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Daily Archives: December 11, 2018

Cybersecurity of the Person

Kosseff, Jeff, Cybersecurity of the Person (October 31, 2018). First Amendment Law Review, 2019. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3276218

“U.S. cybersecurity law is largely an outgrowth of the early-aughts concerns over identity theft and financial fraud. Cybersecurity laws focus on protecting identifiers such as driver’s licenses and social security numbers, and financial data such as credit card numbers. Federal and state laws require companies to protect this data and notify individuals when it is breached, and impose civil and criminal liability on hackers who steal or damage this data. In this paper, I argue that our current cybersecurity laws are too narrowly focused on financial harms. While such concerns remain valid, they are only one part of the cybersecurity challenge that our nation faces. Too often overlooked by the cybersecurity profession are the harms to individuals, such as revenge pornography and online harassment. Our legal system typically addresses these harms through retrospective criminal prosecution and civil litigation, both of which face significant limits. Accounting for such harms in our conception of cybersecurity will help to better align our laws with these threats and reduce the likelihood of the harms occurring.”

The Race to Understand Antarctica’s Most Terrifying Glacier

Wired: “Few places in Antarctica are more difficult to reach than Thwaites Glacier, a Florida-sized hunk of frozen water that meets the Amundsen Sea about 800 miles west of McMurdo. Until a decade ago, barely any scientists had ever set foot there, and the glacier’s remoteness, along with its reputation for bad weather, ensured that… Continue Reading

DHS OIG Report – CBP’s Searches of Electronic Devices At Ports of Entry

DHS Office of Inspector General Audit – CBP’s Searches of Electronic Devices At Ports of Entry / Redacted, December 3, 2018: “Between April 2016 and July 2017, CBP’s [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] Office of Field Operations (OFO) did not always conduct searches of electronic devices at U.S. ports of entry according to its SOPs. Specifically,… Continue Reading

NOAA Arctic Report Card – Update for 2018

2018 Headlines: Effects of persistent Arctic warming continue to mount – “Continued warming of the Arctic atmosphere and ocean are driving broad change in the environmental system in predicted and, also, unexpected ways. New emerging threats are taking form and highlighting the level of uncertainty in the breadth of environmental change that is to come.… Continue Reading

NOAA Expands Public Access to Big Data

Collaboration with Amazon Web Services enhances data access – “NOAA generates thousands of datasets as part of its mission to collect information on environments that span from the surface of the sun to the depths of the ocean floor. More than 68,000 datasets are made publicly available from NOAA with the National Centers for Environmental… Continue Reading

United States Congressional Web Archive now includes content for 113th and 114th Congresses

LC – In Custodia Legis: “The Library of Congress Web Archiving Program is dedicated to providing reliable access to historical web content from the legislative branch. To that end, the Library has just released an update to the United States Congressional Web Archive. The archive, which includes member sites from the House and Senate, as well as… Continue Reading

People from all over the world are sending emails to Melbourne’s trees

ABC.Net.Au: “Melbourne gave 70,000 trees email addresses so people could report on their condition. But instead people are writing love letters, existential queries and sometimes just bad puns…” Please take a couple of minutes and read this article – you may cry, you may appreciate how important trees are in our urban areas (and if… Continue Reading