American Civil Liberties Union

A few links that have caught our eye this past week:

Paul Rosenzweig has posted a nice piece on Lawfare on the reasons to be skeptical of the need for cybersecurity regulation. He breaks cybersecurity down into its constituent parts (as we have urged) of cybercrime, cyber espionage, and truly catastrophic “digital Pearl Harbor” attacks. He suggests that the first two do not justify regulation, and (like us) is skeptical about the degree of risk of the third. In explaining that skepticism, he provides an elegant analysis of the electric grid, the taking down of which is a frequent cyber-attack scenario, and makes the point that the pro-regulation viewpoint “mistakes vulnerability for risk”—in other words, there can be a vulnerability in a system, but still a low risk that anyone will actually be able to or try to exploit it.

On Monday, the Supreme Court in Arizona v. United States struck down three provisions of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 racial profiling law, but reinstated, for now, the most controversial provision, which requires Arizona police officers to demand the immigration papers of anyone they stop, arrest, or detain. S.B. 1070 makes racial profiling Arizona state policy. When a police officer asks for papers, it’s based on bias because there is no way to tell by looking at or listening to someone whether the person is lawfully in the United States.

Yesterday 22 Members of Congress sent a letter to the Inspector General of the Department of Justice urging him to launch an investigation into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's improper recording and dissemination of information about the First Amendment-protected activities of American Muslims. Several of the members who joined the letter-including Representatives Pete Stark (D-CA-13), Anna Eshoo (D-CA-14), Sam Farr (D- CA-17), Mike Honda (D- CA-15), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA-16), and Barbara Lee (D-CA-09) -represent districts in Northern California in which FBI memoranda document the use of community outreach for intelligence purposes.