another site
California’s Oak Grove School District says it has fired a special education teacher caught on video coughing on a 1-year-old boy. Nancy Norland reportedly became upset when the child’s mother wasn’t maintaining proper social distance in line at a San Jose yogurt shop. So Norland pulled off her mask, leaned down in the boy’s face and coughed.
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This is the case I blogged about here and here (and also, as to a collateral lawsuit, here); two weeks ago it was officially dismissed pursuant to a settlement. The first lawsuit by FitzGibbon had led to a settlement agreement, which Radack allegedly breached; that in turn led to the second lawsuit and now the second settlement. Let’s see if this one sticks.
Since June 2019, I’ve been involved in litigation with Trevor Fitzgibbon in EDVA. We’ve settled the case. As part of the settlement, I retract all stmts I’ve made about Trevor Fitzgibbon & apologize for any harm I’ve caused Mr. Fitzgibbon & his family. I have no further comment. pic.twitter.com/eF1HKzJzXI
— unR̶A̶D̶A̶C̶K̶ted (@JesselynRadack) June 19, 2020
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After lawsuits by Harvard/MIT and then California about the recent changes to the student visa rules, seventeen more states have filed their own lawsuit (in district court in Massachusetts, where the Harvard/MIT suit was already filed). Like the preceding lawsuits, the plaintiffs allege that the federal government violated the Administrative Procedure Act by engaging in arbitrary and capricious decision-making and failing to provide for notice and comment. Because the claims largely track those of the previous lawsuits, I will note here only a few excerpts that captured my attention.
This lawsuit nicely captured the absurdity of the requirements imposed on universities through the sudden and belated change:
Now, with insufficient notice, zero explanation, and severely depleted resources, colleges and universities are forced to readjust all of those plans to account for whether every single international student, in every single program, will have sufficient in-person learning opportunities to maintain their visa status in the United States–a determination they must make before many students have registered for a single class, while many faculty and staff are absent from campus due to the pandemic or on leave for the summer, and while the pandemic’s course this summer and autumn remains worrisome and unclear.
The plaintiffs also go after the motives of the federal government, stating that “the Administration has expressly acknowledged these coercive effects of the July 6 Directive and even indicated that the directive was actually intended to pressure into reopening, overriding the deliberative planning by Plaintiff States to ensure the health and safety of students, faculty, staff, and the broader community.” As evidence, the complaint among other things reprints a screenshot of President Trump’s tweet from the same day, July 6, in which he exclaimed: “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!”.
This complaint convincingly shows why universities lacking flexibility and having to choose between following state mandates and retaining their international student population make no sense in a pandemic. I have seen multiple casual (and some less casual) observers ask why international students taking online classes “need” to be in the country. While that’s potentially a fair question during normal times, the real question at this time is not why online-only students should generally be able to be in the United States (which they are not). Rather, the question is why students should be sent back who 1) sought an in-person experience that became partly or completely impossible due to a pandemic, 2) were told back in March that they could stick with online classes for the duration of an emergency which has by no means abided, and 3) have now made financial and other investments according to that information. Let’s not get lost in red herrings.
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Our interview today is with Bruce Schneier, who has coauthored a paper about how to push security back up the Internet-of-things supply chain: The Reverse Cascade: Enforcing Security on the Global IoT Supply Chain. His solution is hard on IOT affordability and hard on big retailers and other middlemen, who will face new liabilities, but we conclude that it’s achievable and maybe necessary. In fact, the real question is who’ll get there first, a combination of DHS’s CISA and the FTC or the California Secretary of State.
In the News Roundup Megan Stifel (@MeganStifel), Nate Jones (@n8jones81), and David Kris (@DavidKris) and I discuss TikTok’s unenviable position—holding the ball at the wrong end of the court as the clock winds down to 00:00. Every week seems to bring a new administration initiative that could hurt or kill TikTok’s US business. The government’s options include a simple ban on TikTok sales to US buyers based on a finding that the company is a threat to national security or the security of Americans. That’s the applicable legal standard under Executive Order 13873; it’s brand-new (the regs aren’t even final yet) but it relies on tools that have long been used under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA). A straightforward application of IEEPA remedies would cut TikTok off from the US market, I argue.
Meanwhile, another little-advertised but equally sweeping rule for government contractors is on its way to implementation. It will deny federal contracts, not just contractors who want to deliver certain Chinese products but it will also cut off contractors who jsut use those products themselves.
Not to be outdone by the contracting officers, the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department are attacking TikTok from a different direction – investigating claims that the company failed to live up to last year’s consent decree on the privacy of children using the app.
And, on top of everything, private sector CISOs are drawing a bead on the app, too, as Wells Fargo and (briefly) Amazon told their employees to take the app off their work phones.
It’s no surprise in the face of these developments that TikTok is working overtime to decouple itself in the public’s mind from China, including going so far as to join the rest of Silicon Valley in signaling discomfort with Hong Kong’s new security rules (and ruler). Megan and I question whether this strategy will succeed.
If Chief Justice Roberts were running for office, he couldn’t have produced a better platform than the Court’s latest tech decision – upholding most of a law that makes robocalls illegal while striking down the one part that authorizes robocalls for collection of government debt. David Kris explains.
Nate unpacks a new Florida DNA privacy law prohibiting life, disability and long-term care insurance companies from using genetic tests for coverage purposes. I express skepticism.
Nate also explains the mysteriously quiet launch of the UK-US Bilateral Data Access Agreement. Four years in the making, and neither side wanted to announce that it had taken effect – what are they worried about, I wonder?
FBI Director Wray gives a compelling speech on the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China. He says the bureau opens a new such case every ten hours. And right on schedule comes the prosecution of a professor charged with taking $4M in US grant money to conduct research—for China.
David and I puzzle over the surprisingly lenient sentence handed to a former Yahoo engineer for hacking the personal accounts of more than 6,000 Yahoo Mail users looking for sexually explicit images and videos.
For This Week in Silicon Valley Speech Suppression, I out Reddit as a particularly fanatical convert to SJW orthodoxy in censoring the right, as the service apparently tells its moderators that it’s hate speech to post stories or video showing a person of color as the aggressor in a confrontation.
And Nate closes us out by drawing again from a bottomless well of problems faced by technological contact tracing.
Download the 324th Episode (mp3)
You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!
The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
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via IFTTT
This is the case I blogged about here and here (and also, as to a collateral lawsuit, here); two weeks ago it was officially dismissed pursuant to a settlement. The first lawsuit by FitzGibbon had led to a settlement agreement, which Radack allegedly breached; that in turn led to the second lawsuit and now the second settlement. Let’s see if this one sticks.
Since June 2019, I’ve been involved in litigation with Trevor Fitzgibbon in EDVA. We’ve settled the case. As part of the settlement, I retract all stmts I’ve made about Trevor Fitzgibbon & apologize for any harm I’ve caused Mr. Fitzgibbon & his family. I have no further comment. pic.twitter.com/eF1HKzJzXI
— unR̶A̶D̶A̶C̶K̶ted (@JesselynRadack) June 19, 2020
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2OjtI2H
via IFTTT
After lawsuits by Harvard/MIT and then California about the recent changes to the student visa rules, seventeen more states have filed their own lawsuit (in district court in Massachusetts, where the Harvard/MIT suit was already filed). Like the preceding lawsuits, the plaintiffs allege that the federal government violated the Administrative Procedure Act by engaging in arbitrary and capricious decision-making and failing to provide for notice and comment. Because the claims largely track those of the previous lawsuits, I will note here only a few excerpts that captured my attention.
This lawsuit nicely captured the absurdity of the requirements imposed on universities through the sudden and belated change:
Now, with insufficient notice, zero explanation, and severely depleted resources, colleges and universities are forced to readjust all of those plans to account for whether every single international student, in every single program, will have sufficient in-person learning opportunities to maintain their visa status in the United States–a determination they must make before many students have registered for a single class, while many faculty and staff are absent from campus due to the pandemic or on leave for the summer, and while the pandemic’s course this summer and autumn remains worrisome and unclear.
The plaintiffs also go after the motives of the federal government, stating that “the Administration has expressly acknowledged these coercive effects of the July 6 Directive and even indicated that the directive was actually intended to pressure into reopening, overriding the deliberative planning by Plaintiff States to ensure the health and safety of students, faculty, staff, and the broader community.” As evidence, the complaint among other things reprints a screenshot of President Trump’s tweet from the same day, July 6, in which he exclaimed: “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!”.
This complaint convincingly shows why universities lacking flexibility and having to choose between following state mandates and retaining their international student population make no sense in a pandemic. I have seen multiple casual (and some less casual) observers ask why international students taking online classes “need” to be in the country. While that’s potentially a fair question during normal times, the real question at this time is not why online-only students should generally be able to be in the United States (which they are not). Rather, the question is why students should be sent back who 1) sought an in-person experience that became partly or completely impossible due to a pandemic, 2) were told back in March that they could stick with online classes for the duration of an emergency which has by no means abided, and 3) have now made financial and other investments according to that information. Let’s not get lost in red herrings.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/32eaIe1
via IFTTT
Our interview today is with Bruce Schneier, who has coauthored a paper about how to push security back up the Internet-of-things supply chain: The Reverse Cascade: Enforcing Security on the Global IoT Supply Chain. His solution is hard on IOT affordability and hard on big retailers and other middlemen, who will face new liabilities, but we conclude that it’s achievable and maybe necessary. In fact, the real question is who’ll get there first, a combination of DHS’s CISA and the FTC or the California Secretary of State.
In the News Roundup Megan Stifel (@MeganStifel), Nate Jones (@n8jones81), and David Kris (@DavidKris) and I discuss TikTok’s unenviable position—holding the ball at the wrong end of the court as the clock winds down to 00:00. Every week seems to bring a new administration initiative that could hurt or kill TikTok’s US business. The government’s options include a simple ban on TikTok sales to US buyers based on a finding that the company is a threat to national security or the security of Americans. That’s the applicable legal standard under Executive Order 13873; it’s brand-new (the regs aren’t even final yet) but it relies on tools that have long been used under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA). A straightforward application of IEEPA remedies would cut TikTok off from the US market, I argue.
Meanwhile, another little-advertised but equally sweeping rule for government contractors is on its way to implementation. It will deny federal contracts, not just contractors who want to deliver certain Chinese products but it will also cut off contractors who jsut use those products themselves.
Not to be outdone by the contracting officers, the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department are attacking TikTok from a different direction – investigating claims that the company failed to live up to last year’s consent decree on the privacy of children using the app.
And, on top of everything, private sector CISOs are drawing a bead on the app, too, as Wells Fargo and (briefly) Amazon told their employees to take the app off their work phones.
It’s no surprise in the face of these developments that TikTok is working overtime to decouple itself in the public’s mind from China, including going so far as to join the rest of Silicon Valley in signaling discomfort with Hong Kong’s new security rules (and ruler). Megan and I question whether this strategy will succeed.
If Chief Justice Roberts were running for office, he couldn’t have produced a better platform than the Court’s latest tech decision – upholding most of a law that makes robocalls illegal while striking down the one part that authorizes robocalls for collection of government debt. David Kris explains.
Nate unpacks a new Florida DNA privacy law prohibiting life, disability and long-term care insurance companies from using genetic tests for coverage purposes. I express skepticism.
Nate also explains the mysteriously quiet launch of the UK-US Bilateral Data Access Agreement. Four years in the making, and neither side wanted to announce that it had taken effect – what are they worried about, I wonder?
FBI Director Wray gives a compelling speech on the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China. He says the bureau opens a new such case every ten hours. And right on schedule comes the prosecution of a professor charged with taking $4M in US grant money to conduct research—for China.
David and I puzzle over the surprisingly lenient sentence handed to a former Yahoo engineer for hacking the personal accounts of more than 6,000 Yahoo Mail users looking for sexually explicit images and videos.
For This Week in Silicon Valley Speech Suppression, I out Reddit as a particularly fanatical convert to SJW orthodoxy in censoring the right, as the service apparently tells its moderators that it’s hate speech to post stories or video showing a person of color as the aggressor in a confrontation.
And Nate closes us out by drawing again from a bottomless well of problems faced by technological contact tracing.
Download the 324th Episode (mp3)
You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!
The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
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California is closing down again in response to a rising number of reported COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.
This afternoon, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) ordered restaurants, wineries, movie theaters, zoos, and museums to halt all indoor operations. Bars across the state must close down completely. In addition, gyms, malls, churches, and salons in 30 counties—including Los Angeles, San Diego, and Orange counties—must close for three days.
Effective immediately, CA is closing some indoor business operations statewide and additional indoor business operations in counties on @CAPublicHealth Monitoring List for 3 consecutive days.
????Find the updated list of counties here: https://t.co/snYe5v55Rw pic.twitter.com/W3wBJp2ap5
— Office of the Governor of California (@CAgovernor) July 13, 2020
The Los Angeles Times reports that the latter closures cover counties where 80 percent of Californians live.
“We’re moving back into a modification mode of our original stay-at-home order, but doing so utilizing what commonly referred to as a dimmer switch,” said Newsom when announcing the new closures today. “Not ‘on’ open economy or ‘off’ shut down but a dimmer switch.”
The governor said that the state’s number of new cases and its positivity rate (meaning the percentage of COVID-19 tests that are positive) were on the rise, as were hospitalizations.
The state reported 109,910 COVID-19 cases over the past two weeks, and an additional 1,104 deaths. Just over 7,000 people have died of COVID-19 in California.
Hospitalizations have increased 28 percent in the last two weeks. The number of patients in ICUs has grown by 19 percent over the same period. Nevertheless, 36 percent of ICU beds in the state are available as are 72 percent of the state’s ventilators.
The new order comes one month after the state had announced that dine-in restaurants, retail stores, and gyms could open back up under certain physical distancing protocols.
The statewide closures are only the latest tightening of the state’s lockdown order. In late June, Newsom ordered bars to close in seven counties, including Los Angeles County, reported the Times. San Francisco, which is not one of the counties listed in the governor’s order today, has delayed its own plans to reopen dine-in restaurants and outdoor bar service.
California’s closures come at a time of rising coronavirus caseloads across much of the country, and states like Texas and Florida are also reversing some of their prior reopenings of businesses.
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California is closing down again in response to a rising number of reported COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.
This afternoon, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) ordered restaurants, wineries, movie theaters, zoos, and museums to halt all indoor operations. Bars across the state must close down completely. In addition, gyms, malls, churches, and salons in 30 counties—including Los Angeles, San Diego, and Orange counties—must close for three days.
Effective immediately, CA is closing some indoor business operations statewide and additional indoor business operations in counties on @CAPublicHealth Monitoring List for 3 consecutive days.
????Find the updated list of counties here: https://t.co/snYe5v55Rw pic.twitter.com/W3wBJp2ap5
— Office of the Governor of California (@CAgovernor) July 13, 2020
The Los Angeles Times reports that the latter closures cover counties where 80 percent of Californians live.
“We’re moving back into a modification mode of our original stay-at-home order, but doing so utilizing what commonly referred to as a dimmer switch,” said Newsom when announcing the new closures today. “Not ‘on’ open economy or ‘off’ shut down but a dimmer switch.”
The governor said that the state’s number of new cases and its positivity rate (meaning the percentage of COVID-19 tests that are positive) were on the rise, as were hospitalizations.
The state reported 109,910 COVID-19 cases over the past two weeks, and an additional 1,104 deaths. Just over 7,000 people have died of COVID-19 in California.
Hospitalizations have increased 28 percent in the last two weeks. The number of patients in ICUs has grown by 19 percent over the same period. Nevertheless, 36 percent of ICU beds in the state are available as are 72 percent of the state’s ventilators.
The new order comes one month after the state had announced that dine-in restaurants, retail stores, and gyms could open back up under certain physical distancing protocols.
The statewide closures are only the latest tightening of the state’s lockdown order. In late June, Newsom ordered bars to close in seven counties, including Los Angeles County, reported the Times. San Francisco, which is not one of the counties listed in the governor’s order today, has delayed its own plans to reopen dine-in restaurants and outdoor bar service.
California’s closures come at a time of rising coronavirus caseloads across much of the country, and states like Texas and Florida are also reversing some of their prior reopenings of businesses.
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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made the chat-show circuit on Sunday to argue that the federal government should withhold money from public K–12 schools that don’t fully reopen in the fall.
“There’s nothing in the data that suggests that kids being in school is in any way dangerous,” DeVos told Fox News host Chris Wallace. “We know that children contract and have the virus at far lower incidence than any other part of the population, and we know that other countries around the world have reopened their schools and have done so successfully and safely, and kids there are going back to school every day. And so that has got to be the posture here. Parents are expecting that this fall, their kids are going to have a full-time experience with their learning and we need to follow through on that promise.”
Is the Trump administration right on the science? The policy? The federal government’s role thereof? These are among the questions bandied about on today’s Reason Roundtable podcast. Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Matt Welch also debate President Donald Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s sentence, Charlize Theron‘s action-star chops, and, of course…The Letter.
Audio production by Ian Keyser Regan Taylor.
Music: “The Great Unknown” by Audionautix.
Relevant links from the show:
“Don’t Force Schools to Reopen, but Don’t Force Families To Pay for Closed Schools Either,” by Corey A. DeAngelis
“Families Turn to Homeschooling as the Education Establishment Fumbles Its Pandemic Response,” by J.D. Tuccille
“Mr. de Blasio: Open Up Those Elementary Schools!” by Matt Welch
“Reopen the Schools!” by Robby Soave
“Trump Commutes Ally Roger Stone’s Prison Sentence,” by C.J. Ciaramella
“President Trump’s Use of the Pardon Power,” by Jonathan H. Adler
“Would a Presidential Pardon for Roger Stone Be Unconstitutional?” by Jacob Sullum
“Stone Cold Justice,” by Jacob Sullum
“Trump’s Continuing Commentary on Criminal Cases Reflects His Disdain for the Rule of Law,” by Jacob Sullum
“Roger Stone Deserves a Lighter Sentence, but Not Because He Is Trump’s Buddy,” by Jacob Sullum
“Lefties Hate on Liberal Open Letter on Free Speech,” by Matt Welch
“The Reaction to the Harper’s Letter on Cancel Culture Proves Why It Was Necessary,” by Jesse Singal
“Are We Living in Crazytown?” by David Bernstein
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