measures:”
  • The American people and political candidates are promptly informed about the targeting of our political processes by foreign malign actors, and that the public is provided regular periodic updates about such efforts leading up to the general election.
  • Members of Congress and congressional staff are appropriately and adequately briefed on continued findings and analysis involving election related foreign disinformation campaigns and the work of each agency and department to combat these campaigns.
  • Findings and analysis involving election related foreign disinformation campaigns are shared with civil society organizations and independent researchers to the maximum extent which is appropriate and permissible.
  • Secretary Esper and Director Ratcliffe implement a social media information sharing and analysis center (ISAC) to detect and counter information warfare campaigns across social media platforms as authorized by section 5323 of the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.
  • Director Ratcliffe implement the Foreign Malign Influence Response Center to coordinate a whole of government approach to combatting foreign malign influence campaigns as authorized by section 5322 of the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.
• The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) unveiled an issue brief “Why New Calls to Subvert Commercial Encryption Are Unjustified” arguing “that government efforts to subvert encryption would negatively impact individuals and businesses.” ITIF offered these “key takeaways:”
  • Encryption gives individuals and organizations the means to protect the confidentiality of their data, but it has interfered with law enforcement’s ability to prevent and investigate crimes and foreign threats.
  • Technological advances have long frustrated some in the law enforcement community, giving rise to multiple efforts to subvert commercial use of encryption, from the Clipper Chip in the 1990s to the San Bernardino case two decades later.
  • Having failed in these prior attempts to circumvent encryption, some law enforcement officials are now calling on Congress to invoke a “nuclear option”: legislation banning “warrant-proof” encryption.
  • This represents an extreme and unjustified measure that would do little to take encryption out of the hands of bad actors, but it would make commercial products less secure for ordinary consumers and businesses and damage U.S. competitiveness.
• The White House released an executive order in which President Donald Trump determined “that the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong (Hong Kong) is no longer sufficiently autonomous to justify differential treatment in relation to the People’s Republic of China (PRC or China) under the particular United States laws and provisions thereof set out in this order.” Trump further determined “the situation with respect to Hong Kong, including recent actions taken by the PRC to fundamentally undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States…[and] I hereby declare a national emergency with respect to that threat.” The executive order would continue the Administration’s process of changing policy to ensure Hong Kong is treated the same as the PRC.
• President Donald Trump also signed a bill passed in response to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) passing legislation the United States and other claim will strip Hong Kong of the protections the PRC agreed to maintain for 50 years after the United Kingdom (UK) handed over the city. The “Hong Kong Autonomy Act” “requires the imposition of sanctions on Chinese individuals and banks who are included in an annual State Department list found to be subverting Hong Kong’s autonomy” according to the bill’s sponsor Representative Brad Sherman (D-CA).
• Representative Stephen Lynch, who chairs House Oversight and Reform Committee’s National Security Subcommittee, sent letters to Apple and Google “after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) confirmed that mobile applications developed, operated, or owned by foreign entities, including China and Russia, could potentially pose a national security risk to American citizens and the United States” according to his press release. He noted in letters sent by the technology companies to the Subcommittee that:
  • Apple confirmed that it does not require developers to submit “information on where user data (if any such data is collected by the developer’s app) will be housed” and that it “does not decide what user data a third-party app can access, the user does.”
  • Google stated that it does “not require developers to provide the countries in which their mobile applications will house user data” and acknowledged that “some developers, especially those with a global user base, may store data in multiple countries.”
  • Lynch is seeking “commitments from Apple and Google to require information from application developers about where user data is stored, and to make users aware of that information prior to downloading the application on their mobile devices.”
• Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced a settlement with Frontier Communications that “concludes the three major investigations and lawsuits that the Attorney General’s office launched into Minnesota’s major telecoms providers for deceptive, misleading, and fraudulent practices.” The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) stated
  • Based on its investigation, the Attorney General’s Office alleged that Frontier used a variety of deceptive and misleading practices to overcharge its customers, such as: billing customers more than they were quoted by Frontier’s agents; failing to disclose fees and surcharges in its sales presentations and advertising materials; and billing customers for services that were not delivered.
  • The OAG “also alleged that Frontier sold Minnesotans expensive internet services with so-called “maximum speed” ratings that were not attainable, and that Frontier improperly advertised its service as “reliable,” when in fact it did not provide enough bandwidth for customers to consistently receive their expected service.”
• The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) issued guidelines “on the criteria of the Right to be Forgotten in the search engines cases under the GDPR” that “focuses solely on processing by search engine providers and delisting requests  submitted by data subjects” even Article 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation applies to all data controllers. The EDPB explained “This paper is divided into two topics:
  • The first topic concerns the grounds a data subject can rely on for a delisting request sent to a search engine provider pursuant to Article 17.1 GDPR.
  • The second topic concerns the exceptions to the Right to request delisting according to Article 17.3 GDPR.
• The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) “is seeking views on draft Rules and accompanying draft Privacy Impact Assessment that authorise third parties who are accredited at the ‘unrestricted’ level to collect Consumer Data Right (CDR) data on behalf of another accredited person.” The ACCC explained “[t]his will allow accredited persons to utilise other accredited parties to collect CDR data and provide other services that facilitate the provision of goods and services to consumers.” In a March explanatory statement, the ACCC stated “[t]he CDR is an economy-wide reform that will apply sector-by-sector, starting with the banking sector…[and] [t]he objective of the CDR is to provide individual and business consumers (consumers) with the ability to efficiently and conveniently access specified data held about them by businesses (data holders), and to authorise the secure disclosure of that data to third parties (accredited data recipients) or to themselves.” The ACCC noted “[t]he CDR is regulated by both the ACCC and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) as it concerns both competition and consumer matters as well as the privacy and confidentiality of consumer data.” Input is due by 20 July.
• Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of the Interior (Interior) found that even though the agency spends $1.4 billion annually on cybersecurity “[g]uarding against increasing cybersecurity threats” remains one of Interior’s top challenges. The OIG asserted Interior “continues to struggle to implement an enterprise information technology (IT) security program that balances compliance, cost, and risk while enabling bureaus to meet their diverse missions.”
• In a summary of its larger investigation into “Security over Information Technology Peripheral Devices at Select Office of Science Locations,” the Department of Energy’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) that “identified weaknesses related to access controls and configuration settings” for peripheral devices (e.g. thumb drives, printers, scanners and other connected devices)  “similar in type to those identified in prior evaluations of the Department’s unclassified cybersecurity program.”
• The House Homeland Security Committee’s Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Innovation Subcommittee Ranking Member John Katko (R-NY) “a comprehensive national cybersecurity improvement package” according to his press release, consisting of these bills:
  • The “Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director and Assistant Directors Act:”  This bipartisan measure takes steps to improve guidance and long-term strategic planning by stabilizing the CISA Director and Assistant Directors positions. Specifically, the bill:
    • Creates a 5-year term for the CISA Director, with a limit of 2 terms. The term of office for the current Director begins on date the Director began to serve.
    • Elevates the Director to the equivalent of a Deputy Secretary and Military Service Secretaries.
    • Depoliticizes the Assistant Director positions, appointed by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), categorizing them as career public servants. 
  • The “Strengthening the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act of 2020:” This measure mandates a comprehensive review of CISA in an effort to strengthen its operations, improve coordination, and increase oversight of the agency. Specifically, the bill:
    • Requires CISA to review how additional appropriations could be used to support programs for national risk management, federal information systems management, and public-private cybersecurity and integration. It also requires a review of workforce structure and current facilities and projected needs. 
    • Mandates that CISA provides a report to the House and Senate Homeland Committees within 1-year of enactment. CISA must also provide a report and recommendations to GSA on facility needs. 
    • Requires GSA to provide a review to the Administration and House and Senate Committees on CISA facilities needs within 30-days of Congressional report. 
  • The “CISA Public-Private Talent Exchange Act:” This bill requires CISA to create a public-private workforce program to facilitate the exchange of ideas, strategies, and concepts between federal and private sector cybersecurity professionals. Specifically, the bill:
    • Establishes a public-private cyber exchange program allowing government and industry professionals to work in one another’s field.
    • Expands existing private outreach and partnership efforts. 
• The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is ordering United States federal civilian agencies “to apply the July 2020 Security Update for Windows Servers running DNS (CVE-2020-1350), or the temporary registry-based workaround if patching is not possible within 24 hours.” CISA stated “[t]he software update addresses a significant vulnerability where a remote attacker could exploit it to take control of an affected system and run arbitrary code in the context of the Local System Account.” CISA Director Christopher Krebs explained “due to the wide prevalence of Windows Server in civilian Executive Branch agencies, I’ve determined that immediate action is necessary, and federal departments and agencies need to take this remote code execution vulnerability in Windows Server’s Domain Name System (DNS) particularly seriously.”
• The United States (US) Department of State has imposed “visa restrictions on certain employees of Chinese technology companies that provide material support to regimes engaging in human rights abuses globally” that is aimed at Huawei. In its statement, the Department stated “Companies impacted by today’s action include Huawei, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surveillance state that censors political dissidents and enables mass internment camps in Xinjiang and the indentured servitude of its population shipped all over China.” The Department claimed “[c]ertain Huawei employees provide material support to the CCP regime that commits human rights abuses.”
• Earlier in the month, the US Departments of State, Treasury, Commerce, and of Homeland Security issued an “advisory to highlight the harsh repression in Xinjiang.” The agencies explained
  • Businesses, individuals, and other persons, including but not limited to academic institutions, research service providers, and investors (hereafter “businesses and individuals”), that choose to operate in Xinjiang or engage with entities that use labor from Xinjiang elsewhere in China should be aware of reputational, economic, and, in certain instances, legal, risks associated with certain types of involvement with entities that engage in human rights abuses, which could include Withhold Release Orders (WROs), civil or criminal investigations, and export controls.
• The United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), Canada’s Communications  Security Establishment (CSE), United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) and the United States’ Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security  Agency (CISA) issued a joint advisory on a Russian hacking organization’s efforts have “targeted various organisations involved in COVID-19 vaccine development in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, highly likely with the intention of stealing information and intellectual property relating to the development and testing of COVID-19 vaccines.” The agencies named APT29 (also known as ‘the Dukes’ or ‘Cozy Bear’), “a cyber espionage group, almost certainly part of the Russian intelligence services,” as the culprit behind “custom malware known as ‘WellMess’ and ‘WellMail.’”
  • This alert follows May advisories issued by Australia, the US, and the UK on hacking threats related to the pandemic. Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) issued “Advisory 2020-009: Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actors targeting Australian health sector organisations and COVID-19 essential services” that asserted “APT groups may be seeking information and intellectual property relating to vaccine development, treatments, research and responses to the outbreak as this information is now of higher value and priority globally.” CISA and NCSC issued a joint advisory for the healthcare sector, especially companies and entities engaged in fighting COVID-19. The agencies stated that they have evidence that Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups “are exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic as part of their cyber operations.” In an unclassified public service announcement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and CISA named the People’s Republic of China as a nation waging a cyber campaign against U.S. COVID-19 researchers. The agencies stated they “are issuing this announcement to raise awareness of the threat to COVID-19-related research.”
• The National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) has released a draft National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) for comment due by 28 August. Draft NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-181 Revision 1, Workforce Framework for Cybersecurity (NICE Framework) that features several updates, including:
  • an updated title to be more inclusive of the variety of workers who perform cybersecurity work,
  • definition and normalization of key terms,
  • principles that facilitate agility, flexibility, interoperability, and modularity,
  • introduction of competencies,
• Representatives Glenn Thompson (R-PA), Collin Peterson (D-MN), and James Comer (R-KY) sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “questioning the Commission’s April 20, 2020 Order granting Ligado’s application to deploy a terrestrial nationwide network to provide 5G services.”
• The European Commission (EC) is asking for feedback on part of its recently released data strategy by 31 July. The EC stated it is aiming “to create a single market for data, where data from public bodies, business and citizens can be used safely and fairly for the common good…[and] [t]his initiative will draw up rules for common European data spaces (covering areas like the environment, energy and agriculture) to:
  • make better use of publicly held data for research for the common good
  • support voluntary data sharing by individuals
  • set up structures to enable key organisations to share data.
• The United Kingdom’s Parliament is asking for feedback on its legislative proposal to regulate Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport explained “the obligations within the government’s proposed legislative framework would fall mainly on the manufacturer if they are based in the UK, or if not based in the UK, on their UK representative.” The Department is also “developing an enforcement approach with relevant stakeholders to identify an appropriate enforcement body to be granted day to day responsibility and operational control of monitoring compliance with the legislation.” The Department also touted the publishing of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute’s (ETSI) “security baseline for Internet-connected consumer devices and provides a basis for future Internet of Things product certification schemes.”
• Facebook issued a white paper, titled “CHARTING A WAY FORWARD: Communicating Towards People-Centered and Accountable Design About Privacy,” in which the company states its desire to be involved in shaping a United States privacy law (See below for an article on this). Facebook concluded:
  • Facebook recognizes the responsibility we have to make sure that people are informed about the data that we collect, use, and share.
  • That’s why we support globally consistent comprehensive privacy laws and regulations that, among other things, establish people’s basic rights to be informed about how their information is collected, used, and shared, and impose obligations for organizations to do the same, including the obligation to build internal processes that maintain accountability.
  • As improvements to technology challenge historic approaches to effective communications with people about privacy, companies and regulators need to keep up with changing times.
  • To serve the needs of a global community, on both the platforms that exist now and those that are yet to be developed, we want to work with regulators, companies, and other interested third parties to develop new ways of informing people about their data, empowering them to make meaningful choices, and holding ourselves accountable.
  • While we don’t have all the answers, there are many opportunities for businesses and regulators to embrace modern design methods, new opportunities for better collaboration, and innovative ways to hold organizations accountable.
• Four Democratic Senators sent Facebook a letter “about reports that Facebook has created fact-checking exemptions for people and organizations who spread disinformation about the climate crisis on its social media platform” following a New York Times article this week on the social media’s practices regarding climate disinformation. Even though the social media giant has moved aggressively to take down false and inaccurate COVID-19 posts, climate disinformation lives on the social media platform largely unmolested for a couple of reasons. First, Facebook marks these sorts of posts as opinion and take the approach that opinions should be judged under an absolutist free speech regime. Moreover, Facebook asserts posts of this sort do not pose any imminent harm and therefore do not need to be taken down. Despite having teams of fact checkers to vet posts of demonstrably untrue information, Facebook chooses not to, most likely because material that elicits strong reactions from users drive engagement that, in turn, drives advertising dollars. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-WA), Tom Carper (D-DE), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) argued “[i]f Facebook is truly “committed to fighting the spread of false news on Facebook and Instagram,” the company must immediately acknowledge in its fact-checking process that the climate crisis is not a matter of opinion and act to close loopholes that allow climate disinformation to spread on its platform.” They posed a series of questions to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on these practices, requesting answers by 31 July.
• A Canadian court has found that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) “admittedly collected information in a manner that is contrary to this foundational commitment and then relied on that information in applying for warrants under the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, RSC 1985, c C-23 [CSIS Act]” according to a court summary of its redacted decision. The court further stated “[t]he Service and the Attorney General also admittedly failed to disclose to the Court the Service’s reliance on information that was likely collected unlawfully when seeking warrants, thereby breaching the duty of candour owed to the Court.” The court added “[t]his is not the first time this Court has been faced with a breach of candour involving the Service…[and] [t]he events underpinning this most recent breach were unfolding as recommendations were being implemented by the Service and the Attorney General to address previously identified candour concerns.” CSIS was found to have illegally collected and used metadata in a 2016 case ion its conduct between 2006-2016. In response to the most recent ruling, CSIS is vowing to implement a range of reforms. The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) is pledging the same.
• The United Kingdom’s National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) announced the withdrawal of “[t]he ‘Digital device extraction – information for complainants and witnesses’ form and ‘Digital Processing Notice’ (‘the relevant forms’) circulated to forces in February 2019 [that] are not sufficient for their intended purpose.” In mid-June, the UK’s data protection authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) unveiled its “finding that police data extraction practices vary across the country, with excessive amounts of personal data often being extracted, stored, and made available to others, without an appropriate basis in existing data protection law.” This withdrawal was also due, in part, to a late June Court of Appeal decision.  
• A range of public interest and advocacy organizations sent a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) noting “there are intense efforts underway to do exactly that, via current language in the House and Senate versions of the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that ultimately seek to reverse the FCC’s recent bipartisan and unanimous approval of Ligado Networks’ regulatory plans.” They urged them “not endorse efforts by the Department of Defense and its allies to veto commercial spectrum authorizations…[and][t]he FCC has proven itself to be the expert agency on resolving spectrum disputes based on science and engineering and should be allowed to do the job Congress authorized it to do.” In late April, the FCC’s “decision authorize[d] Ligado to deploy a low-power terrestrial nationwide network in the 1526-1536 MHz, 1627.5-1637.5 MHz, and 1646.5-1656.5 MHz bands that will primarily support Internet of Things (IoT) services.” The agency argued the order “provides regulatory certainty to Ligado, ensures adjacent band operations, including Global Positioning System (GPS), are sufficiently protected from harmful interference, and promotes more efficient and effective use of [the U.S.’s] spectrum resources by making available additional spectrum for advanced wireless services, including 5G.”
• The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) rendered his opinion on the European Commission’s White Paper on Artificial Intelligence: a European approach to excellence and trust and recommended the following for the European Union’s (EU) regulation of artificial intelligence (AI):
  • applies both to EU Member States and to EU institutions, offices, bodies and agencies;
  • is designed to protect from any negative impact, not only on individuals, but also on communities and society as a whole;
  • proposes a more robust and nuanced risk classification scheme, ensuring any significant potential harm posed by AI applications is matched by appropriate mitigating measures;
  • includes an impact assessment clearly defining the regulatory gaps that it intends to fill.
  • avoids overlap of different supervisory authorities and includes a cooperation mechanism.
  • Regarding remote biometric identification, the EDPS supports the idea of a moratorium on the deployment, in the EU, of automated recognition in public spaces of human features, not only of faces but also of gait, fingerprints, DNA, voice, keystrokes and other biometric or behavioural signals, so that an informed and democratic debate can take place and until the moment when the EU and Member States have all the appropriate safeguards, including a comprehensive legal framework in place to guarantee the proportionality of the respective technologies and systems for the specific use case.
• The Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), Germany’s domestic security agency, released a summary of its annual report in which it claimed:
  • The Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Turkey remain the main countries engaged in espionage activities and trying to exert influence on Germany.
  • The ongoing digital transformation and the increasingly networked nature of our society increases the potential for cyber attacks, worsening the threat of cyber espionage and cyber sabotage.
  • The intelligence services of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China in particular carry out cyber espionage activities against German agencies. One of their tasks is to boost their own economies with the help of information gathered by the intelligence services. This type of information-gathering campaign severely threatens the success and development opportunities of German companies.
  • To counteract this threat, Germany has a comprehensive cyber security architecture in place, which is operated by a number of different authorities. The BfV plays a major role in investigating and defending against cyber threats by detecting attacks, attributing them to specific attackers, and using the knowledge gained from this to draw up prevention strategies. The National Cyber Response Centre, in which the BfV plays a key role, was set up to consolidate the co-operation between the competent agencies. The National Cyber Response Centre aims to optimise the exchange of information between state agencies and to improve the co-ordination of protective and defensive measures against potential IT incidents.

Further Reading

• “Trump confirms cyberattack on Russian trolls to deter them during 2018 midterms” – The Washington Post. In an interview with former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, President Donald Trump confirmed he ordered a widely reported retaliatory attack on the Russian Federation’s Internet Research Agency as a means of preventing interference during the 2018 mid-term election. Trump claimed this attack he ordered was the first action the United States took against Russian hacking even though his predecessor warned Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop such activities and imposed sanctions at the end of 2016. The timing of Trump’s revelation is interesting given the ongoing furor over reports of Russian bounties paid to Taliban fighters for killing Americans the Trump Administration may have known of but did little or nothing to stop.
• “Germany proposes first-ever use of EU cyber sanctions over Russia hacking” – Deutsche Welle. Germany is looking to use the European Union’s (EU) cyber sanctions powers against Russia for its alleged 2015 16 GB exfiltration of data from the Bundestag’s systems, including from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office. Germany has been alleging that Fancy Bear (aka APT28) and Russia’s military secret service GRU carried out the attack. Germany has circulated its case for sanctions to other EU nations and EU leadership. In 2017, the European Council declared “[t]he EU diplomatic response to malicious cyber activities will make full use of measures within the Common Foreign and Security Policy, including, if necessary, restrictive measures…[and] [a] joint EU response to malicious cyber activities would be proportionate to the scope, scale, duration, intensity, complexity, sophistication and impact of the cyber activity.”
• “Wyden Plans Law to Stop Cops From Buying Data That Would Need a Warrant” – VICE. Following on a number of reports that federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies are essentially sidestepping the Fourth Amendment through buying location and other data from people’s smartphones, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) is going to draft legislation that would seemingly close what he, and other civil libertarians, are calling a loophole to the warrant requirement.
• “Amazon Backtracks From Demand That Employees Delete TikTok” – The New York Times. Amazon first instructed its employees to remove ByteDance’s app, TikTok, on 11 July from company devices and then reversed course the same day, claiming the email had been erroneously sent out. The strange episode capped another tumultuous week for ByteDance as the Trump Administration is intensifying pressure in a number of ways on the company which officials claim is subject to the laws of the People’s Republic of China and hence must share information with the government in Beijing. ByteDance counters the app marketed in the United States is through a subsidiary not subject to PRC law. ByteDance also said it would no longer offer the app in Hong Kong after the PRC change in law has extended the PRC’s reach into the former British colony. TikTok was also recently banned in India as part of a larger struggle between India and he PRC. Additionally, the Democratic National Committee warned staff about using the app this week, too.
• “Is it time to delete TikTok? A guide to the rumors and the real privacy risks.” – The Washington Post. A columnist and security specialist found ByteDance’s app vacuums up information from users, but so does Facebook and other similar apps. They scrutinized TikTok’s privacy policy and where the data went, and they could not say with certainty that it goes to and stays on servers in the US and Singapore. 
• “California investigating Google for potential antitrust violations” – Politico. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is going to conduct his own investigation of Google aside and apart from the investigation of the company’s advertising practices being conducted by virtually every other state in the United States. It was unclear why Becerra opted against joining the larger probe launched in September 2019. Of course, the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice is also investigating Google and could file suit as early as this month.
• “How May Google Fight an Antitrust Case? Look at This Little-Noticed Paper” – The New York Times. In a filing with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Google claimed it does not control the online advertising market and it is borne out by a number of indicia that argue against a monopolistic situation. The company is likely to make the same case to the United States’ government in its antitrust inquiry. However, similar arguments did not gain tractions before the European Commission, which levied a €1.49 billion for “breaching EU antitrust rules” in March 2019.
•  “Who Gets the Banhammer Now?” – The New York Times. This article examines possible motives for the recent wave of action by social media platforms to police a fraction of the extreme and hateful speech activists and others have been asking them to take down for years. This piece makes the argument that social media platforms are businesses and operate as such and expecting them to behave as de facto public squares dedicated to civil political and societal discourse is more or less how we ended up where we are.
• “TikTok goes tit-for-tat in appeal to MPs: ‘stop political football’ – The Australian. ByteDance is lobbying hard in Canberra to talk Ministers of Parliament out of possibly banning TikTok like the United States has said it is considering. While ByteDance claims the data collected on users in Australia is sent to the US or Singapore, some experts are arguing just to maintain and improve the app would necessarily result in some non-People’s Republic of China (PRC) user data making its way back to the PRC. As Australia’s relationship with the PRC has grown more fraught with allegations PRC hackers infiltrated Parliament and the Prime Minister all but saying PRC hackers were targeting hospitals and medical facilities, the government in Canberra could follow India’s lead and ban the app.
• “Calls for inquiry over claims Catalan lawmaker’s phone was targeted” – The Guardian. British and Spanish newspapers are reporting that an official in Catalonia who favors separating the region from Spain may have had his smartphone compromised with industrial grade spyware typically used only by law enforcement and counterterrorism agencies. The President of the Parliament of Catalonia Roger Torrent claims his phone was hacked for domestic political purposes, which other Catalan leaders argued, too. A spokesperson for the Spanish government said “[t]he government has no evidence that the speaker of the Catalan parliament has been the victim of a hack or theft involving his mobile.” However, the University of Toronto’s CitizenLab, the entity that researched and claimed that Israeli firm NSO Group’s spyware was deployed via WhatsApp to spy on a range of journalists, officials, and dissidents, often by their own governments, confirmed that Torrent’s phone was compromised.
• “While America Looks Away, Autocrats Crack Down on Digital News Sites” – The New York Times. The Trump Administration’s combative relationship with the media in the United States may be encouraging other nations to crack down on digital media outlets trying to hold those governments to account.
•  “How Facebook Handles Climate Disinformation” – The New York Times. Even though the social media giant has moved aggressively to take down false and inaccurate COVID-19 posts, climate disinformation lives on the social media platform largely unmolested for a couple of reasons. First, Facebook marks these sorts of posts as opinion and take the approach that opinions should be judged under an absolutist free speech regime. Moreover, Facebook asserts posts of this sort do not pose any imminent harm and therefore do not need to be taken down. Despite having teams of fact checkers to vet posts of demonstrably untrue information, Facebook chooses not to, most likely because material that elicits strong reactions from users drive engagement that, in turn, drives advertising dollars.
• “Here’s how President Trump could go after TikTok” – The Washington Post. This piece lays out two means the Trump Administration could employ to press ByteDance in the immediate future: use of the May 2019 Executive Order “Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain” or the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States process examining ByteDance of the app Music.ly that became TikTok. Left unmentioned in this article is the possibility of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) examining its 2019 settlement with ByteDance to settle violations of the “Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act” (COPPA).
• “You’re Doomscrolling Again. Here’s How to Snap Out of It.” – The New York Times. If you find yourself endlessly looking through social media feeds, this piece explains why and how you might stop doing so.
• “UK selling spyware and wiretaps to 17 repressive regimes including Saudi Arabia and China” – The Independent. There are allegations that the British government has ignored its own regulations on selling equipment and systems that can be used for surveillance and spying to other governments with spotty human rights records. Specifically, the United Kingdom (UK) has sold £75m to countries non-governmental organizations (NGO) are rated as “not free.” The claims include nations such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and others. Not surprisingly, NGOs and the minority Labour party are calling for an investigation and changes.
• “Google sued for allegedly tracking users in apps even after opting out” – c/net. Boies Schiller Flexner filed suit in what will undoubtedly seek to become a class action suit over Google’s alleged continuing to track users even when they turned off tracking features. This follows a suit filed by the same firm against Google in June, claiming its browser Chrome still tracks people when they switch to incognito mode.
• “Secret Trump order gives CIA more powers to launch cyberattacks” – Yahoo! News. It turns out that in addition to signing National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) 13 that revamped and eased offensive cyber operations for the Department of Defense, President Donald Trump signed a presidential finding that has allowed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to launch its own offensive cyber attacks, mainly at Russia and Iran, according to unnamed former United States (US) officials according to this blockbuster story. Now, the decision to commence with an attack is not vetted by the National Security Council; rather, the CIA makes the decision. Consequently, there have been a number of attacks on US adversaries that until now have not been associated with the US. And, the CIA is apparently not informing the National Security Agency or Cyber Command of its operations, raising the risk of US cyber forces working at cross purposes or against one another in cyberspace. Moreover, a recently released report blamed the lax security environment at the CIA for a massive exfiltration of hacking tools released by Wikileaks. 
• “Facebook’s plan for privacy laws? ‘Co-creating’ them with Congress” – Protocol. In concert with the release of a new white paper, Facebook Deputy Chief Privacy Officer Rob Sherman sat for an interview in which he pledged the company’s willingness to work with Congress to co-develop a national privacy law. However, he would not comment on any of the many privacy bills released thus far or the policy contours of a bill Facebook would favor except for advocating for an enhanced notice and consent regime under which people would be better informed about how their data is being used. Sherman also shrugged off suggestions Facebook may not be welcome given its record of privacy violations. Finally, it bears mention that similar efforts by other companies at the state level have not succeeded as of yet. For example, Microsoft’s efforts in Washington state have not borne fruit in the passage of a privacy law.
• “Deepfake used to attack activist couple shows new disinformation frontier” – Reuters. We are at the beginning of a new age of disinformation in which fake photographs and video will be used to wage campaigns against nations, causes, and people. An activist and his wife were accused of being terrorist sympathizers by a university student who apparently was an elaborate ruse for someone or some group looking to defame the couple. Small errors gave away the ruse this time, but advances in technology are likely to make detection all the harder.
• “Biden, billionaires and corporate accounts targeted in Twitter hack” – The Washington Post. Policymakers and security experts were alarmed when the accounts of major figures like Bill Gates and Barack Obama were hacked yesterday by some group seeking to sell bitcoin. They argue Twitter was lucky this time and a more ideologically motivated enemy may seek to cause havoc, say on the United States’ coming election. A number of experts are claiming the penetration of the platform must have been of internal controls for so many high profile accounts to be taken over at the same time.
• “TikTok Enlists Army of Lobbyists as Suspicions Over China Ties Grow” – The New York Times. ByteDance’s payments for lobbying services in Washington doubled between the last quarter of 2019 and thirst quarter of 2020, as the company has retained more than 35 lobbyists to push back against the Trump Administration’s rhetoric and policy changes. The company is fighting against a floated proposal to ban the TikTok app on national security grounds, which would cut the company off from another of its top markets after India banned it and scores of other apps from the People’s Republic of China. Even if the Administration does not bar use of the app in the United States, the company is facing legislation that would ban its use on federal networks and devices that will be acted upon next week by a Senate committee. Moreover, ByteDance’s acquisition of the app that became TikTok is facing a retrospective review of an inter-agency committee for national security considerations that could result in an unwinding of the deal. Moreover, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been urged to review ByteDance’s compliance with a 2019 settlement that the company violated regulations protecting the privacy of children that could result in multi-billion dollar liability if wrongdoing is found.
• “Why Google and Facebook Are Racing to Invest in India” – Foreign Policy. With New Delhi banning 59 apps and platforms from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), two American firms have invested in an Indian giant with an eye toward the nearly 500 million Indians not yet online. Reliance Industries’ Jio Platforms have sold stakes to Google and Facebook worth $4.5 billion and $5.7 billion that gives them prized positions as the company looks to expand into 5G and other online ventures. This will undoubtedly give a leg up to the United States’ online giants in vying with competitors to the world’s second most populous nation.
• ““Outright Lies”: Voting Misinformation Flourishes on Facebook” – ProPublica. In this piece published with First Draft, “a global nonprofit that researches misinformation,” an analysis of the most popular claims made about mail voting show that many of them are inaccurate or false, thus violating the platforms terms of services yet Facebook has done nothing to remove them or mark them as inaccurate until this article was being written.
• “Inside America’s Secretive $2 Billion Research Hub” – Forbes. Using contract information obtained through Freedom of Information requests and interviews, light is shined on the little known non-profit MITRE Corporation that has been helping the United States government address numerous technological problems since the late 1950’s. The article uncovers some of its latest, federally funded projects that are raising eyebrows among privacy advocates: technology to life people’s fingerprints from social media pictures, technology to scan and copy Internet of Things (IoT) devices from a distance, a scanner to read a person’s DNA, and others.
• “The FBI Is Secretly Using A $2 Billion Travel Company As A Global Surveillance Tool” – Forbes. In his second blockbuster article in a week, Forbes reporter Thomas Brewster exposes how the United States (US) government is using questionable court orders to gather travel information from the three companies that essentially provide airlines, hotels, and other travel entities with back-end functions with respect to reservations and bookings. The three companies, one of whom, Sabre is a US multinational, have masses of information on you if you have ever traveled, and US law enforcement agencies, namely the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is using a 1789 statute to obtain orders all three companies have to obey for information in tracking suspects. Allegedly, this capability has only been used to track terror suspects but will now reportedly be used for COVID-19 tracking.
• “With Trump CIA directive, the cyber offense pendulum swings too far” – Yahoo! News. Former United States (US) National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke argues against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) having carte blanche in conducting cyber operations without the review or input of other federal agencies. He suggests that the CIA in particular, and agencies in general, tend to push their authority to the extreme, which in this case could lead to incidents and lasting precedents in cyberspace that may haunt the US. Clarke also intimated that it may have been the CIA and not Israel that launched cyber attacks on infrastructure facilities in Tehran this month and last.

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