Monday Morning JETLawg

• The United States and Russia agree to establish a cyber hotline aimed at reducing the risk of cyber conflict and misunderstandings. Many are drawing analogies to the Cold War-era nuclear hotline, and in fact the new cyber hotline will be built on top of that communications framework.
• NSA leaker Snowden is charged with espionage (and sharing classified information) under court-ordered seal, but the charges are leaked to the press anyway. Is the espionage charge appropriate? Was Hong Kong right to allow him to argue that his offense was political? Will his destination country let his asylum claim stand?
• Vermont AG charges an alleged patent troll (they are claiming a patent on scanning a document and attaching it to on email) under its new anti-patent-troll law (previously discussed here).
• The Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament, passes a motion encouraging the German government to make it much more difficult to patent software. [via EFF] Will this stand up under the TRIPS Agreement, which is generally seen as requiring signatories to make patents available in all fields of technology (with a few exceptions–software not among them)?
• France gives Google three months to come into compliance with privacy requirements it says the search-and-advertising giant violated.
• Google files a claim in FISA court alleging that gag orders on the FISA-issued requests for its data violates its First Amendment rights. In March Google won a ruling that the gag orders accompanying National Security Letters (another kind of data request the company receives) were unconstitutional.
• Senator Warren asked the U.S. Trade Representative nominee Michael Froman for the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, leaked drafts of which show proposals for major alterations to all areas of U.S. intellectual property law. She voted against confirmation, but Froman was confirmed by a 93-4 Senate vote.
• Representative Lofgren and Senator Wyden propose an amendment to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the primary federal anti-hacking statute. They say the current language is too vague, making it subject to prosecutorial overreach. The new language would make it clear that violating a site’s terms of service is not access “without authorization” and reduce penalties for less intrusive violations.

–Brad Edmondson

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