Bickerton Law Blog | An in-depth look at law news with legal analysis by Bickerton Law. New articles every Monday and Thursday.On April 8, 2026, Pennsylvania State Trooper Stephen Kamnik pleaded to criminal charges related to using state computers to make AI porn. The month before that, a group of Lancaster County juveniles were
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Indonesia’s Disinformation Bill
In its bid to clamp down on fake news, President Prabowo’s administration is arming itself with some concerning powers. writes the diplomat Here’s a google AI roundup In early 2026, the Indonesian government under President Prabowo Subianto introduced plans for a Bill on Countering Disinformation and Foreign Propaganda. The proposed legislation aims to protect national…
What Role Should AI Play In Judging?
A couple federal judges were humiliated when it was revealed that they had used AI to write their decisions, as AI did what AI does, and used fake hallucinated citations. Oopsie. But fake cites are only the easiest problems to find. When cites and quotes don’t exist, it’s merely a matter of someone doing the…
Code of War: How AI Firms Are Rewriting the Rules of War and what that means for International Criminal Law
Efthimia (Mariefaye) Bechrakis, Esq. On March 26, 2026, a federal judge blocked the Pentagon from branding Anthropic a “supply chain risk.” The ruling does more than grant an early legal victory for Anthropic. It exposes a deeper structural shift in how the boundaries of military power are being negotiated at a moment when contemporary warfare is increasingly…
The Perils Of Pro Hac
Over more than 40 years of practice, I’ve worked in jurisdictions in which I was not admitted to practice and served as local counsel to lawyers not admitted in jurisdictions where I was. It’s hardly uncommon, but it is fraught with the potential for very serious problems. As Eugene Volokh notes, those problems smacked…
It Ain’t Me, Babe
Now that the AI tech giants swear* they have fixed the problem of chatbots providing teens with the information needed to plan and execute violent attacks, lesser concerns are coming to the fore, such as AI giving people writing advice ranging from bad to mediocre in the name of a real person, without the…
Devoiding The Cobra Effect
As might be obvious, I like to write. Writing enables me to think things through, to come to grips with the errors of my views and the beliefs that cannot be justified or explained. In other words, I don’t know what I think until I see what I write. (Sorry, Bill.)
At Techdirt, Mike Masnick…
Can I Ask A.I. Chatbots for Advice About Crimes?
Landmark Ruling Finds that Conversations with Chatbots Generally Aren’t Protected by Attorney-Client Privilege
With the rise of artificial intelligence and the popularity of chatbots, it was inevitable that courts were going to be forced to deal with a fundamental question that will have profound consequences: can prosecutors have access to chats where individuals ask for…
Synthetic Abuse, Real Harm: Closing the International Law Gap on AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Material
By Mariefaye (Efthimia) Bechrakis, Esq. Introduction Generative AI is often praised for its many transformative benefits across various fields, including that of law and human rights. The dual -use nature of the technology, however, has produced urgent harms, most notably the rapid rise of AI-generated synthetic child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Reports of AI generated…
AI On The Pentagon’s Precipice (Update)
It seems clear that the op-ed couldn’t be written by Pete Hegseth, as it was coherent and all the words were spelled correctly. But it came as a shock that it was written by Frank Kendall, who served as Secretary of the Air Force under President Biden. Given the current Secretary’s obsession with war and…