The Volokh Conspiracy
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Electoral Interference in Taiwan
Episode 276 of the Cyberlaw Podcast: An interview with Alex Stamos
In this bonus episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast, Alex Stamos of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute talks about the Institute's recent paper on the risk of Chinese social media interference with Taiwan's upcoming presidential election. It's a wide-ranging discussion of everything from a century of Chinese history to the reasons why WeChat lost a social media competition in Taiwan to a Japanese company. Along the way, Alex notes that efforts to identify foreign government election interference have been seriously degraded by (what else?) privacy law, mixed with fear of commercial consequences when China is the attacker. If companies make data about foreign government and "inauthentic" users public, the risk of liability under GDPR as well as Chinese retaliation is real, and the benefits go more to the nation as a whole rather than to the companies taking the risk.
During the interview, Alex references a paper co-authored by his colleague, Jennifer Pan, regarding the "50c party." You can find that paper here. He also mentions his recent op-ed in Lawfare, which you can find here.
Download the 276th Episode (mp3).
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The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.
