The Weekly Newsletter of The George Washington University Cyber Security and Privacy Research Institute
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CSPRI in the News
Prof. Lance Hoffman, CSPRI co-director, was interviewed by China Business News on Apple and privacy.

Trey Herr, CSPRI senior research associate, presented "A Brief Guide to the Weapons of Cyberconflict" in Slate.
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              March 9 , 2016
cybersecurity and privacy events 
scheduled in the Greater Washington Area in the next few weeks. ----------------------->
Legislative Lowdown
-Wired.com writes about a bill introduced by California Congressman Ted Lieu called  "Ensuring National Constitutional Rights for Your Private Telecommunications Act of 2016." ENCRYPT, as the bill is known for short, has a simple aim: To preempt states from attempting to implement their own anti-encryption policies at a state level. Read more here.

Cyber Security and Privacy News

-Apple last week won a major victory in an iPhone warrant case - although it may not help the company in its San Bernardino trial, The Verge reports. "The victory comes from a New York district court that's been facing something legally similar to the higher-profile warrant case playing out in San Bernardino," writes Russell Brandom. " In a 50-page ruling, Magistrate Judge Orenstein found that the All Writs Act did not justify the government's request, and denied the government's request to legally compel Apple's help."
 
Meanwhile, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and a litany of other tech companies filed court briefs on Thursday in support of Apple fight against the Justice Department, The New York Times reports. "The extraordinary show of support for Apple from the tech companies, including many rivals, underscores how high the stakes are for the industry with the case, in which the authorities are demanding Apple's help to break into an iPhone used by a gunman in a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. last year," write Nick Wingfield and Katie Benner.
 
-The Obama administration is telling lawmakers that it will seek to renegotiate certain portions of a 41-nation agreement designed to keep hacking tools out of the hands of repressive regimes, The Hill reports. "The reversal follows months of pressure from the technology community and lawmakers, who warned the vague definitions within the agreement would restrict companies' ability to use legitimate tools to test and fortify their own defenses," writes Katie Bo Williams. Check out the full story here.
 
-Facebook may prevent its users from using fake names, a German court said on Thursday, overturning a previous order from the Hamburg data protection authority, Reuters reports. The publication calls the ruling a coup for the social network firm, which has long argued its real-name policy ensures people know who they are sharing and connecting with and protects them from the abuse of the wide-open Internet.
-The Pentagon is challenging hackers to attack military code and get paid to find bugs in the software. According to NextGov's Aliya Sternstein, the idea is to find and fix vulnerabilities unknowingly inserted in software before the bad guys do. "The contest draws inspiration from 'bug bounty' programs in the private sector open to hobbyists and professional penetration testers. Microsoft, for instance, offers a reward of up to $100,000 for attacking its software," Sternstein writes. "General Motors earlier this year launched a car-hacking program that seeks glitch reports but doesn't yet pay for them."
-From the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) comes news that the Department of Homeland Security has released the 2015 Annual Data Mining Report. The report describes several of the Agency's profiling systems that assign secret "risk assessments" to U.S. citizens. EPIC recently prevailed in a FOIA case involving a controversial DHS passenger screening program, the "Analytic Framework for Intelligence." In EPIC v. USCG, another case concerning a DHS profiling program, EPIC uncovered records about a program to track boaters operating in US waters in which DHS stated that boaters "have no expectation of privacy."


Events
Click here for detailed descriptions

-Mar 9 . 2nd Annual Cybersecurity Conf., New America

-Mar 11-12 , Cyber 9/12 Student Challenge

-Mar. 16, 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.,  The Year Ahead in Drone Innovation.
 
-Mar. 17, 12 noon-1 p.m., Privacy: Plural, Contextual, Contestable but not Unworkable,
Prof. Dierdre M ulligan, University of
California, Berkeley.
 
-Mar. 24, 12 noon-1 p.m.,  The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work,Prof.  Phillip Rogaway, University of California, Davis.
 
-Mar. 24, 12 noon-2 p.m.,  GW University Seminar, Broader Implications of Apple vs. the FBI for Cyber Security and Privacy.Profs. A. Etzioni, P. Rosenzweig, L. Hoffman, and Mr. Ari Schwartz

About this Newsletter
 
This newsletter is a weekly summary of events related to cyber security policy and research, with a special focus on developments and events in the Washington, DC area. It is published by the Cyber Security and Privacy Research Institute (CSPRI) of the George Washington University. CSPRI is a center for GW and the Washington area that promotes technical research and policy analysis of topics in or related to cybersecurity and privacy. More information is available at our website, http://www.cspri.seas.gwu.edu
 
CSPRI 
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