Legal experts say they’re the most important First Amendment cases in a generation. The question is whether states like Florida and Texas can force big social media platforms to carry content the platforms find hateful or objectionable.”There is nothing more Orwellian than the government trying to dictate what viewpoints are distributed in the name of free expression,” said Matt Schruers, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a trade group for the social media companies that’s involved in the litigation. “And that’s what’s at issue in this case.”

The dispute intensified after the violent siege on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, when social media sites booted former President Donald Trump from their platforms, fearing his posts could provoke more unrest.

Republicans in Florida and Texas took action, signing sweeping laws that prevent the largest platforms from banning users based on their political viewpoints and require them to provide an individual explanation to users about why their posts have been edited or removed.

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At stake, he said, is who controls what people hear, say and read online. “Everyone, left right or center, should oppose government control of speech,” Szabo said. “Because as it may be your person in the White House today, we know that that will not be forever. And that’s why the First Amendment is so important and so paramount.”

What the justices will have to decide – The justices will have to decide between radically different conceptions of what social media is. Are these platforms more like old-time phone companies: basically, open to everyone without filtering?

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The social media giants are relying in part on a 1974 Supreme Court case, Miami Herald v Tornillo. Florida tried to force the newspaper to carry op-eds it didn’t want to publish. The high court sided with the Herald back then.

Today, the social media sites said, Florida is trying to make the big social media platforms print every single letter to the editor. Users don’t want that and neither do advertisers, they said.

Support for the tech companies – The two trade associations — NetChoice and CCIA — are backed by groups across the political spectrum, from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Americans For Prosperity, which is linked to Charles Koch, to the American Civil Liberties Union.

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The state laws are not about protecting speech, the moderators wrote. Instead, they’re commandeering someone else’s microphone to spread a message.

A Cyber Insurance BackstopIn the first week of January, the pharmaceutical giant Merck quietly settled its years-long lawsuit over whether or not its property and casualty insurers would cover a $700 million claim filed after the devastating NotPetya cyberattack in 2017. The malware ultimately infected more than 40,000 of Merck’s computers, which significantly disrupted the company’s drug and vaccine production. After Merck filed its $700 million claim, the pharmaceutical giant’s insurers argued that they were not required to cover the malware’s damage because the cyberattack was widely attributed to the Russian government and therefore was excluded from standard property and casualty insurance coverage as a “hostile or warlike act.”

At the heart of the lawsuit was a crucial question: Who should pay for massive, state-sponsored cyberattacks that cause billions of dollars’ worth of damage?
One possible solution, touted by former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on a recent podcast, would be for …

Like terrorist attacks, catastrophic cyberattacks are difficult for insurers to predict or model because there is not very good historical data about them—and even if there were, it’s not clear that past patterns of cyberattacks will dictate future ones.

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Tags: computer security, cyber, cyberattack, insurance

Suspected Chinese state-sponsored hackers leveraging Ivanti Connect Secure VPN flaws to breach a variety of organizations have demonstrated “a nuanced understanding of the appliance”, according to Mandiant incident responders and threat hunters.They were able to perform a number of modifications on the device and deploy specialized malware and plugins aimed at achieving persistence across system upgrades, patches, and factory resets.

“While the limited attempts observed to maintain persistence have not been successful to date due to a lack of logic in the malware’s code to account for an encryption key mismatch, it further demonstrates the lengths UNC5325 [one of the threat groups] will go to maintain access to priority targets and highlights the importance of ensuring network appliances have the latest updates and patches,” Mandiant’s specialists noted.

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Registrars can now block people from registering tens of thousands of domain names that look like, are spelling variations of, or otherwise infringe on brand names.GlobalBlock, a solution already in use by leading registrars like GoDaddy Corporate Domains, 101domain, and MarkMonitor lets businesses pay a subscription fee to reserve a part of the domain space, as a means to protect their trademark. But, is there more to this than meets the eye?

Blocks similar domains, even homoglyphs

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Free speech concerns – No doubt, a solution like GlobalBlock, when implemented by leading registrars can save brands the hassle of registering every domain that has its echoes. But, I couldn’t help but wonder if an automated solution this vast could end up providing an undue advantage to companies in hoarding up the domain space.

Should a company or celebrity reserve their name and use “unlimited blocking of main labels,” this would effectively prevent registration of a domain with that term.

In other words, could a famous JohnSmith now block you from registering JohnSmithSucks.com, or your next-door ‘iPhone Repair Shop’ be compelled to find a domain name that is free from a trademark?

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