Month: February 2024

News
On February 20, 2024, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford filed a motion to prevent Meta from providing end-to-end encryption on Messenger for users residing in the state who are under the age of eighteen. Since December 2023, Meta has made end-to-end encryption the default for all messages on Messenger. The AG has sought rapid hearing on the matter, citing the “extreme urgency” affecting the safety and well-being of minors in Nevada. Meta responded by noting the value of encryption in protecting communications and personal information.

The Supreme Court heard a pair of cases (Moody v. NetChoice, LLC and NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton) on February 26, 2024. The Court appeared skeptical of laws in Florida and Texas that regulate how large social media companies exercise their editorial discretions over content moderation. The Court’s decision would have an enormous impact on the scope of the First Amendment and the nature of speech in the internet era.

UnitedHealth, the nation’s largest insurer, was hit by a cyberattack on its unit—Change Healthcare, a division of Optum. The attack was discovered on February 21, 2024, and appeared to be a ransomware attack launched by a foreign nation-state actor. This latest attack foregrounded the vulnerability of healthcare data and private medical records, especially those of patients. The cyberattack disrupted UnitedHealth’s services with prescription drug orders and even affected the U.S. military overseas.

Canada has introduced a new bill—the Online Harms Act—that requires social media platforms to remove posts exposing children to online abuse. The Canadian Parliament needs to vote on the bill, but the proposed Act aims to create a “digital safety commission” to regulate social media companies and offer more effective means to protect children online.

President Biden issued an Executive Order on February 28, 2024, to protect the sensitive personal data of Americans. The Executive Order authorizes the Attorney General to “prevent the large-scale transfer of Americans’ personal data to countries of concern” and provides relevant safeguards. The “countries of concern” specified in the Order included China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. Such restrictions mark the first-ever broad prohibition on the sale of digital data by the U.S. to individual countries.

Wendy’s has announced its plan to spend $20 million on more enhanced features, including dynamic pricing and digital menu boards that allow for a more flexible menu in stores. The company has further clarified that it will not use surge pricing, similar to that used by Uber, after its CEO Kirk Tanner’s comments to investors sparked commotion around the possibility of adopting this practice, which raises prices when the demand is highest.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Stephanie Shim)

News 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced changes to the current research data request and access policies in the name of data security that will limit individual researchers’ access to data.

The European Commission has opened investigations to assess whether TikTok has breached the Digital Services Act.

Reddit has signed a contract to allow a company to train its AI Models on the platform’s content, ahead of its IPO.

Signal is testing a beta version that hides user’s phone numbers and lets them pick a username instead.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that weakening end-to-end encryption presents a disproportionate risk of undermining human rights.

Events

Abrams Institute Conversations will host Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin to discuss the cases before the Supreme Court concerning the power of states to regulate content moderation on social media platforms. Monday, March 4 · 12 – 1:30pm EST

Papers

Researcher Access to Social Media Data: Lessons from Clinical Trial Data Sharing authored by Christopher Morten (Columbia Law School), Gabriel Nicholas (New York University School of Law) and Salome Viljoen (University of Michigan Law School; Harvard University). 

(Compiled by Student Fellow Marina Garrote)

News

Google agreed to a $350 million settlement over a lawsuit related to a security lapse that exposed Google Plus users’ data, amidst other legal challenges for privacy and competition law violations.

The FTC has issued proposed settlements to ban the sale of sensitive geolocation data by data brokers, marking a significant step in addressing privacy concerns and emphasizing the need for informed consumer consent.

Apple is reportedly considering acquiring the German AI startup Brighter AI to integrate its Precision Blur and Deep Natural Anonymisation technologies into the Vision Pro, aiming to enhance privacy by anonymizing faces and license plates in photos and videos.

The EU requires large tech platforms like TikTok, X, and Facebook to identify AI-generated content to safeguard the upcoming European election against disinformation.

Nightshade v1.0 ‘poisons’ AI models by embedding imperceptible pixel-level changes into images to prevent unauthorized use of artworks for AI training, with some critics labeling the tool as a form of ‘illegal’ hacking.

A new report criticizes state privacy laws as being significantly weakened by the tech industry’s influence, with most states enacting ineffective legislation that fails to protect consumer data adequately or offer meaningful enforcement.

After over two years of development, the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) is nearing approval, with the latest text offering a final compromise on high-risk AI systems, General Purpose AI, and governance and enforcement mechanisms; however, critiques note that last-minute concessions may limit its protective potential, especially due to industry lobbying and the possibility of insufficient enforcement resources.

An investigation into Microsoft’s design practices across Windows 10 and 11, Edge, and Bing reveals the company’s use of harmful design techniques—such as coercive, manipulative, and deceptive patterns—to push users towards using Edge browser, leading to potential consumer, social, and market harms. The report concludes that Microsoft’s practices distort user choice and undermine trust in technology, advocating for the cessation of these practices and regulatory intervention if necessary.

A Nigerian man has been arrested and charged with various offenses, including child pornography and attempted extortion, following the suicide of a Canadian teen, who fell victim to an online sextortion scheme.

US police departments are attempting to use facial recognition on 3D models of suspects’ faces generated from DNA evidence, despite concerns from civil liberties groups and experts who argue that this practice is based on unproven science and could lead to wrongful identification, as shown in a controversial case by the East Bay Regional Park District Police Department.

Bumble has introduced an AI-powered feature called “Deception Detector” to its dating app, designed to identify and block fake profiles, scams, and spam, reducing member reports of such issues by 45% during initial testing and supporting a 95% success rate in blocking undesirable accounts. 

Events

The Workshop for Junior Scholars on March 11, 2024, at MIT Stata Center, organized by Aniket Kesari and Sarah Scheffler, aims to build a community and provide guidance for early-career individuals in Law and Computer Science. The half-day event includes panels on academic and non-academic careers, mentoring sessions, and discussions on conducting interdisciplinary research, followed by dinner. Registration is available online. It precedes another conference: ACM Symposium on Computer Science and Law (CSLAW 2024).

There is an open application for a two-year residential postdoctoral program at Harvard Law School aimed at developing scholars early in their careers who have a primary interest in private law, including common law subjects and statutory areas like intellectual property. Selected from recent graduates, academics, and practitioners, Fellows focus on their research, contribute to the Project on the Foundations of Private Law, mentor students, present and attend workshops, help with events, and engage in blogging.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Rebecca Kahn)

News

Child access and privacy work are at the forefront of issues being addressed politically. On Wednesday, January 31, five CEOs from major tech companies, including Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew, testified at a Senate hearing about the protection of children from online sexual exploitation as congressional leaders explore how to tackle these issues.

Additionally, the California Attorney General Rob Bonta introduced two bills, one privacy and one on social media. “The privacy bill, deemed the proposed Children’s Data Privacy Act, aims to amend the California Consumer Privacy Act to tighten youth coverage. The proposed Protecting Youth from Social Media Addiction Act focuses on measures to moderate content and limit luring features or techniques on social media platforms.”

23 & Me’s stock price tumbled to the ground as they face a class action filed last week around a data breach specifically impacting Jewish and Chinese customers. 

Court began to scrutinize using AI chatbots on legal briefings as an attorney Jae Lee “reports that she relied on a generative artificial intelligence tool, ChatGPT, to identify precedent that might support her arguments, and did not read or otherwise confirm the validity of the (non-existent) decision she cited.”

TikTok continues to struggle in preventing the sharing of data with its Chinese parent company. TikTok is trying to show the U.S. lawmakers that its video sharing application is a safe form of social media through these limits in data sharing.

OpenAI removed their blanket prohibition on military use of ChatGPT by deleting the text from their usage policy. The blanket ban on “military and welfare” has been removed from the policy but continues the policy on using the tool for “to harm yourself or others” and “develop or use weapons”. 

Events

As an organization focused on the intersection of law and artificial intelligence, LunchGPT’s first lunch is planned for Friday February 16 at 12 PM. If you are interested, please reach out to Kevin Fraizer with questions.

Registration is now open for the 2024 ACM Symposium on Computer Science and Law, which will take place on March 12-13, 2024, at Boston University. The Symposium is a leading venue for cross-disciplinary scholarship at the intersection of computer science and law.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Molly Pushner)