Consent allegedly has become a cornerstone of modern privacy regimes, serving as one of the most commonly used mechanisms for legitimizing the collection and use of personal data, despite ongoing concerns about its effectiveness in truly safeguarding privacy. This paper explores the legal and historical foundations of consent within the framework of privacy law, examining its legal significance alongside its critiques and limitations. The historical development of consent in privacy law is rooted in the evolution of the concept of privacy itself, moving from philosophical discussions about personal space to legal frameworks addressing data collection and use. With Plato introducing the concept of the “receptacle” (chora”), and Aristotle focusing on the concept of “place” (topos) we learn that, although not...
For many of us, February 24, 2022, was just a regular day, while for the others it was the day when everything changed. Did Russia become more sophisticated at taking over countries? Who is next? During its invasion in Ukraine, Russia allegedly conducted Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, and deployment of wiper malware against various sectors. One of the most recent multifaceted and deliberate cyber-attacks reportedly started approximately one hour before the actual invasion and resulted in a partial interruption of Viasat Inc’s KA-SAT consumer-oriented satellite network. Despite Ukraine’s military being the main target, as it was believed, private and commercial internet users were affected as well, in addition to wind farms in central Europe. With Russia previously denying...
In the context of a DDoS attack impacting Protected Health Information (“PHI”) shared among multiple custodians, while responsibility for data privacy is shared, it ultimately rests with the data owners and holders. One approach to establishing accountability for privacy violations stemming from information flow during a DDoS attack - Boston Children’s Hospital (“BCH”) - calls for a nuanced application of Helen Nissenbaum’s Contextual Integrity framework. This involves carefully considering the complexity and variability of the contextual constraints that shape an individual’s expectations of privacy regarding how information should flow. For example, because BCH used the same Internet Service Provider (“ISP”) as seven other care institutions, the organized attack shad the potential to bring down multiple pieces of BCH’s critical infrastructure...
An hour before the invasion, malicious traffic was detected emerging from several SurfBeam2 and SurfBeam 2+ modems and/or associated customer premise equipment (CPE) physically located within Ukraine. The modems were allegedly serviced by a Eutelsat subsidiary, Skylogic, which was in charge for managing a partition of the KA-SAT overall network, specifically BAP1 and BAP2. Ruben Santamarta’s research allegedly revealed that at the time of the attack, Skylogic counted on Fortinet for VPN services, which suffered a cyberattack from the Russian group “Groove” in 2021, leading to the leak of almost half a million credentials of VPN appliances. Despite Fortinet developing and releasing a patch to the uncovered vulnerability, it is presumed that Skylogic had not deployed it at the time...
What does it mean to be Emotionally Intelligent "EI" when dealing with legal matters, regarldess of the role you play in them? What steps are you taking to improve your EI today?
