Facebook has finally found a new general counsel — hiring Jennifer Newstead, a top lawyer at the US State Department, to fill the role. The social network's previous general counsel, Colin Stretch, originally announced his intention to leave in July 2018. But as the California company lurched from scandal to scandal, he ended up staying on. He will continue to be with Facebook "through the summer to help with the transition," the company said on Monday. Newstead most recently served as a legal adviser for the US State Department, "overseeing work on all domestic and international legal issues affecting the conduct of US foreign policy," Facebook said in a blog post announcing the news. She joins Facebook at a time of extreme upheaval. Over the last two years the company has faced successive crises, from the Cambridge Analytica scandal to its role spreading hate speech that fueled genocide in Myanmar. Public attitudes towards big tech — and Facebook specifically — have soured accordingly, with increasing calls for stricter legislation or even antitrust measures. "I'm excited to be joining Facebook at an important time and working with such a fantastic team," she said in a statement. "Facebook's products play an important role in societies around the world. I am looking forward to working with the team and outside experts and regulators on a range of legal issues as we seek to uphold our responsibilities and shared values." On Monday, Facebook also announced a new vice president of global communications — John Pinette, the former VP of marketing and communications at Vulcan, who has also worked at Google and Bill Gates' Gates Ventures. He replaced Caryn Marooney, who announced her exit in February 2019. Got a tip? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (650) 636-6268 using a non-work phone, email at [email protected], Telegram or WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop. SEE ALSO: Watch Bill Gates tear up the dance floor at a Miami club Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Facial recognition is almost perfectly accurate — here's why that could be a problem from https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-state-department-lawyer-jennifer-newstead-general-counsel-2019-4
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Heather Meeker has seen her share of career changes. She's been a software programmer and a drummer in a rock band. Now, she's very likely the most prominent lawyer working specifically with the world of open source software. She's made a name for herself as one of the top experts in the field, especially in the last year. Companies like MongoDB, Redis Labs, and Confluent turned to Meeker to help them write new, more restrictive licenses that prevent big cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Alibaba, and Tencent from using their code freely. She calls 2018 a "watershed year" for these new licenses, which sparked fierce debate in the open source software community. The companies in question argued that while it's completely legal for the big tech companies to take open source code and resell it as a commercial service for profit, it's not especially fair — especially since Amazon, in particular, is seen as not contributing enough code back to the open source communities in return. "[These companies] were concerned about cloud providers free riding on their development efforts without sharing their modifications," Meeker told Business Insider. "They were concerned about sustaining a business and big companies were just using it for free and making a lot of money from making it available for others. They thought, that's a business problem for us." The result, as we've seen over the last several months, is a dramatic industry-wide debate over the future of open source: Some companies have chosen to find new monetization models for open source, while others have doubled down and actually released their entire product line-up as open source code. This all comes as investors flock to open source startups, in the wake of mega-deals like IBM's$34 billion acquisition of Red Hat and Microsoft's $7.5 billion GitHub buy. Besides her licensing work, Meeker is involved in the startup scene as a founding portfolio partner at OSS Capital, a VC firm specifically aimed at commercial open source software startups. She helps these startups with their business and licensing models, helping them solve a problem that's now decades-old: How do you make money with a business built on free, open source software? "I've always understood that you could make money doing open source development, but there were a lot of people who were really skeptical for a long time," Meeker said. "You can make money with an open source business very effectively if you plan it properly." "Flavor of the month"Meeker graduated from Yale in 1978 and spent the early '80s as a programmer. Her degree is in economics, but she learned to program on her own as a child, picking up some basics from her computer scientist father. "I was a nerd. I love technology all my life," Meeker said. "I learned about it at an early age which at the time was very unusual." After five years as a programmer, she says she became bored. At the time, she was developing accounting applications, and felt that she had hit a roadblock in her career. So instead, she pursued what she says was her first passion, and became a musician. She was a drummer and a leader of a band that played blues, college radio rock, and anything people wanted them to play. It was a good time, she says, but it didn't pay the bills. "It's easy to explain why I changed from being a musician to a lawyer," Meeker said. "I wanted health insurance. It was fun, but it was not a career. Compared to other lawyers, I deeply appreciate the practice of law as a career because I've been through something much more difficult. I have loved being a lawyer much more than I expected." She went into law school at UC Berkeley, thinking she would combine law with music and entertainment to become an entertainment lawyer. But soon enough, she realized interesting things were cropping up in technology law, and she changed course. As a lawyer, she started off doing intellectual property and licensing. It wasn't until a couple years later when she discovered the niche field of open source licensing — open source software is, by definition, free for anybody to use and modify, but licensing is a crucial element that controls what's allowed and what isn't, legally speaking. "I set out to learn all I could about it," Meeker said. "In any organization, if you learn a little bit more than the person in the next office, you're the expert. Then they came to me with questions, so I learned more about it. Open source to me is really an interesting thing to focus on." Meeker expected open source to be like a "flavor of the month;" a fad that would eventually disappear. But it never did. 'A clash of ideologies'Today, using open source is the rule in the modern software industry, rather than the exception, Meeker says. The world is embracing open source, and more clients have asked her about it. They wanted to use open source software, but they weren't sure how — and when she first started, most corporate counsels simply advised clients to stay away. "I thought there has to be a better answer than 'no,'" Meeker said. "I thought there has to be a 'yes, if.' That's how I started my practice by trying not to say no. If you want to be a good business lawyer, you have to give your clients more practical and nuanced advice." Generally, her clients want to make sure they're in compliance with open source licenses when they use or modify the code. Some clients want to learn how to set up a foundation to run an open source project of their own, or they may have a dispute over the interpretation of a license. Lately, she's been involved in writing new software licenses. "Most open source licenses don't have any requirements until you distribute the software," Meeker said. "The advent of cloud computing has changed how people deploy software. A lot of people are asking what is that activity that invokes distribution of open source. There is some sort of doctrinal ambiguity about it." These new licenses have been controversial, as free software activists argue that some of the licenses she's helped write go against the definition of open source. Meeker says she cannot comment on her clients directly, but that she only does what she's been asked to do. More broadly, Meeker says, open source startups are only seeking new ways to protect their business, and that change always comes as a shock to any community. "Some software that was previously open source became not open source, so people didn't like that," Meeker said. "There was also a clash of ideologies. You have some people who are free software advocates who object to anyone who uses anything but a free software license, and you have businesses saying we can't sustain a business with a free software license." A problem, she says, is that advocates, developers, and businesses may all have different ideas on what open source should be. For those advocates, open source is an ideal, while developers find it to be an easier way to work together on large software projects. Open source software-based businesses have to balance these principles, while also finding ways to make money. In theory, these "ideologies," can't meet, Meeker says, but in practice, they're combined all the time. For example, most of these companies follow a so-called "open core model," which means that they have a free version of their software, and sell an enterprise version that carries more features for businesses and other power users. Meeker says that it's important to find these moments of balance as a way to grow the overall open source community, commensurate with its outsized impact in the world. "In open source world, there's a lot of philosophical debate that gets very contentious," Meeker said. "While it's important to air ideas and have debate, to people outside who are looking in and are not thinking about open source issues everyday, it's very confusing and concerning to them. I would like to see open source be a big tent instead of a little tent." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here's how North Korea's Kim Jong Un became one of the world's scariest dictators from https://www.businessinsider.com/lawyer-behind-mongodb-redis-labs-new-licenses-discusses-open-source-2019-3 Facebook may have broken the law by harvesting 1.5 million users' email contacts experts say (FB)4/18/2019
Facebook harvested 1.5 million users' email contact data without their consent, and experts say that in doing so the company may have violated American and European Union laws. On Wednesday, Business Insider revealed that the California social network had since May 2016 been scraping some new users' email contact books after asking for their email passwords to "verify" their accounts. Around 1.5 million users ultimately had their data taken without permission; Facebook says this was done "unintentionally" and it is now deleting the data. Experts speaking to Business Insider on Thursday said that they believed Facebook's actions had potentially violated multiple laws — including a US FTC consent decree, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — the European Union's data privacy regulation — and while there would likely be a strong defence for Facebook, perhaps even the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a US criminal statute involving computer fraud and abuse. If their theories are accurate, and regulators ultimately decide to take action against Facebook over the issue, then it could further exacerbate the legal headaches facing the company, which has been battling scandals on multiple fronts for the past two years — from Cambridge Analytica's misappropriation of tens of millions of users' data to the social network's role spreading hate speech that fueled genocide in Myanmar. A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment. Facebook is already under investigation by the FTCSince 2011, Facebook has been subject to a consent decree by US regulator the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), after it settled charges that alleged it had misled users over privacy issues. The FTC is now investigating Facebook over its subsequent privacy practices, namely the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The FTC is inquiring whether the incident violated the 2011 consent decree, and is reportedly close to negotiating a settlement with Facebook that may be in the billions of dollars. Ashkan Soltani, a former chief technologist for the FTC, said he believed Facebook's actions with users' email contacts may itself have broken the terms of the consent decree if it was using the data. "In my opinion, Facebook's collection and use of users' address books would be another clear violation of the Consent decree and merit an investigation," he said. "The FTC enforces unfair and deceptive trade practices. On its own, downloading and using users' address books under a deceptive pretext of 'security' would constitute a deceptive practice, even IF the company wasn't under order," he said, speaking in the abstract. Dina Srinivasan, a Yale Law graduate who recently wrote a paper called "The Antitrust Case Against Facebook," argued that the company's behavior was potentially illegal "on the grounds that Facebook was deceiving consumers when it came to their data and privacy. This can be a violation of 3 things. (1) Federal antitrust laws. (2) Unfair competition laws which every state has a version of. (3) The FTC consent decree." That said, it's not yet clear whether the FTC will ultimately attempt to take any action against Facebook on this issue, and a spokesperson for the organization didn't respond to a request for comment. "There are so many different potential violations at this point that I don't know that FTC will investigate this latest ... particularly because it's under a lot of pressure to act on the Cambridge Analytica [incident]," said Sally Hubbard, the director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute, a research and advocacy group that focuses on issues around corporate power. She explained that, even if this did constitute a violation, it would be difficult to investigate. "Once there's a revised consent decree in place, it will be hard for the FTC to go back and investigate any misconduct that came before it (depending on the terms of the negotiated agreement settling the claims — it likely will resolve all liability for violations up to the date it's agreed to)." The Silicon Valley firm could face trouble in Europe tooIn May 2018, the European Union started enforcing GDPR, its tough new data protection legislation. Facebook hasn't yet said if any of the affected users signed up in Europe after that data, but it seems extremely likely — in which case some believe Facebook may have fallen afoul of GDPR. "It is especially problematic because it was not just data of the user being verified that was ... processed, but the personal data of their contacts too," London-based data protection researcher and Alan Turing institute fellow Michael Veale said in an email. "It might just have been 1.5m users that were directly affected, but considering the number of unique emails that were harvested and the network information linking them, the total number of individuals affected is likely in the hundreds of millions." He suggested there may have been multiple breaches of the law, including not informing users, and processing people's data for advertising purposes without informing them. "This could be construed as a general security breach, as Facebook were not aware their system was effectively compromised," he added. The Irish Data Protection Commission, which is responsible for regulating Facebook's data practices in the EU under GDPR, said it's now in contact with Facebook over the issue and is considering its next move. "We are currently engaging with Facebook on this issue and once we receive further information we will decide what steps to take," said Graham Doyle, the head of communications at the Irish DPC. The question of intentJulian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, discussed the possibility that Facebook had potentially violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act — which would veer into criminal territory. "It's an offense under 18 USC 1030 to, among other things, intentionally exceed authorized access to a protected computer. A 'protected computer' is, for practical purposes, any computer connected to the Internet," he said. "So with respect to Facebook's access to users' e-mail contacts, the relevant questions are whether there's any viable argument that it was 'authorized,' which seems like a very hard sell when it's represented as being specifically for the purpose of authentication, and if not, whether the access in excess of authorization was intentional." He added: "If we were talking about a rapidly-corrected coding mistake that had removed language about scraping the user's contacts, you'd have a plausible case for saying this was access in excess of authorization, but not intentional. But that becomes more difficult to buy the longer they were doing it." Facebook says that the action was purely unintentional — that it previously notified users that it would be accessing their contacts, but a change inadvertently stripped that warning out. Such an argument would be a defense under the CFAA. "Can they plead incompetence? In principle, though boy is that embarrassing," Sanchez said. "You'd need to look through internal correspondence to see whether anyone noticed the issue and Facebook decided not to fix it." Got a tip? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (650) 636-6268 using a non-work phone, email at [email protected], Telegram or WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop. Read more:
Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Wearable and foldable phones are shaking up tech, making 2019 the year of weird phones from https://www.businessinsider.com/experts-facebook-law-harvesting-1-5-users-email-contacts-2019-4
Facebook has stored millions of Instagram users' passwords in an unencrypted format easily readable by its employees for years, the latest in a series of high-profile security missteps committed by the Silicon Valley giant. The news came on Thursday by way of an update to an existing company blog post, which in March, announced that unencrypted passwords for hundreds of millions of Facebook and Facebook Lite users had been accessible on its internal servers. At the time, the company also said the same issue affected "tens of thousands" of Instagram users. On Thursday, that number was updated to "millions." Facebook said that since its previous post — on March 21 — it had discovered "additional logs of Instagram passwords being stored in a readable format," but that its "investigation has determined that these stored passwords were not internally abused or improperly accessed." The company said it would notify affected users. Back in March, Facebook said it discovered the vulnerability during a "routine security review" at the beginning of the year. The cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs said the issue existed as far back as 2012. The incident adds to a long line of serious scandals and crises to wrack Facebook over the past two years — many of which have been security- or privacy-related. Just yesterday, Business Insider discovered that the tech giant had been harvesting the email contacts of 1.5 million new users without their knowledge or consent. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: We tried the Samsung Galaxy S10 to find out if it's worth the $1,000 from https://www.businessinsider.com/millions-of-unencrypted-instagram-passwords-2019-4
One of America's wealthiest cities has a huge problem with public poop. Between 2011 and 2018, San Francisco experienced a massive increase in reported incidents of human feces found on public streets. In 2011, just over 5,500 reports were logged by the San Francisco Department of Public Works; in 2018, the number increased to over 28,000. Government watchdog Open the Books documented the sharp increase over time in a stunning chart, first spotted by BuzzFeed editor John Paczkowski. Notably, this is only a chart of documented reports — the actual amount of feces on San Francisco's streets is likely to be even higher than these statistics suggest. "I will say there is more feces on the sidewalks than I've ever seen growing up here," San Francisco mayor London Breed told NBC in a 2018 interview. "That is a huge problem, and we are not just talking about from dogs — we're talking about from humans." San Francisco has struggled with a feces problem for years. The city even employs a "Poop Patrol" that aims to keep the streets clean, which focuses on the Tenderloin neighborhood. But the problem is bigger than just keeping the streets clean — it's a demonstration of the city's struggle to accommodate its homeless population amidst skyrocketing rent prices and a decreasing supply of affordable housing. A 2017 survey of San Francisco's homeless population counted just shy of 7,500 people living on the street. That population faces limited public resources, and public bathrooms are no exception. Whether the Poop Patrol is able to reverse the trend on San Francisco's streets remains to be seen, but it's evident that the crew is a bandage on a much bigger problem than dirty streets. Join the conversation about this story » from https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-human-poop-problem-2019-4
Ireland's Data Protection Commission has reached out to Facebook for information as it considers what steps to take about the revelation that Facebook harvested email contacts of 1.5 million users without their consent. Business Insider reported on Wednesday that Facebook has collected the contact lists of 1.5 million users new to the social network. The Silicon Valley company said the contact data was "unintentionally uploaded to Facebook," and it is now deleting it. "We are currently engaging with Facebook on this issue and once we receive further information we will decide what steps to take," Graham Doyle, the head of the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) told Business Insider on Thursday. The Irish DPC is the official data regulator in the country, and under GDPR — the EU's data protection law — it is responsible for handling all data protection issues relating to Facebook in the 28-country bloc. Read Business Insider's full report about Facebook's collection of user email contacts here »
Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: We tried Louis Vuitton's wireless earbuds to find out if they're worth the $995 from https://www.businessinsider.com/ireland-dpc-agency-info-facebook-collection-1-5-million-email-contacts-2019-4 Allegations remain unknown A partner at Freshfields has been placed on “indefinite leave”, ahead of his appearance before a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) next week. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is still to publish the allegations against Ryan Beckwith, a restructuring and insolvency partner in the magic circle outfit’s London office, but confirmed it would do so in the coming weeks. A case management hearing is scheduled for Friday 26 April, according to a listing published on the SDT’s website. A spokesperson for Freshfields said:
Beckwith, who was elevated to partner in 2012, studied law at Anglia Polytechnic University (now Anglia Ruskin University), before going on to study civil law at the University of Oxford. Comments on this article are closed for legal reasons. The post Freshfields partner on ‘indefinite leave’ ahead of disciplinary hearing appeared first on Legal Cheek. from https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/04/freshfields-partner-placed-on-indefinite-leave-ahead-of-disciplinary-hearing/ Competition and Market Authority stops short of banning accountancy giants from legal sector altogether The Big Four accountancy giants should be made to split their fast-growing legal practices from their audit work, an influential government regulator recommends today. Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC need to put strict Chinese walls between their professional services people and their auditors in order to improve the quality of their auditing, according to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The regulator has been looking into the structure of the audit market amid concerns that the Big Four firms are too dominant despite not doing a very good job. One of the CMA’s four recommendations is an “operational split” between audit and professional services within each firm. None of the Big Four are solely focused on accountancy any more, with things like management consultancy and — increasingly — legal services making up a larger share of the business than old-fashioned bean counting. The CMA wants the audit business to have its own chief executive and board of management, with no profit sharing between the two sides of the business. That way, it reckons, management of the audit business will be able to focus on doing their clients’ accounts properly, rather than being distracted by shiny professional services activities. One non-audit insider at Deloitte told Legal Cheek: “Generally I think it’s a good idea. The Big Four have become too powerful”. The regulator decided not to recommend that the non-audit businesses be spun out completely. It thinks that an internal operational split, falling short of separation into two new firms, will be enough. The CMA also declined the radical step of banning the Big Four from the legal and professional services market altogether. All this could happen within 12-18 months, if the government were to back it. The CMA points out that “the audit firms have all the expertise needed to implement this remedy quickly and effectively”. All four accountancy giants now have a bridgehead in the UK legal market, with Deloitte the last to pick up its alternative business structure licence last year. In November 2018, KPMG announced plans to double its global complement of lawyers to 3,000 — which would make it one of the biggest law firms on the planet. In a way, this would only be a reversion to type for the Big Four’s lawyers. PwC Legal was a separate entity as recently as 2016, as a committee of MPs pointed out in a separate report published earlier this month. For a weekly round-up of news, plus jobs and latest event info Sign up to the Legal Cheek NewsletterThe post Big Four told to keep lawyers and accountants apart appeared first on Legal Cheek. from https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/04/big-four-told-to-keep-lawyers-and-accountants-apart/ ‘We are expected to brush away the trauma of one case and pick up the next’ Fans of legal dramas will be forgiven for thinking that life at the criminal bar is one of glamour, wealth and non-stop excitement. But the reality is quite different: as evidenced in a recent Twitter thread by Richard Bentwood, a criminal barrister at London’s 23 Essex Street Chambers. Kicking things off, Bentwood explains that he has just come to the end of a “nasty kidnap trial” involving a “violent London gang”. His client was convicted along with his two co-defendants, Bentwood writes.
The experienced barrister continues to describe how his 18-year-old client “demonstrated a bravado and nonchalance” throughout the trial, treating his legal team with “little respect”.
Bentwood goes on to say how his client’s demeanour quickly changed following his conviction. “The gangster façade had dropped”, he explains.
Accepting that there is no reason why he should feel sorry him, yet he does, Brentwood reflects on the chances he had compared to those of his now sobbing client.
In a series of further tweets, Brentwood describes how life at the criminal bar is “tough” and “emotionally draining”, explaining how barristers are expected to “brush away the trauma of one case and pick up the next”.
Rounding off his emotional thread, Brentwood tells his followers that the pay is “demeaning”, the hours are “long” and that he receives little thanks for his hard work. “I feel drained, he feels far worse”, he concludes.
The post Criminal barrister reveals emotional toll of life at the bar in candid Twitter thread appeared first on Legal Cheek. from https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/04/criminal-barrister-reveals-emotional-toll-of-life-at-the-bar-in-candid-twitter-thread/ Clad in comfy sweats and £77,000 Birkin bag Following a fiery Insta exchange where she shot back at her critics for pursuing her lawyerly ambitions, first-year law student Kim Kardashian has been pictured rocking up to sit a tort law exam. The 38-year-old socialite was photographed yesterday hopping out of her Range Rover and into what appears to be a building in Los Angeles where she supposedly took the test. Dressed in casual grey Yeezy jogger pants, trainers and a hoodie to boot — the reality TV star would not look out of place in your average law student cohort. She clutched a large binder with the word ‘criminal’ scrawled in capital letters and carried a khaki rucksack (doubtless filled with more paperwork and textbooks). In a rather telltale sign to the icon’s wealth and celeb status, Kardashian also toted a cream crocodile Hermès Birkin handbag, that is estimated to cost around $100,000 (£77,000). The social media superstar took to her Instagram on Tuesday, where she boasts an impressive 134 million followers, to share a glimpse into her exam prep. Posting a pic (below) of her (very neat) tort law revision notes, the beauty business icon could be seen studying definitions of negligence: ‘standard of care’ and ‘breach of duty’, combined with flashcards and handwritten key terms scribed on them. What struck Legal Cheek most was her distinct lack of highlighters!
Following the exam, which is one of three Kim K must complete in order to pass her first year, the reality TV queen of Keeping up with the Kardashians fame tweeted she had “Aced my test btw ”, meaning the star, whose own father, Robert Kardashian, was an attorney and famously worked on OJ Simpson’s murder trial, could be one step closer to her lawyer dream.
The mother-of-three (soon to be four) sent shockwaves around the legal world when she revealed she is studying to become a lawyer in May’s issue of fashion bible Vogue. She confirmed she had begun a four-year legal apprenticeship with an unnamed law firm in San Francisco last summer, with a view to sitting the California bar exam in 2022. Despite not possessing a university degree, Kardashian’s path into law is possible because California is one of a number of US states that allow aspiring lawyers to sit their final bar exams without a law degree. Earlier this week Kimmie hit back at her haters in a lengthy Insta post. “I’ve seen some comments from people who are saying it’s my privilege or my money that got me here, but that’s not the case,” wrote Kardashian, who also detailed her gruelling study schedule which includes disconnecting from friends and sacrificing time with her children to spend 18-hours per week on her studies. For a weekly round-up of news, plus jobs and latest event info Sign up to the Legal Cheek NewsletterThe post Kim Kardashian proves haters wrong as she ‘aces’ torts exam appeared first on Legal Cheek. from https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/04/kim-kardashian-proves-haters-wrong-as-she-aces-torts-exam/ |
AuthorHi I am Alana Smith 35 years old living in New York. I am working as an assistant in local law office. I like to share legal news with people to educate them. Archives
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