The Cyberlaw Podcast
The Cyberlaw Podcast is a weekly interview series and discussion offering an opinionated roundup of the latest events in technology, security, privacy, and government. It features in-depth interviews of a wide variety of guests, including academics, politicians, authors, reporters, and other technology and policy newsmakers. Hosted by cybersecurity attorney Stewart Baker, whose views expressed are his own.
“Pay no Attention to the Guns, the Flashbang, and the Handcuffs. You’re Free to Go at Any Time.”
9 Jan 2019
Nate Jones (https://twitter.com/n8jones81), David Kris and I kick off 2019 with a roundup of the month of news since we took our Christmas break. First, we break down the utterly predictable but
Blockchain Takes Over The Podcast
18 Dec 2018
On December 17th, Alan Cohn hosted the 244th episode of The Cyberlaw Podcast. We took a deep dive into all things blockchain and cryptocurrency, discussing recent regulatory developments and
Tech World Turned Upside Down Down Under
11 Dec 2018
In the News Roundup, Nick Weaver (https://twitter.com/ncweaver) and I offer very different assessments of Australia’s controversial encryption bill. Nick’s side of the argument is bolstered by
Nobody Trolls Like the Russians
5 Dec 2018
This episode features an interview with Michael Tiffany, the co-founder and president of White Ops and a deep student of how to curtail adtech fraud. Michael explains the adtech business, how
You’ll Never Know How Evil a Technology Can be Until the Engineers Deploying it Fear for Their Jobs
28 Nov 2018
I propose this episode’s title as Baker’s Law of Evil Technology, something that explains Twitter’s dysfunctional woke-ness, Yahoo’s crappy security and Uber’s deadly autonomous vehicles.
If Paris Calls, Should We Hang Up?
19 Nov 2018
Mieke Eoyang joins us for the interview about Third Way’s “To Catch a Hacker” report. We agree on the importance of what I call “attribution and retribution” as a way to improve
The Ministry of Silly Talk
14 Nov 2018
This week’s interview is a deep (and long—over an hour) dive into new investment review regulations for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). It’s excerpted from an
Bold Prediction Episode: Foreign Governments Will Not Hack This Election
6 Nov 2018
This episode puts our experts on the spot with an election-eve question: Will foreign governments attack US electoral rolls or vote-counting machinery in 2018? Remarkably, no one on our panel
I’d Like to Teach the World to Troll, in Perfect Harmony!
29 Oct 2018
The theme of this week’s podcast seems to be the remarkable reach of American soft power: Really, we elect Donald Trump, and suddenly everybody’s trolling. The Justice Department criminally
Twitterlaw and the Khashoggi Killing
23 Oct 2018
In this episode’s interview we ask whether the midterm elections are likely to suffer as much foreign hacking and interference as we saw in 2016. The answer, from Christopher Krebs, Under Secretary
It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's… Doug?
16 Oct 2018
Today we interview Doug, the chief legal officer of GCHQ, the British equivalent of NSA. It’s the first time we’ve interviewed someone whose full identify is classified. Out of millions of
The California Turing Test
9 Oct 2018
Bloomberg Businessweek’s claim that the Chinese bugged Supermicro motherboards leads off our News Roundup. The story is controversial not because it couldn’t happen and not because the Chinese
Outing the GRU
1 Oct 2018
In this news-only episode, Nick Weaver and I muse over the outing of a GRU colonel for the nerve agent killings in the United Kingdom. I ask the question that is surely being debated inside MI6
Will AI Save the Internet From Vladimir Putin—and Matt Drudge?
25 Sep 2018
Our guest is Peter W. Singer (https://twitter.com/peterwsinger), co-author with Emerson T. Brooking of LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (https://www.likewarbook.com/). Peter’s book is a
Ah, September, When Europe Unleashes a Summer's Worth of Crazy
18 Sep 2018
Our interview this week is with Hon. Michael Chertoff, my former boss at Homeland Security and newly minted author of Exploding Data: Reclaiming Our Cyber Security in the Digital Age. The
Click Here to Kill Everybody
11 Sep 2018
We are fully back from our August hiatus, and leading off a series of great interviews, I talk with Bruce Schneier about his new book, Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a
Bonus: Interview with Bruce Schneier (2015)
29 Aug 2018
We’re still on hiatus, but we’re back again this week with another bonus episode. Our next season will feature an interview with Bruce Schneier (https://www.schneier.com/), cryptography, computer
Bonus: Interview with Joseph Nye (2015)
7 Aug 2018
We’re officially on hiatus this month, but we just couldn’t stay away that long. If you can’t live without The Cyberlaw Podcast in your life, then you’re in luck. We’re releasing a couple
Best Idea Yet for Derailing the Kavanaugh Nomination
31 Jul 2018
Our guest for the interview is Noah Phillips, recently appointed FTC Commissioner and former colleague of Stewart Baker at Steptoe. Noah fields questions about the European Union, privacy, and LabMD,
Defending Against Deep Fakes with Lifelogs, Watermarks … and Tatts?
24 Jul 2018
In our 227th episode of The Cyberlaw Podcast, Stewart Baker interviews Bobby Chesney (https://twitter.com/BobbyChesney) (@BobbyChesney), who recently co-authored a paper with Danielle Citron
Where Are All My Twitter Followers?
17 Jul 2018
In Episode 226 of the Cyberlaw Podcast, Stewart departs for the wilderness, and the news-roundup team (Brian Egan with Matthew Heiman, Jim Lewis, and Megan Reiss (https://twitter.com/MegReiss))
Interview with Gen. Michael Hayden
10 Jul 2018
Our interview is with Gen. Michael Hayden, author of "The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies." Gen. Hayden is a former head of the CIA and NSA, and a harsh critic
Interview with Duncan Hollis: Do We Need an International “Potluck” Cyber Coalition?
3 Jul 2018
I interview Duncan Hollis (https://twitter.com/duncanhollis), another Steptoe alumnus patrolling the intersection of international law and cybersecurity. With Matt Waxman, Duncan has written an essay
Interview with David Sanger
28 Jun 2018
I interview David Sanger (https://twitter.com/SangerNYT) in this episode on his new book, “The Perfect Weapon – War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age.” It is an instant history of how the
Interview with Megan Stifel
19 Jun 2018
Our interview is with Megan Stifel, whose paper for Public Knowledge offers a new way of thinking about cybersecurity measures, drawing by analogy on the relative success of sustainability
Daugherty’s Revenge
11 Jun 2018
The 11th Circuit’s LabMD decision is a dish served cold for Michael Daugherty, the CEO of the defunct company. The decision overturns decades of FTC jurisdiction, acquired over the years by a kind
GDPR and the Typhoid Marys of the Internet
5 Jun 2018
GDPR has finally arrived, Maury Shenk reminds us, bringing both expected and unexpected consequences. Among the expected: New Schrems lawsuits for more money from the same old defendants; and the
Nick Bilton, Ross Ulbricht, and the Silk Road Bust
29 May 2018
This episode features a conversation with Nick Bilton, author of “American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road.” His book, out in paperback, tells the story of
The Mugshots.com Case: California Crazy Meets European Crazy
28 May 2018
In this episode, Markham Erickson highlights the Mugshots.com prosecution. The site had a loathsome business model, publishing mugshots for free and charging hundreds of bucks to people who wanted
Blockchain Takes Over The Cyberlaw Podcast
23 May 2018
In our 217th episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast, the blockchain and cryptocurrency team takes over the podcast again. Alan Cohn (https://www.steptoe.com/en/lawyers/alan-cohn.html) hosts another of the
Every President Gets the White House He Deserves
15 May 2018
The Cyberlaw Podcast has now succumbed to an irresistible media trend: We begin the episode with a tweet from President Trump. In this one, he promises to get ZTE “back in business, fast.” Paul
Interview with Nicholas Schmidle
9 May 2018
Our interview is with Nick Schmidle, staff writer for the New Yorker. His report on cybersecurity work that goes to the edge of the law and beyond turns up some previously unreported material,
Dumbest Privacy Issue of the Decade?
1 May 2018
This episode features a new technology-and-privacy flap. The police finally catch a sadistic serial killer, and the press can’t stop whining about DNA privacy. I argue that DNA privacy is in the
News Roundup
17 Apr 2018
In episode 212 of the podcast, Stewart Baker is at RSA, and Brian Egan, Maury Shenk, and Pete Jeydel of Steptoe are joined by David Kris and Nate Jones of Culper Partners LLC to cover the good, the
Interview with Chris Bing and Patrick Howell O’Neill
10 Apr 2018
Our interview is with Chris Bing and Patrick Howell O’Neill of Cyberscoop. They’ve broken two cyberscoops in the last week or so. First, an in-depth look at Kaspersky’s outing of a U.S.
Keeper: Loser, Weeper
3 Apr 2018
In the news roundup, Nick Weaver, Ben Wittes and I talk about the mild reheating of the encryption debate, sparked not just by renewed FBI pleading but by the collapse of the left-lib claim that
Interview with Michael Page
27 Mar 2018
It was a cyberlaw-packed week in Washington. Congress jammed the CLOUD Act into the omnibus appropriations bill, and boom, just like that, it’s law. Say goodbye to the Microsoft Ireland case just
Interview with Pete Chronis
19 Mar 2018
All of Washington is mad at Silicon Valley these days, as our news roundup reveals. Democrats and the media have moved on from blaming Hillary Clinton’s loss on Vladimir Putin; now they’re
Interview with Amb. Nathan Sales
14 Mar 2018
Our interview this week is with Amb. Nathan Sales, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator. We cover a Trump administration diplomatic achievement in the field of technology and
Interview with Miles Brundage and Shahar Avin
6 Mar 2018
Our interview features an excellent and mostly grounded exploration of how artificial intelligence could become a threat as a result of the cybersecurity arms race. Maury Shenk does much of the
Interview with Glenn Gerstell
15 Feb 2018
This episode consists of Jamil Jaffer and me interviewing Glenn Gerstell, the general counsel of the National Security Agency. Glenn explains what it was like on the inside of the effort to
The Cyberlaw Podcast: News Roundup
13 Feb 2018
Cyberlaw Podcast alumnus Marten Mickos was called before the Senate commerce committee to testify about HackerOne’s bug bounty program. But the unhappy star of the hearings was Uber, which was
Interview with Susan Landau
6 Feb 2018
The crypto wars return to The Cyberlaw Podcast in episode 201, as I interview Susan Landau about her new book on the subject, ‘Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age.’ Susan and I have
Interview with Tim Maurer
30 Jan 2018
Whether they call it the fitbit or the “Ohsh*t!bit,” governments are learning that the exercise internet of things is giving away their geospatial secrets at a rapid clip. Nick Weaver walks us
Untold Stories of Section 702 Reauthorization
23 Jan 2018
In this guestless episode, Michael Vatis, Markham Erickson, and Nick Weaver (http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/) join me to round up the news. I explore the final results of the intense
Interview with Shane Harris
17 Jan 2018
It turns out that the most interesting policy story about Kaspersky software isn’t why the administration banned its products from government use; it’s why the last administration didn’t. Shane
Interview with Mara Hvistendahl
8 Jan 2018
While the U.S. was transfixed by posturing over the Trump presidency, China has been building the future. Chances are you’ll find one part of that future–social credit scoring–both appalling in
Did AlphaGo Launch an Arms Race With China?
12 Dec 2017
In this episode, I interview Elsa Kania, author of a Center for a New American Security report on China’s plan for military uses of artificial intelligence—a plan that seems to have been
Interview with Susan Hennessey and Andrew McCarthy
5 Dec 2017
Episode 195 features an interview with Susan Hennessey of Lawfare and Andrew McCarthy of the National Review. They walk us through the “unmasking” of US identities in intelligence reports—one
Mass Bioterrorism, Runaway Artificial Intelligence, and Other Romps with Rob Reid
28 Nov 2017
Our interview this week is with Rob Reid, author of “After On” and “Year Zero,” two books that manage to translate serious technology nightmares into science fiction romps. We cover a lot of