Cyber and the Law

The past year has proven to be a contentious and disruptive time for the technology sector. The threat of home grown terrorism combined with the adroit usage of social media by terrorist groups, has forced the tech sector to come into far closer contact with the intelligence community than it would prefer – especially following the disclosures made by Edward Snowden. This was seen most significantly during the conflict between Apple and the FBI over breaking the encryption on a terrorist’s iPhone. The FBI attempted to use legal pressure to force compliance from Apple, but that attempt had, at best, mixed results. At the same time, it highlighted the rapidly changing legal landscape that technology firms must navigate in order to avoid running afoul of the government.

The legal and regulatory environment for technology companies is shaped primarily by two forces: legislation and judicial decisions. However, it appears to be very difficult for legislators to make effective laws when it comes to cyber issues. This is largely because the legislative process is, by design, slow and methodical, while technology is changing at an extremely rapid pace. The most recent piece of major federal legislation, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), prompted a great deal of controversy – even though CISA was still benefiting from the shock generated by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM hack).

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