Podcast
Lex Cybernetica Podcast
Hosted by The Federmann Cyber Security Center – Cyber Law Program · EN
Lex Cybernetica by The Federmann Cyber Security Center – Cyber Law Program Brings together experts to discuss issues from the Center’s core activities and research.
20episodes
Episodes
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Lex Cybernetica E10 – Artificial Intelligence
Aug 5, 201900:26:18Tap to summarizeWe hear a lot about AI and how it's going to change our lives - or even destroy them. How does the legal system deal with having AI integrated into our lives? Prof. Karen Eltis, a full Professor of Law (professeure titulaire) at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ottawa and research associate at the Federmann Cyber Security Center – Cyber Law Program, says that cyberspace diminished or removed two main pillars of traditional law - territory and intermediaries. She also wants to dispel AI myths, saying “It’s like the Wizard of OZ and the man behind the curtain. AI is data-in, data-out, so it’s really the humans that tell the AI what to do. And the concern is we’re able to hide behind the AI”. AI powered tech has different degrees of autonomy, depending on how involved the humans around it are - in, on or outside the loop. How do we control AI, or should we let it control us in some ways? “When people talk about AI, there are two visions that people see”, says Prof. Oren Gross, an Irving Younger Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School and research associate at the Federmann Cyber Security Center – Cyber Law Program, with whom we discuss these questions. “If you're looking at the apocalyptic vision of Skynet or Terminator, then the answer is yes, we absolutely do not want to lose our humanity and to give machines decision making power. If we're thinking about R2D2 - as machines that will be complimentary to human beings, that may free us from some sorts of decision making and free us to make some other, maybe higher level, more abstract level, of decision making - that's not necessarily a bad thing”. Is your fridge running? Better hurry and catch it, then, before it becomes sentient. As our electronic devices - not just the gadgety ones, but also the old fashioned ones, like the fridge, the vacuum cleaner and the personal assistant - become connected and so-called smart, what does it mean for product liability, and legal liability at large? “The independent intelligence makes it very difficult for us to assume that a human agent is behind certain acts or behaviours”, explains Dr. Omri Rachum-Twaig, an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Law, Tel-Aviv University and research fellow at the Federmann Cyber Security Center – Cyber Law Program. “Without agency, it would be very difficult to impose legal liability on human actors”. AI, law and regulation are discussed in this episode of Lex Cybernetica, hosted by Ido Kenan. Clips from The Wizard of Oz, Terminator, and Star Wars
Transcribe →Lex Cybernetica Interview E06 – Prof. Yuval Shany
Jul 9, 201900:37:57Tap to summarizeState actors abuse the ability to cyberattack anonymously or through proxies, which allows them to evade the consequences and avoid retaliation. Before we determine what we should and should not do in reaction to a cyberattack, we need to make sure we correctly attribute it to its source. “Currently, one of the predicaments is that states are able to do very bad things and get away with it, scot free”, says Prof. Yuval Shany, the head of The Federmann Cyber Security Center – Cyber Law Program and the chair of the UN Human Rights Committee. There are currently no international agencies responsible for naming the actual entities behind the dummy cyberattackers. Prof. Shany, alongside Exeter University and the Dutch government, are researching this in a feasibility study, looking to borrow ideas from other areas where attribution is important, among them proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons. A lot of attacks take place on infrastructure, software and platforms that are run by private tech companies. Those companies presumably have better understanding of their systems, and of how the attacks were initiated. "The question is whether the more suitable model for such an attribution agency is a private model or a public model", says Prof. Shany. "There have been private companies that have conducted research and came out with specific conclusions as to who's done it, who was behind it. [But] because they are private companies and because they do this for pay, there are some questions that are often raised as to whether they are generating findings that would be sufficiently independent and impartial from the client that actually ordered this service". Wars have rules, and they will have to be refreshed, perhaps even restarted, when killer robots and AI will join the battlefield. “One area in which we have done research is what are the very rules of the game”, says Prof. Shany. “There is some specific tech development project which we are monitoring that have to do with the interplay between technology and humans, and the way in which human decision making in the battlefield is going to be increasingly enmeshed with technology”. Prof. Shany is our guest on this episode of Lex Cybernetica, hosted by Ido Kenan, where we also spoke of technology in the battlefield, including enhanced humans, and digital human rights.
Transcribe →Lex Cybernetica E09 – Big Data and Information Security
Jun 2, 201900:24:25Tap to summarizeBig data is used, among other things, in cybersecurity research. Take, for example, Dr. Amit Rechavi‘s research, tracking different hacking activities in order to supply policymakers with state attribution of malicious hackers. We often put our trust in data-based information and decisions, but even data has inherent bias in it, which stems from what data we decided to collect, the way the data was collected, as well as how it was analyzed. Dr. Guy Katz explains how this happens and what can be done to address this. Another problem with big data is its potential to harm our privacy, not only in having troves of data collected about us, but also in big data analysis which provides excess information that we did not even know could be concluded from that data. For example, a smart city system operating in China was found to utilize facial recognition technology to keep track of specific residents, as well as identify their ethnicity. In a country where technology enables persecution of Uyghur Muslims by the authorities, this may have dire consequences. Dr. Romi Mikulinsky tells us about artists and designers who have taken upon themselves to call attention to this surveillance capitalism with artwork that allows us to defy data collection, contaminate databases, and cast doubt upon the so-called reality as it is being presented to us – while giving law and security authorities quite a headache. Such artworks include Peng! Collective’s Mask.ID, Zach Blass’s collective masks, and Adam Harvey’s CV Dazzle. Big Data and Information Security are the subject of this episode of Lex Cybernetica, hosted by Ido Kenan. Clips in this episode: Black Mirror S03E01, Buzzfeed’s Barack Obama’s deep fake.
Transcribe →Lex Cybernetica E08 – Military Application of Human Enhancement Technologies
May 1, 201900:25:26Tap to summarizeWhat is human enhancement? One way to define it is to compare it to therapeutic measures, explains Prof. Noam Lubell, a professor of international law at the University of Essex, research associate at the Hebrew University Federmann Cyber Law Program and Swiss chair of humanitarian law at the Geneva Academy. "Your glasses or contact lenses would be therapeutic, because they bring us up to the norm. Enhanced would be if you had an implant which gave you night vision or let you see beyond 2KM into the distance". Human enhancement has military applications, from giving soldiers exoskeletons to connecting their brains to computers. This raises many regulatory and ethical issues. For example, can a soldier refuse to be enhanced? “The question of informed consent in the military is always an incredibly difficult one, simply because of the hierarchical structure”, says Dr. Heather Harrison Dinniss, senior lecturer at the International and Operational Law Center at the Swedish Defence University. Another issue is whether enhanced soldiers are legally considered a person or a weapon, and what we’re allowed to do to neutralize them in the war field. “Maybe there could be a way to hack it where it’s sort of temporarily takes that person out but it’s not [...] long term damage”, suggests Adv. Erin Hahn (JD), senior national security analyst with the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. Prof. Noam Lubell, Dr. Heather A. Harrison Dinniss, and Adv. Erin Hahn are our guests on this episode of Lex Cybernetica, hosted by Ido Kenan. Clips in the episode are from The Six Million Dollar Man and Star Trek: Discovery.
Transcribe →Lex Cybernetica Interview E05 – Prof. David Maimon
Apr 1, 201900:38:23Tap to summarizeProf. David Maimon is the guest of this episode of Lex Cybernetica, Prof. Maimon is an Associate Professor in the department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Georgia State University. His research interests include cyber-enabled and cyber-dependent crimes and experimental research methods. His current research focuses on computer hacking and the progression of system trespassing events, online deception and fraud, computer networks vulnerabilities to cyber attacks, and decision-making process in cyberspace. In his interview, Maimon points the finger at cybersecurity companies and experts who don’t use evidence based proof to their tools’ effectiveness, and says there’s not enough good data - it’s either questionable or not the right data at all - to independently evaluate it, thus making us potentially more unprotected against, and as a result more susceptible to, cyberthreats than we thought. Maimon also talks about the different cybersecurity practices people use in different situations, and how hackers can be nudged to leave an infiltrated system before they damage it. This episode of Lex Cybernetica, hosted by Ido Kenan.
Transcribe →Lex Cybernetica Interview E04 – Dr. Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler
Mar 3, 201900:35:48Tap to summarizeThe Israeli elections are imminent, and so are the threats to our democracy. The threat comes from hackers, who may try to harm the elections or divert the results, and from digital information manipulators, spreading fake news and propaganda. Election hacking is just one example of the cyberthreats to our way of life. Another is the threat to our privacy from governments and corporations. GDPR and other privacy laws try to strengthen our control over our personal data. But are we also to take responsibility as individuals? One of the main bodies that’s in charge of our cybersecurity is the Israel National Cyber Directorate, which is problematic in many ways. It’s been functioning without a legal framework, and according to the draft of Israel’s cyber bill, it will be able to collect data from internet and cellular providers, government ministries, local authorities, etc., making it another spy agency. Dr. Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a research associate at the Federmann Cyber Security Center – Cyber Law Program, a senior fellow with the Center for Democratic Values and Institutions, and head of the Media Reform Program and Democracy in the Information Age, both with the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), is our guest on this episode of Lex Cybernetica, hosted by Ido Kenan.
Transcribe →Lex Cybernetica Interview E03 – Prof. Michael Schapira
Feb 10, 201900:44:05Tap to summarizeThe Internet works, but we’d like it to work better. But fixing it is not as easy as it would have been when it was just a fledgeling academic network. For the last decade, Prof. Michael Schapira has been tackling one really essential part of it - securing Internet routing. Apparently, it’s currently based on trust. What could possibly go wrong? Another pet peeve of Schapira's is time. Specifically, how to use the web to accurately synchronize one’s computer or cellular clock. His suggested solution: an app called Chronos. Prof. Michael Schapira, an associate professor at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the scientific co-leader of the Fraunhofer Cybersecurity Center at Hebrew University, is our guest on this episode of Lex Cybernetica, hosted by Ido Kenan.
Transcribe →Lex Cybernetica Interview E02 – Prof. Noam Lubell
Jan 1, 201900:28:01Tap to summarizeCyberwar, What is it Cybergood For? While most cyberattacks are civil ones, the discussion about them has been militarized very early on. This is a problem, according to Prof. Noam Lubell, because the consequences are that most of the discussion of regulation of cyber security focuses on the branch of law that deals with military operations. Prof. Lubell is co-author of an article about how AI and machine learning can help states decide whether to resort to force and go to war. Another issue on Prof. Lubell’s mind is human enhancement in the battlefield. Enhancement as in technologies that improve human skills or add new ones, like a soldier with an exoskeleton suit that makes her stronger and more endurant. Enhanced humans entering this sphere raise an abundance of practical, technological, biological and ethical questions. Among them: are enhanced soldiers humans or weapons? Should the rules of war change for them? If an enhanced human makes a deadly mistake, who’s to blame, her or the software/hardware people behind her? What becomes of them and their enhancements when they leave the army and rejoin civil society? Prof. Lubell, a professor of international law at the University of Essex, research associate at the Hebrew University cybersecurity program and Swiss chair of humanitarian law at the Geneva Academy, is our guest on this episode of Lex Cybernetica, hosted by Ido Kenan.
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Lex Cybernetica E07 – Digital Rights and Activism
Dec 2, 201800:53:57Tap to summarizeThe departure of both WhatsApp founders from Facebook, who bought their chat app in 2014 for $19.3 billion, had to do with user rights, and in a broader view, digital rights. Jan Koum left earlier this year over disagreements with Facebook, which attempted to use users’ personal data and weaken the app’s encryption, according to the Washington Post. A few months earlier, in late 2017, Brian Acton announced leaving Whatsapp to form a new foundation. In early 2018 Acton and Moxie Marlinspike, developer of the Signal Protocol and the Signal app, announced the Signal Foundation, which Acton gave $50 milllion to establish and will executive chairman, to replace Marlinspike’s Open Whisper Systems non-profit as the developer of the privacy-oriented chat app and protocol, as well as other privacy-oriented tools. But as Facebook got embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which drew criticism and parliamentary investigations on both sides of the Atlantic, and as the new GDPR rules are making waves around the world, it seems Facebook merely felt a bump on the road and keeps on driving. The Norwegian Data Protection Authority, Datatilsynet, and the the Norwegian Consumer Agency, Forbrukertilsyne, recently issued a harshly titled report, DECEIVED BY DESIGN - How tech companies use dark patterns to discourage us from exercising our rights to privacy. The report shows how Facebook, along with Google and Microsoft, are using product design to manipulate their users into sharing more and more information about themselves, which will be monetized and probably abused. In this case, several consumer and privacy groups in Europe and the US are asking the European data protection authorities to investigate whether the massive datatech companies are breaking the law. In this episode of Lex Cybernetica, we discuss digital rights and digital activism with Northwestern University’s Dr. Efrat Daskal, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy Prof. Joe Cannataci, ARTICLE 19’s Paula Martins, and Lex Cybernetica’s host, Ido Kenan.
Transcribe →Lex Cybernetica E06 – Surveillance
Oct 28, 201800:40:54Tap to summarize“Unplug your Alexa devices right now, you're being hacked” was the warning Danielle (last name withheld) got when she picked up the phone recently. On the other side was one of her husband's employees, who’d received a recording of the couple’s conversation - “You sat there talking about hardwood floors”. This evil machination was carried out - due to “an extremely rare occurrence”, according to Amazon’s comment to KIRO-TV - by the couple’s aptly named Amazon Echo, a constantly-eavesdropping machine people for some reason welcome into their homes. A basic couple normie-talking about hardwood floors is unfortunately not criminal as of writing, but murder is. In November 2015, James Andrew Bates hosted a football party at his Arkansas home, which ended with one dead guest in the hot tub. Police investigation found an Amazon Echo in the kitchen, and asked Amazon for any recording which may have occurred during the fatal event. Amazon declined, claiming they hadn’t received “a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us”, but later conceded as Bates, who pleaded not guilty, said he doesn’t object to releasing the files. Arkansas prosecutors later dropped the case. And don’t get me started on the Interpol’s new international voice identification database. Technology brings with it exciting, new surveillance methods that we have to deal with. In this episode of Lex Cybernetica, we discuss digital surveillance with Dr. Ilia Siatitsa, criminologist Prof. Pete Fussey and CSRCL research fellow Amir Cahane, and Lex Cybernetica’s host, podcaster and digital culture blogger Ido Kenan.
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