AI sovereignty and surveillance.

Dave Bittner: Hello, everyone; and welcome to Caveat, N2K Cyberwire's Privacy Surveillance Law and Policy podcast. I'm Dave Bittner. And joining me is my co-host, Ben Yelin, from the University of Maryland Center for Cyber Health and Hazard Strategies. Hey there, Ben.

Ben Yelin: Hello, Dave. On today's show, Ben has the story of the European Union's latest effort to achieve technological sovereignty. I've got concerns from experts on the growing potential for a surveillance state here in the US. While this show covers legal topics, and Ben is a lawyer, the views expressed do not constitute legal advice. For official legal advice on any of the topics we cover, please contact your attorney. All right, Ben. Lots going on this week. What do you got for us? There sure is. So, because there's lots going on, of course I chose a story that actually came out a couple of weeks ago. We had something urgent to cover last week.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: But I wanted to give this due attention. So it comes from the Lawfare blog, and it's written by Kenneth Propp, and the article is about the European Union's proposed Cloud and AI Development Act, or CADA. This is part of a broader EU strategy to achieve technological sovereignty, to be less reliant on the United States and our cloud providers. And I think you have to start by looking at this outside the context of technology. And not to make everything about Trump, but I do think a lot of countries have reconsidered the fact that they've relied on the United States for a lot of things, economic might, economic support, things like weapon systems for kinetic warfare, just basically, like, things that states have relied on the United States to produce and share with them that, because we have an administration that prides itself on being America first and because we've had the things like threats of tariffs or actual tariffs, I think a lot of countries are rethinking that relationship. I mean, most famously, people heard the speech at the Davos conference from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney where he made the point, I think very eloquently, that the world isn't the same that it was a few years ago. All of these other countries, these other Western countries have to become more self-sufficient, whether that relates to technology, whether that relates to weapon systems. And I think Trump is just kind of the wake-up call --

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ben Yelin: -- that these countries have been slacking on technological development.

Dave Bittner: Just let me just jump in for a second because the thing that really struck me about the movement on this is that it's that old saying about how trust is slowly earned but quickly lost --

Ben Yelin: Totally.

Dave Bittner: -- and that it's not so much Donald Trump himself. Obviously he's the catalyst for this and his -- as you say, his push to America first. But it's simply the demonstration that this is what the US is capable of.

Ben Yelin: Exactly.

Dave Bittner: That one administration, whether it's Trump or someone else, can come in and change our direction so quickly and so distinctly to throw off the world order.

Ben Yelin: Yeah. And, like, Trump has backed down on a lot of things. You could imagine a future administration that doesn't back down and follows through with all of these threatening tariffs or actually succeeds in withdrawing the United States from our international obligations, like with NATO.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: So it's no longer something that's theoretical. I think it's forcing countries and, in this case, the European Union to think seriously about self-sufficiency. So the catalyst for this particular concern is that most of the European cloud market, 70% is owned by US companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Google. And then, of the remaining 30%, only about half of that is controlled by European providers. So Asian companies generally control the rest. And there are a couple of risks that come with this. One is there's something called the US Cloud Act, which allows authorities within the United States to access data held by American companies when stored in Europe. So, if 70% of the market in Europe is controlled by US companies, then our surveillance state, which we'll talk about in our next segment here, would have access to lots of communications of people in -- within the European Union. And then the other issue that they've mentioned is a so-called kill switch where crippling US sanctions, government -- other government actions, including tariffs, could force American companies to suspend services to European users. One example he gave is how the International Criminal Court made this finding about what's happened in Israel, calling it a genocide; and the United States imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court and everybody who I guess contributes to it. And this was kind of a warning sign that the US can impose these sanctions and would have a big impact in Europe. So how does this law work? Basically, this law would create an EU-wide system of four sovereignty assurance levels for cloud providers serving --

Dave Bittner: Oh. Like DEFCON levels.

Ben Yelin: It's basically DEFCON levels. Yeah.

Dave Bittner: Okay.

Ben Yelin: Serving what they call sensitive public sector contracts. Fancy word for contracting with the government. For Level 1, which is the highest level -- see? We really are in DEFCON levels, right?

Dave Bittner: Yeah. I know. I've always found that to be counterintuitive.

Ben Yelin: Me too. Level 1 to me seems like, ah. Everything's okay. We're only at Level 1.

Dave Bittner: Right, right. No. But I learned this from watching war games.

Ben Yelin: Totally. Yeah. I think that's kind of how we all learned about it.

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ben Yelin: All right. So, here's how this law would actually work. CADA would create an EU-wide system of four sovereignty assurance levels, going up from Level 1 to Level 4, which is the strictest.

Dave Bittner: Yeah. So this is the opposite of DEFCON.

Ben Yelin: Opposite of DEFCON. Exactly. This gets so confusing.

Dave Bittner: Okay.

Ben Yelin: So Level 1, data must be hosted in the EU and protected from certain foreign reporting requirements. Level 2, providers must demonstrate that foreign governments cannot access the data or shut down services. At Level 3, providers cannot be controlled or be legally dependent on a non-EU country, i.e. the United States of America. And, at the strictest level, the EU would require independence from foreign-controlled components and the highest cybersecurity certifications. For your garden variety contracts from most public sector agencies, that's going to remain at Levels 1 and 2, which means US cloud providers could generally be involved as long as they loosen reporting requirements and they make assurances that the United States is not going to access data or shut down services. But, when we're talking about very sensitive rights affecting government work or things relating to national security or foreign affairs, you could get up to that Level 3 or Level 4; and that might lock out US companies. There are a bunch of exceptions that could allow non-EU providers to participate if there's no alternative, but this is something that I think US companies are going to have to pay attention to, that into the future they're going to have lesser access to the European market when it comes to these public sector services. And it also could partially inflame the already existing tensions relating to trade and diplomacy that we have with the European Union. And that's where this has received some criticism from the US and affiliated companies. But this is just something that I think reflects the broader diplomatic scenario that we're seeing in the world today where companies are rethinking their relationship with the United States; and this is a manifestation of that, which could have a huge impact on our cloud providers.

Dave Bittner: Isn't this a big business opportunity for companies in the EU? Like, I know we had a story over on the CyberWire about France really shifting their cloud storage to a French provider for this very reason.

Ben Yelin: Yeah. I mean, it's a huge opportunity. I kind of want to move to -- you know, what's the coolest country in the European Union? There are a lot of cool ones. Let's go with -- let's go with Sweden.

Dave Bittner: Okay.

Ben Yelin: I want to move there and start my own cloud computing company and be able to fulfill these services.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: They'll have no clue that I'm just an American tourist who decided to move there. Yeah. It's a huge opportunity. Now, like, there are a lot of barriers to entry in Europe to creating these companies. It's just kind of the way these countries are. Like, there is a reason why most big tech companies are located in the United States. Those reasons are complicated, but a lot of it is the economics of agglomeration. With having Silicon Valley there, you have the intellectual capital.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: Like, you have the Silicon Valley investors. You have high-skilled immigrants who have come to the United States to help create some of these applications. Like, that infrastructure already exists. So Europe, I think, if they're going to be -- get serious about their sovereignty, has to think about those types of things. Having a more skilled workforce, bringing down some of the regulatory barriers they have in various countries, this is, I think, going to be a long-term effort on behalf of the European Union. It's not something that's going to change overnight. But this might be the catalyst that gets these countries more serious about supporting industries within the European Union, supporting companies. Maybe they even change tax policies. In some ways, I'd hate to see that because I enjoy a progressive taxation system. But it might be that, as a way to incentivize the creation of these companies, you have to change tax structures. And, for new companies, maybe they get some type of tax credit or tax break. And you'd have to have the cooperation of the countries that make up the European Commission because they're the ones that are developing this policy.

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ben Yelin: So who knows how this is going to play out. But I think this at least could be the catalyst that changes the fundamental relationship between our tech companies, the United States, and the European Union, as at least as it relates to cloud computing in the -- in the public sector.

Dave Bittner: Do you see echoes of some of the things that US companies have had to deal with, with China? I'm particularly thinking about Apple who has had to deal with some of China's requirements of data being stored locally in China, thereby giving -- sort of the flip side of this so giving the Chinese government access to that data, which is not something that would be Apple's impulse. But, if you want to do business in China, you've got to play by the rules.

Ben Yelin: Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of it. Even though the motivation from the EU and China, as you say, is kind of on opposite ends of the Spectrum --

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ben Yelin: -- the fact that these companies will have to change their business practices to operate as cloud computing services within Europe, that has significant consequences. And that might require some very difficult decisions from these companies because, unless the US changes its policy or revises its own cloud computing act, companies might have to say to US regulators, like, Hey. We want to do business in Europe. We're not going to comply with your reporting requirements. We're going to make sure that there's no kill switch. We're not going to give you access to European users' information. And then what's the US government going to do? Are they going to seek some type of redress against these companies? Or are they going to prohibit them, as the Trump administration has done in other contexts, from getting contracts with the US government? So I think it's not an easy decision for these companies. It's much more difficult in my mind than something like GDPR, where it is a higher floor standard for data protection --

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: -- But you're not kind of fundamentally going against the interests of the United States, the United States government. You're just -- I mean, I guess that's in the eye of the beholder. But, in that case, you're just agreeing to this higher standard that you're going to apply universally because it's easier to just have one standard. Same with CCPA. I think this -- this is categorically different.

Dave Bittner: Let me float a hypothetical.

Ben Yelin: I love when you do that.

Dave Bittner: And I hit you where you live.

Ben Yelin: All right.

Dave Bittner: So, as you know, my wife and I recently had a vacation. We were traveling in upstate New York. And one of the things we discovered is that being out of the state of Maryland where we live, we could see more Orioles baseball games than we can when we're in Maryland.

Ben Yelin: Now, this is a question. Finally, this is relevant to my interests.

Dave Bittner: That's exactly. So my point is a lot of streaming media services are geographically bound, right? You cannot watch this out of your zone. You cannot. This movie is not licensed for your part of the world. We even had this back in the days of DVDs where you had different zones, and you could buy a region unlocked DVD player.

Ben Yelin: I couldn't watch my YouTube TV, YouTube TV services when I was in Europe --

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ben Yelin: -- which was a major disappointment because that's where a lot of the sporting events are held. So this is the real problem here, Dave.

Dave Bittner: You see where I'm going here is, could we envision a future where data itself is fenced in. And this notion of an open internet which we enjoy today where you can pull data from servers all over the world and not think twice about it, you being in the US might not be able to pull that database from Sweden.

Ben Yelin: Yeah. I mean, I think, like, most people, if they sat down and thought about that, really wouldn't benefit from a system of a siloed internet where something that's being streamed in another country on that country's server's inaccessible in the United States. I think we enjoy having access to those things. But, on the other hand, like, it's not rank and file voters or consumers who are going to be making these decisions. I mean, I think the way our government sees it and the way the EU sees it is this relates to sovereignty and national security. And so they might be willing to sacrifice the convenience and the preferences of the country's consumers or users in order to ensure things like technological sovereignty, which is, I think, a more pressing policy goal from the European Union. Now, again, there are things -- when we're talking about streaming sporting events, there are some workarounds, although they're not as successful as they used to be. They're getting better at sniffing out VPNs.

Dave Bittner: Right. Right.

Ben Yelin: But, in other contexts, like, there are not going to be workarounds. So that could be the consequences that we're -- we are shutting ourselves off from their market, and they're shutting themselves out from the US market; and we do become more siloed. I think it just kind of depends on how you see globalization in the first place.

Dave Bittner: Right, right.

Ben Yelin: Like, there are benefits to it; and there are detriments to it. And it would be great if we could reap the benefits without having to deal with any of the detriments. But, as we found out through international free trade over the past 30, 40 years, it's not always that easy.

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ben Yelin: People like cheap goods, but they also don't like losing factories in their hometown.

Dave Bittner: Right, right.

Ben Yelin: So, yeah.

Dave Bittner: Do you suppose -- how do I say this? Are there any indications that this administration might be retaliatory when it comes to this? They -- that is their nature?

Ben Yelin: This administration? Retaliatory?

Dave Bittner: I was trying to walk gently there, Ben; and you just bust -- burst through the wall like a Kool-Aid man.

Ben Yelin: I keep waiting for the -- I keep waiting for the Trump Truth Social post that just goes nuclear on this.

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ben Yelin: Like, the so-called EU and their cloud -- you know, CADA act, terrible name.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: I haven't seen it yet, but yes. I do think there's a good chance that --

Dave Bittner: You think that these US cloud providers, they have the President's ear, right? He listens to them. So, if they're looking at decreased shareholder value because of this, that is a way, probably, to get his attention.

Ben Yelin: Yeah. He does not like when the stock market goes down.

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ben Yelin: But also I think, as we've seen with tariffs, he's willing to go against the wishes of these titans. And I think we've seen that in the Anthropic dispute as well.

Dave Bittner: Yeah. That's true.

Ben Yelin: Like, if it's a battle that he wants to pick, I think he's fine being at odds with some of the business leaders who have supported him in the past. I think if he legitimately believes that this is about our sovereignty and that this is an America First policy, I think he has expressed a willingness to supersede the bare economics of it.

Dave Bittner: Yeah. I guess it's interesting to think about. This is really a wake-up call for the world. And things are going to be different from here on out, at least for the near term. But I see -- I guess what I'm saying is this to me, in my mind, goes beyond this particular administration.

Ben Yelin: Totally.

Dave Bittner: This is long-lasting.

Ben Yelin: And I think you can imagine, let's say, you know, a president, whomever takes office in 2029, they go on an apology tour to other countries are are like --

Dave Bittner: Right, right.

Ben Yelin: Well, you know, we want to reestablish diplomatic relationships. I think the countries aren't going to be like, Okay. It's all good now.

Dave Bittner: No. It's a fool me once kind of thing, right.

Ben Yelin: Totally. Like somebody like Trump can run and win in the United States. And, in the long-term, these countries have to be prepared for that scenario.

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ben Yelin: And if you want to know how countries are thinking about that, I really encourage you to watch the speech that Prime Minister Carney of Canada gave at the Davos forum, which is, I think, the purest articulation of, like, we have to rethink everything. And it's not just -- he's talking about Canada, but it was also to other Western democracies. Like, we've been the minnow on the shark of the United States; and that relationship is not going to work anymore. So change your policies. Like, I know you don't want to spend a certain amount of your national budget on defense. But it's a new era. You're going to have to. So, whatever you have to do to make that happen, like, make it happen.

Dave Bittner: Yeah. I think the EU, in that spirit, is -- is enacting or in the process of enacting this legislation. Right. All right. Well, we will have a link to that story in the show notes. Let's take a quick break here to hear from our show sponsors. We will be right back after these messages. And we are back. Ben, my story this week comes from The Guardian. This is an article written by Bruce Schneier and John Penny. Bruce Schneier, very well-known within cybersecurity circles. He's one of the longtime respected pundits, expert on cybersecurity things. And they're talking broadly about the possibilities for AI transforming surveillance into a much more powerful system than it is today, capable of monitoring all sorts of things in public life. And, you know, we talk about the slippery slope and what's next; and we see things being chipped away at day by day, month by month. I guess it's easy to feel like you don't want to cry Chicken Little, right? But, at the same time, this article points out China has done a lot of this stuff.

Ben Yelin: I mean, the moral to the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf is not, in fact, that there's no wolf.

Dave Bittner: Right?

Ben Yelin: I'm just going to throw that out there.

Dave Bittner: Right, right, right. So they point out that future AI surveillance systems can monitor people's actions in public spaces. We're already seeing things like that. They could detect violations, just routine violations and automatically fine you for them, like, things like littering or jaywalking. I was thinking of -- I don't know if you've ever -- have you ever seen the film Demolition Man with -- okay. I -- I'm pretty sure it's Demolition Man. It's a Sylvester Stallone movie, of all people. And part of the story is that they're living in this futuristic world where, like, I think Sylvester Stallone's character utters a curse word. And this voice pops up and says, you know, public profanity. Fine, $10. You know, that sort of thing, right, which is funny in the movie; but how crazy an idea is it? We have automated red light cameras.

Ben Yelin: Yeah. Not that I've ever violated any of those.

Dave Bittner: Speed cameras, speed tax. We've got Flock cameras. So we can imagine many ways that surveillance could ooze into the other areas of our lives, and the authors of this article are saying we need to be vigilant about that. We have to be careful. There's the old boiling-the-frog scenario where slowly these things can change while we don't realize it. And then, the next thing you know, you look around; and you're being monitored in ways that you probably wouldn't like to be monitored.

Ben Yelin: Yeah. I mean, I think, first of all, this forces us to admit that the technology exists. And it's largely being adopted and deployed. You know, I don't think we're in the full 1984 hellscape yet that's described in this article, but I think certainly there are pieces of it that are already in place. So the question is, what do we do about it? There's a theory in the legal world called the equilibrium adjustment theory where, as technology, as surveillance technology evolves and gets stronger and allows people or allows governments to do much broader surveillance on the population, then the laws should equally adjust to match that new reality. In other words, we should have more stringent Fourth Amendment standards for government surveillance. And, in that spirit, we saw what we talked about last week, the Chatrie decision.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: I think that's a recognition from the Supreme Court that surveillance technology has fundamentally changed. And, even though that decision was limited to whether there was a search in that case as it related to the geofence warrant, I think it's a recognition that people still should retain an expectation of privacy in things like the whole of their movements or their political, professional, and religious associations or things they do in their private lives. And I think it's going to be incumbent on the court system as more of these criminal cases come up where you have some type of all-encompassing surveillance, to look at it and say, can we maintain the same expectation of privacy that people had before this technology came into our lives? That's not going to be a full solution because that really only protects accused criminals. For the rest of us, I think if you're very privacy conscious, like, you're going to have to spend a lot of your life opting out of certain things. And there's some things you're not going to be able to opt out of, like you have to go in public so, if you're caught on the litter cam, like, you don't really have a choice. There's only one way to get from point A to point B. But, for other surveillance monitoring, like, a lot of it we just kind of agree to without thinking. I'm guilty of this, as I'm sure you are, of just agreeing to the terms of service and then --

Dave Bittner: Oh, yeah. Of course.

Ben Yelin: -- for the next 30 years, some private company can track our location. But I think the -- what this article highlights is, it is incumbent upon all of us to recognize that this is the new reality and take those measures that are within our control to mitigate the impact.

Dave Bittner: I'm curious your take on an element of this. I guess the groundswell of public support, and I'm thinking specifically of a story I saw in the last week or so where I believe it was a gentleman who's in the Air Force. And he took it upon himself to go around his community with -- let's just say a Sawzall and started cutting down Flock cameras. And he got caught. Can't do that, obviously. What he did was bad. It was wrong. It was illegal. But there's been a groundswell of support for his legal defense. People from all over are sending him money to help pay for his lawyers.

Ben Yelin: You worry about something like jury nullification.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: You get enough people on a jury there who hate the technology, that they just decide, no matter what the evidence is, I'm not going to convict for that type of crime. My take is that's dangerous.

Dave Bittner: Okay.

Ben Yelin: The worst manifestation I've seen of this is Luigi Mangione where, whatever you think about the healthcare industry, like, he committed cold-blooded -- allegedly committed cold-blooded murder. He's going to go on trial for it, and people are cheering him on and are wearing Luigi costumes outside his judicial hearings. And I'm deeply disturbed by that because, like, however bad you think the substantive policy issue is, to me the answer is never to commit more crimes.

Dave Bittner: Right. But, if you're a policy maker, you have to sit up and pay attention to that.

Ben Yelin: Totally.

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ben Yelin: Totally. And that's why people do those things is to get the attention of policy makers.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: I just want to make clear that, like, I don't think those tactics are acceptable. But, yes. I mean, I think it shows a level of societal disgust with these new surveillance tactics. And I think that's something that's kind of hard to deny at this point.

Dave Bittner: Yeah. This article also points out some of the tactics that have been used in China, basically, like, public shaming kinds of things where, you know, an individual might default on a loan or, you know, have bad credit; and they'll post a picture of them on an electronic billboard saying they're an untrustworthy person. And, you know, I mean, we all -- we already have things --

Ben Yelin: The billboard of shame.

Dave Bittner: Right, right. But we have -- you know, here we have credit scores. We have -- you know, I don't know about you but, you know, you go to buy a car or something; and they go to run your credit. And you're like, well, I hope this works out for me.

Ben Yelin: I hope I remembered to pay the cable bill 10 years ago.

Dave Bittner: Right, right.

Ben Yelin: Yeah.

Dave Bittner: Exactly. Because, you know, I guess part of my point here is that there are already these things that are not completely under our control, right, these rating systems for us as individuals, these -- and you understand on a societal level the need for some of them. If you have a criminal record, an employer should be able to know about that. But, at the same time, there's the opportunity, and AI accelerates those opportunities, for things to kind of spin out of control.

Ben Yelin: Yeah. I think so. I think AI is the accelerant because all it is, is a massive multiplication of capabilities that already exist. Like, we can do video surveillance. But, prior to AI, like, it requires somebody, some police officer to sit in front of 12 hours of footage. Like, with AI as a force multiplier, all of those jobs at least can be made more efficient and in some cases fully automated. So it's just accelerating phenomena that already existed. It's just enhancing the capabilities that we already have.

Dave Bittner: Yeah. What about the chilling effects here? That's another thing they mentioned. The author, John Penny, has a book titled Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age. So this notion that knowing that we're living in a panopticon alters our behavior and the potential effects that that has on society as a whole. What's your thoughts on that?

Ben Yelin: I think it's totally illegitimate, and I would hate to see people not participate in First Amendment protected activities because of a fear of surveillance. But clearly it happens. In some ways, this is something we've been dealing with for a long time as the surveillance state has grown. I think back in the 1960s and 1970s you could feel more comfortable joining an organization like the Weather Underground because you didn't realize that, like, the federal government was infiltrating it; and they had all these wiretapping tools. Now we know all of these things exist. So, if you have some type of disfavored political opinion or religious view, I think that does create a disturbing disincentive to express yourself and to be involved in First Amendment protected activities. And, in some ways, what kind of First Amendment do we actually have if people feel that reluctance to speak or to express themselves in a certain way? That's why I think, like, it is incumbent upon the legal system to not only sure that we -- not only ensure that we have the same level of Fourth amount of protection but that people don't feel the chilling effect of a mass surveillance state.

Dave Bittner: What about there's this thing I've been tracking, keeping an eye on, noticing, however you want to label it; and it's groups of people using their numbers for civil disobedience, knowing that there's no way the police are going to be able to take them all. And I'm thinking of -- I guess they call them, like, teen takeovers of streets. I'm also thinking of all the folks who ride around on the dirt bikes in Baltimore. You know what I'm talking about?

Ben Yelin: Yeah, yeah. Where the -- you can't arrest all of us if there's --

Dave Bittner: Right. There's so many of -- there's so many people that there's no way law enforcement -- it just overwhelms law enforcement's ability to focus on any one person. But I guess the flip side of that related to this story is what if facial recognition just provides you with a list of everybody? You know, just goes through the crowd, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Here's -- here's your list of everybody who was here.

Ben Yelin: I mean, that kind of happened with the January 6 investigation with not just facial recognition but also geofence warrants --

Dave Bittner: Right, right.

Ben Yelin: -- where it was like there's no way you would have been able to identify even 15 years ago the thousands of people who went into the Capitol Building that day. But the surveillance technology allows people to do it. I mean, prior to effective speed cameras being employed, like, you had to have a sufficient number of officers out in the field pulling people over and giving them speeding tickets, that it served as an effective deterrent.

Dave Bittner: Right. There's a built-in limiting factor.

Ben Yelin: That's the limiting factor. It's also limiting that, like, if you see one cop car, that cop car presumably can only do one traffic stop at a time. I'm sure the capability exists, and I know this firsthand, to just massively send out tickets for violating the speeding cameras where, like, I think the volume is no limitation whatsoever. So, yeah. I think that's a major concern, that these things that previously would have required significant law enforcement resources, that was the limiting principle. That was the limiting factor. And now that's gone because of the way these -- these tools have evolved to work.

Dave Bittner: Yeah. Well, it's an interesting thing to consider. And, as I said, this article does consider a lot of it. I think it's thoughtful and a read that is worth your time. So we will have a link to that in the show notes. Of course, we'd love to hear from you. If there's something you'd like us to consider for the show, please email us. It's caveat@n2k.com. And that is Caveat, brought to you by N2K CyberWire. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing world of cybersecurity. If you like our show, please share a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes, or send an email to caveat@n2k.com. This episode is produced by Liz Stokes. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. The show is mixed by Tré Hester. Peter Kilpe is our publisher. I'm Dave Bittner.

Ben Yelin: And I'm Ben Yelin.

Dave Bittner: Thanks for listening.