Cyber Week in Review: September 6, 2024

Brazilian Supreme Court bans Twitter/X in country

Brazil’s Supreme Court has forced local internet service providers to block access to social media platform X1, formerly known as Twitter, until the company appoints new legal representative in Brazil. X closed its office in Brazil last month after it said its representative in the country had been threatened with arrest if she did not comply with content takedown orders, which the company described as censorship. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes then imposed a deadline of Friday, August 30 for X to appoint a new legal representative.  After the deadline passed, the Supreme Court directed Brazil’s telecommunications regulator to ban X, and Moraes’ order also said that a fine of up to $8,900 per day would be imposed on companies or individuals using virtual private networks to circumvent the ban. Starlink, the satellite broadband firm, said early this week that it would refuse to comply with Moraes’ blocking order, although it later told Brazilian telecommunications regulator Anatel that it would comply and cut access to X in the country. Elon Musk, the owner of X and Starlink, and Moraes have feuded publicly, as Musk has attacked Moraes online, while Moraes has investigated Musk and X’s role in the January 8, 2023 attack on Brazil’s Congress buildings. In the wake of the ban on X, Brazilian users have begun to migrate to other platforms, with Bluesky, a competing platform, saying that it had added more than two million users in Brazil since X was banned last week.

Federal judge blocks implementation of Texas social media law

A federal district judge issued a partial block on a Texas law that would require some large online platforms to identify minors on their service and control what kind of content they are exposed to days before it was slated to take effect. The Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act was set to take effect on September 1, but Judge Robert Pitman ruled it could unduly restrict online speech. The SCOPE Act imposes a series of requirements on digital service providers, defined as social platforms that allow users to create public or semi-public profiles and where users can create and share content. The law also requires platforms to apply new rules to users under eighteen, including limiting data collection, requiring parental consent before approving financial transactions, and banning targeted advertising to minors. The law also, to implement a plan to prevent minors from seeing content that could glorify suicide, self-harm, or “grooming,” which are left almost entirely undefined in the act. Judge Pitman’s ruling largely impacts content restrictions, allowing the Act’s restrictions on data collection and age verification requirements to take effect. Pitman noted that the Act’s use of vague terms like “grooming” could be used to significantly curtail speech, given that defining such terms is largely delegated to state law enforcement agencies. The judge also criticized the law’s focus on social media platforms, arguing that much of the content the law aims to restrict on social media platforms would still be readily available through other online services.

United States announces plan to counter Russian disinformation in 2024

The Department of Justice announced broad actions to curb Russia’s efforts to spread propaganda and disinformation in the United States. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced indictments against two employees of the Russian-government-controlled news outlet RT, who used a shell company in Tennessee to spread Pro-Russian content, we well as the takedown of the Russian misinformation group Doppelgänger. As part of the takedown, the Justice Department seized more than thirty two internet domains associated with Doppelgänger and sanctioned ten individuals and two organizations for their work with the group. The State Department also said it would designate five Russian state-funded news outlets, including RT and Sputnik, as foreign government missions and restrict visas for individuals associated with Russian state-funded media. The Justice Department said that Tenet Media, a social media company that integrated several prominent right-wing influencers including Tim Pool, was really a front organization for the Russian government that funneled nearly $10 million to influencers it contracted with it; Tenet’s influencers appear to have had wide reach, hosting figures such as former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Lara Trump on their podcasts. The Justice Department has also begun investigating several Americans believed to be working closely with Russian state-funded media, including Scott Ritter and Dimitri Simes. FBI agents raided the homes of Simes and Ritter last month, although prosecutors have not charged either man. Some experts said that the Biden administration would need to tread carefully in distinguishing between foreign elections interference and free speech in the months ahead.

Cyberattack on Iran last month shook stability of its banking system

A cyberattack on an Iranian information technology company, Tosan, last month forced the company to pay a nearly $3 million ransom to the hackers and may have imperiled the Iranian financial system. IRLeaks, the group behind the attack, originally demanded nearly $10 million to prevent the release of individual account data from over 20 domestic banks in the country. The hackers appear to have used their presence in Tosan’s network to steal data from Central Bank of Iran and twenty private banks, which represent more than two thirds of active banks in Iran. The Iranian government eventually forced Tosan to pay the ransom, allegedly out of fear that the release of the stolen data could have a catastrophic impact on consumer confidence if it were leaked. Iran has faced liquidity and solvency issues in its banking sector for decades, and U.S. sanctions imposed in 2018 have served as an accelerant for many of these issues. In the wake of the August attack, Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, lashed out at the United States and Israel for “spreading fear among our people,” although it was unclear if either country was tied to IRLeaks.

The Internet Archive loses appeal in copyright case

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a ruling in the case of Hachette v. Internet Archive, which found that one of the Internet Archive’s book digitization projects violated copyright law. The case centered around a project the Internet Archive launched in March 2020, the National Emergency Library (NEL), in order to provide multiple users access to books during the pandemic. The NEL expanded on an existing book digitization project and removed a priori cap on how many people could access a digital copy of a particular book. The Internet Archive quickly suspended the NEL after book publishers said it amounted to piracy in allowing users unlimited access to their books, but the publishers later sued the Archive. The Archive’s efforts to create digital copies of other forms of media have landed it in legal trouble before; in August 2023, several music labels, including Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive over its “Great 78 Project,” which had digitized songs from musicians such as Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. The record companies are seeking as much as $412 million in damages, which could represent an existential threat to the nonprofit.