In this week’s Security Ledger Podcast (#84): The 1990s era Digital Millennium Copyright Act made it a crime to subvert copy protections in software and hardware. We speak with Cory Doctorow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation about his group’s efforts to win an exemption from that law for voice assistants like the Amazon Echo and Google Home. Also: February is Black History Month in the United States. We interview Corey Thomas, the Chief Executive Officer of the firm Rapid 7 about what it means to be a black man in the information security industry and about his path to the field.
right to repair
EFF Seeks Right to Jailbreak Alexa, Voice Assistants
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking the Library of Congress to give owners of voice assistant devices like Amazon’s Echo, Google Home and other voice assistants the right to “jailbreak” the devices: freeing them from content control features designed to prevent users from running unauthorized code on those platforms.
Will ‘Right to Repair’ imperil IoT Security?
In-brief: the firm Pen Test Partners notes that there are security arguments against expanding right to repair laws. But do they stand up to scrutiny?
Right to Repair on the Ropes in Minnesota | Motherboard
In-brief: Proposed legislation to prevent manufacturers from denying owners and independent repair people to fix and maintain software-based products is being sidelined by opposition from private firms like equipment maker John Deere, Motherboard reports.