Shannon Togawa Mercer on Negotiating with the Bad Guys

Shannon Togawa Mercer served as Lawfare's Managing Editor and then went on to quite a career shift. She now negotiates with ransomware bad actors. She is a cybersecurity and privacy lawyer at WilmerHale and has developed a specialized practice in responding to cybersecurity incidents, many of them involving foreign malware gangs.

She joined Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to talk about this odd area of legal practice. Why do you need a big law firm when your computer files are suddenly frozen? Is it legal to negotiate with and pay off foreign ransomware gangs? How do you do the negotiations anyway? Do they cut you a deal if you're polite? And what is it like to be recruited by the malware gangs that you are negotiating with?

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