New ESI-searching systems find nonspecified synonyms and patterns.
Market Acceptance
The eDiscovery Institute Survey on Predictive Coding, released in October 2010, asks, "Given the claimed advantages for predictive coding, why isn’t everyone using it?" The most mentioned reason was uncertainty about whether judges would accept predictive coding as providing reasonable and defensible efforts to identify responsive documents (see "Courtroom Commentary").
Other reasons cited for the slow adoption were lack of awareness and law firms’ insensitivity to costs of inefficiencies. The respondents also indicated that the value of predictive coding was higher in large-volume cases with short deadlines.
Some experts predict that the first true market acceptance of the technology may include only first pass review.
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Source: insidecounsel.com
By: Michael Kozubek
Saturday, January 29, 2011
The Sedona Conference Has a New Leader
The e-discovery world was shocked yesterday by the surprise announcement that the founder of The Sedona Conference, Richard G. Braman, has stepped down as Executive Director. He is replaced by John K. Rabiej, an attorney, scholar and educator. John Rabiej is not that well known in the e-discovery community, but he must be good, or Richard would not have selected him.
Richard Braman, one of the coolest guys in e-discovery and a great jazz man, will continue to serve as the Chairman of the Board and Co-Chair of the Executive Committee of the Board. These are big shoes for John Rabiej to fill, and we all wish him good luck.
Here is what Richard had to say about this changing of the guard:
John is the right person at the right time to bring The Sedona Conference to the next level of its mission to move the law forward in a reasoned and just way. We are very fortunate to have him on board as our new Executive Director.
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Source: e-discoveryteam.com
By: Ralph Losey
Richard Braman, one of the coolest guys in e-discovery and a great jazz man, will continue to serve as the Chairman of the Board and Co-Chair of the Executive Committee of the Board. These are big shoes for John Rabiej to fill, and we all wish him good luck.
Here is what Richard had to say about this changing of the guard:
John is the right person at the right time to bring The Sedona Conference to the next level of its mission to move the law forward in a reasoned and just way. We are very fortunate to have him on board as our new Executive Director.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: e-discoveryteam.com
By: Ralph Losey
Get Back in the Race
Yesterday's litigation skills will not suffice for tomorrow's challenges, but it's not too late to catch up.
This year marks the 30th birthday of the IBM personal computer. Yet, like the hare in the fabled race, litigators have napped through the information revolution that followed the PC's debut. The tortoise is so far down the road that, instead of sprinting to catch up, the trial bar nervously reassures itself that yesterday's skills will surely be good enough for tomorrow's challenges.
Too many grouse: "I went to law school so I wouldn't have to deal with computers. Just give me a damn form and checklist."
We've got to stop kidding ourselves. It's too late for shortcuts and half measures. There are no forms or checklists that can take the place of understanding electronic evidence, any more than a Polish phrasebook will equip you to try a case in Gdansk.
But there are a few rules of thumb that, applied thoughtfully, will get back you in the race.
Let's start with the Big Four and work through some geek speak as we go.
THE BIG FOUR
Without knowing anything about corporate IT systems, you can safely assume there are four principal sources of digital evidence that may yield responsive electronically stored information (ESI):
1. Key Custodians' E-Mail (server, local, archived, and cloud). Corporate computer users will have a complement of e-mail under one or more e-mail aliases (i.e., addresses) stored on one or more mail servers. These servers may be physical hardware managed by IT staff, or virtual machines leased from a cloud provider, either likely running mail server software called Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino. A third potential source is a software as a service (SaaS) offering from a cloud provider (webmail).
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Source: law.com
By: Craig Ball
This year marks the 30th birthday of the IBM personal computer. Yet, like the hare in the fabled race, litigators have napped through the information revolution that followed the PC's debut. The tortoise is so far down the road that, instead of sprinting to catch up, the trial bar nervously reassures itself that yesterday's skills will surely be good enough for tomorrow's challenges.
Too many grouse: "I went to law school so I wouldn't have to deal with computers. Just give me a damn form and checklist."
We've got to stop kidding ourselves. It's too late for shortcuts and half measures. There are no forms or checklists that can take the place of understanding electronic evidence, any more than a Polish phrasebook will equip you to try a case in Gdansk.
But there are a few rules of thumb that, applied thoughtfully, will get back you in the race.
Let's start with the Big Four and work through some geek speak as we go.
THE BIG FOUR
Without knowing anything about corporate IT systems, you can safely assume there are four principal sources of digital evidence that may yield responsive electronically stored information (ESI):
1. Key Custodians' E-Mail (server, local, archived, and cloud). Corporate computer users will have a complement of e-mail under one or more e-mail aliases (i.e., addresses) stored on one or more mail servers. These servers may be physical hardware managed by IT staff, or virtual machines leased from a cloud provider, either likely running mail server software called Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino. A third potential source is a software as a service (SaaS) offering from a cloud provider (webmail).
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Craig Ball
Friday, January 28, 2011
Defending Against Lawsuits
C-Level executives must work together to protect their companies from prohibitive costs, catastrophic risk and over-burdened internal resources stemming from legal proceedings.
C-level executives strive to protect their companies from lawsuits and regulatory proceedings, but lawsuits are part of business, so the C-suite needs to be prepared. CEOs must protect their organization’s reputation and reduce shareholders’ risk, CFOs must control costs and CIOs must effectively manage the growing mountain of discoverable data within their enterprises.
To protect their companies from prohibitive costs, catastrophic risk and over-burdened internal resources stemming from legal proceedings, the C-suite must understand the legal discovery process. This is critical, as the amount of electron-ically stored information (including e-mail, instant messages, blogs, tweets and texts) is growing exponentially, and courts are becoming intolerant of incomplete or late discovery responses and are imposing sanctions more frequently for discovery negligence. Simultaneously, boards of directors are increasingly demanding greater accountability from the C-suite.
E-discovery can be expensive, although many companies are minimizing this with proactive preparation. Organizations can save time and resources during discovery by determining where documents are located, reducing the data-storage footprint and implementing storage policies. Throughout the current recession, however, many organizations have deferred the investments needed for these proactive steps so as to save up-front costs.
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Source: baselinemag.com
By: Jeffery Fehrman
C-level executives strive to protect their companies from lawsuits and regulatory proceedings, but lawsuits are part of business, so the C-suite needs to be prepared. CEOs must protect their organization’s reputation and reduce shareholders’ risk, CFOs must control costs and CIOs must effectively manage the growing mountain of discoverable data within their enterprises.
To protect their companies from prohibitive costs, catastrophic risk and over-burdened internal resources stemming from legal proceedings, the C-suite must understand the legal discovery process. This is critical, as the amount of electron-ically stored information (including e-mail, instant messages, blogs, tweets and texts) is growing exponentially, and courts are becoming intolerant of incomplete or late discovery responses and are imposing sanctions more frequently for discovery negligence. Simultaneously, boards of directors are increasingly demanding greater accountability from the C-suite.
E-discovery can be expensive, although many companies are minimizing this with proactive preparation. Organizations can save time and resources during discovery by determining where documents are located, reducing the data-storage footprint and implementing storage policies. Throughout the current recession, however, many organizations have deferred the investments needed for these proactive steps so as to save up-front costs.
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Source: baselinemag.com
By: Jeffery Fehrman
In US courts, Facebook posts become less private
It's the latest litigation tactic in the online age: US lawyers are trying to mine the private zones of Facebook and other social-media sites for photos, comments, status updates and other tidbits that might contradict what their opponents are saying in court. And increasingly, judges in civil cases are granting access to online caches that had formerly been considered off-limits.
Defense lawyers in personal-injury cases, in particular, are finding social networks to be a rich source of potentially exculpatory evidence. In one recent case, a New York woman who claimed to be bedridden after falling off a defective chair showed up in family Facebook photos smiling happily in front of her house.
While judges have long allowed information gleaned from public portions of networking sites to be used as evidence in civil trials, materials that are password-protected or reserved for selected "friends" have been given a greater level of protection. But in recent months, two state courts have granted defendants broad access to "private" photos and comments. A federal court issued a similar ruling in 2009.
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Source: indiatimes.com
Defense lawyers in personal-injury cases, in particular, are finding social networks to be a rich source of potentially exculpatory evidence. In one recent case, a New York woman who claimed to be bedridden after falling off a defective chair showed up in family Facebook photos smiling happily in front of her house.
While judges have long allowed information gleaned from public portions of networking sites to be used as evidence in civil trials, materials that are password-protected or reserved for selected "friends" have been given a greater level of protection. But in recent months, two state courts have granted defendants broad access to "private" photos and comments. A federal court issued a similar ruling in 2009.
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Source: indiatimes.com
Thursday, January 27, 2011
The Myth of Browser-Based 'Do Not Track'
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Mozilla , and even Microsoft want you to know they care about your Web privacy. These companies are taking steps to ensure that unwanted advertisers don’t track you, and they are winning acres of press coverage in the process.
Just one problem: “I don’t see these solutions working,” says Darren Hayes, a computer science professor at Pace University and a leading expert in computer forensics. “I just don’t see advertisers getting on board with this.”
The problem -- and it is huge -- is that we suddenly are in a lather about Websites tracking our movement on the Internet, with the result that we get barraged with targeted advertisements. Look at a travel site about Barbados, and for the next week likely you will be served ads offering deals and discounts in Barbados.
Huge cries have gone up about privacy lost, and the upshot has been a flurry of activity, both in Washington and in Silicon Valley.
Inside the Beltway, the lead is the Federal Trade Commission , which in December issued a report that, first, noted the volume of the uproar; second, said online companies weren’t doing enough to protect users’ privacy; and third, suggested that the way forward is to give users the choice to be tracked or not.
Now, by late January, the major browser developers have announced tools to help users prevent being tracked. The Internet Explorer tool is built into IE 9. Google’s tool for Chrome is here. Mozilla discusses its Firefox initiative here.
The three tools are wildly different. IE requires the user to populate a list of sites the user does not want tracking him or her.
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Source: internetrevolution.com
By: Robert McGarvey
Just one problem: “I don’t see these solutions working,” says Darren Hayes, a computer science professor at Pace University and a leading expert in computer forensics. “I just don’t see advertisers getting on board with this.”
The problem -- and it is huge -- is that we suddenly are in a lather about Websites tracking our movement on the Internet, with the result that we get barraged with targeted advertisements. Look at a travel site about Barbados, and for the next week likely you will be served ads offering deals and discounts in Barbados.
Huge cries have gone up about privacy lost, and the upshot has been a flurry of activity, both in Washington and in Silicon Valley.
Inside the Beltway, the lead is the Federal Trade Commission , which in December issued a report that, first, noted the volume of the uproar; second, said online companies weren’t doing enough to protect users’ privacy; and third, suggested that the way forward is to give users the choice to be tracked or not.
Now, by late January, the major browser developers have announced tools to help users prevent being tracked. The Internet Explorer tool is built into IE 9. Google’s tool for Chrome is here. Mozilla discusses its Firefox initiative here.
The three tools are wildly different. IE requires the user to populate a list of sites the user does not want tracking him or her.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: internetrevolution.com
By: Robert McGarvey
Facebook steps-up security after Zuckerberg's user profile is hacked
The Financial Times' technology blog has reported that Facebook users will soon be able to use an "https" secure connection - usually deployed to secure e-commerce and e-banking browsers - to log in to the popular social networking site, after hackers managed to cheekily access social networking wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg's personal profile.
Hackers accessing Zuckerberg's profile posted a message criticising the firm's plans to shift gears and up the gaming and advertising ante after securing a US$1.5 billion investment from Goldman Sachs.
"Let the hacking begin: If Facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn't Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way?" The Hacked posted, adding: "Why not transform Facebook into a 'social business' the way Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus described it? What do you think?"
While the offending comment was deleted in lightning-quick time, eagle-eyed bloggers at TechCrunch had already spotted and publicised the hack, prompting an embarrassed Big Blue F to comment that a "bug" had temporarily enabled unauthorised users to make status postings "on a handful of public pages."
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Source: bigmouthmedia.com
By: N. Hamilton
Hackers accessing Zuckerberg's profile posted a message criticising the firm's plans to shift gears and up the gaming and advertising ante after securing a US$1.5 billion investment from Goldman Sachs.
"Let the hacking begin: If Facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn't Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way?" The Hacked posted, adding: "Why not transform Facebook into a 'social business' the way Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus described it? What do you think?"
While the offending comment was deleted in lightning-quick time, eagle-eyed bloggers at TechCrunch had already spotted and publicised the hack, prompting an embarrassed Big Blue F to comment that a "bug" had temporarily enabled unauthorised users to make status postings "on a handful of public pages."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: bigmouthmedia.com
By: N. Hamilton
Lack of Social Media Supervision Spells Risk
This past December, The New York Times announced that it is eliminating its Social Media Editor position -- less than two years after creating it. The Pentagon recently announced that it too is eliminating its Social Media Office.
Both organizations have commented that they simply don't need centralized management of their social media efforts anymore. They reason that, because social media needs to be a part of everyone's job, they no longer need someone in charge of it.
This trend may continue. Some pundits are evangelizing that the role of Social Media Manager is temporary -- i.e., that if a Social Media Manager ("SMM") does his job well, he will no longer be needed.
Social media campaigns, however, are delicate. The smallest misstep in their management can alienate an audience. The consequences can be as unpleasant as losing some fans or followers, or they can be a catastrophic PR nightmare.
Worse, poorly conceived social media efforts can lead to legal trouble. Government regulations, advertising laws, intellectual property rights, libel concerns... All of these things can be triggered, not only by the social media endeavors of the organization as a whole, but those of individual employees as well. (At least one corporation has realized the importance of having someone with knowledge of these issues manage its social media.)
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Source: internetrevolution.com
By: Joe Stanganelli
Both organizations have commented that they simply don't need centralized management of their social media efforts anymore. They reason that, because social media needs to be a part of everyone's job, they no longer need someone in charge of it.
This trend may continue. Some pundits are evangelizing that the role of Social Media Manager is temporary -- i.e., that if a Social Media Manager ("SMM") does his job well, he will no longer be needed.
Social media campaigns, however, are delicate. The smallest misstep in their management can alienate an audience. The consequences can be as unpleasant as losing some fans or followers, or they can be a catastrophic PR nightmare.
Worse, poorly conceived social media efforts can lead to legal trouble. Government regulations, advertising laws, intellectual property rights, libel concerns... All of these things can be triggered, not only by the social media endeavors of the organization as a whole, but those of individual employees as well. (At least one corporation has realized the importance of having someone with knowledge of these issues manage its social media.)
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: internetrevolution.com
By: Joe Stanganelli
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Warning over legal pitfalls employers can face from the use of social networking sites
SOCIAL networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn are now often used not only by employees, but also as a business networking tool and, as such, the line between work and play is becoming blurred.
Joanne Holborn: Sites can be a boom – and a dangerJoanne Holborn, Employment Partner at Baines Wilson LLP, comments that many businesses have embraced the ability to quickly access large groups of potential clients and undoubtedly, if utilised correctly, social media is a great way to market your business.
However, Joanne warns that if social media is misused it can have the opposite effect, and can reflect poorly on your business. Notable risks include potential disclosure of employer/client confidential information and the risk of offensive, discriminatory or defamatory comments being posted by employees.
Any such offensive comments are likely to leave the employer vicariously liable for the actions of their employees.
Joanne recommends that, to ensure a business makes the most of the opportunities presented by the growth of social media, employers adopt and implement effective social media guidelines that clearly define the use of social media at work, regulating employees’ personal use and how individuals market themselves on behalf of the business using social media tools. Employees should also be warned of the consequences of misuse.
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Source: whitehaven-news.co.uk
By: Joanne Holborn
Joanne Holborn: Sites can be a boom – and a dangerJoanne Holborn, Employment Partner at Baines Wilson LLP, comments that many businesses have embraced the ability to quickly access large groups of potential clients and undoubtedly, if utilised correctly, social media is a great way to market your business.
However, Joanne warns that if social media is misused it can have the opposite effect, and can reflect poorly on your business. Notable risks include potential disclosure of employer/client confidential information and the risk of offensive, discriminatory or defamatory comments being posted by employees.
Any such offensive comments are likely to leave the employer vicariously liable for the actions of their employees.
Joanne recommends that, to ensure a business makes the most of the opportunities presented by the growth of social media, employers adopt and implement effective social media guidelines that clearly define the use of social media at work, regulating employees’ personal use and how individuals market themselves on behalf of the business using social media tools. Employees should also be warned of the consequences of misuse.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: whitehaven-news.co.uk
By: Joanne Holborn
Microsoft Calls for More Government Regulation of the Cloud
The cloud is the new Wild West and the need for regulations is desperate. The lack of regulations hinders the growth of the industry. Major players, such as Microsoft, acknowledge this and ask the governments to do their job.
It is strange when a private company, especially one of the largest corporations in the world, wants more government regulations, because private companies usually favor the least possible interference from the state. However, when business suffers from the lack of regulations, even the most devote free market supporters will admit that governments need to interfere.
Why Governments Should Regulate the Cloud?
Cloud computing is not a private business. Its impact on technology and society as a whole is significant. Cloud computing generates revenue, part of which governments collect in the form of taxes. The estimates are that in Europe alone, cloud computing could bring 763 billion Euros in the next 5 years.
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Source: cmswire.com
By: Tsvetanka Stoyanova
It is strange when a private company, especially one of the largest corporations in the world, wants more government regulations, because private companies usually favor the least possible interference from the state. However, when business suffers from the lack of regulations, even the most devote free market supporters will admit that governments need to interfere.
Why Governments Should Regulate the Cloud?
Cloud computing is not a private business. Its impact on technology and society as a whole is significant. Cloud computing generates revenue, part of which governments collect in the form of taxes. The estimates are that in Europe alone, cloud computing could bring 763 billion Euros in the next 5 years.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: cmswire.com
By: Tsvetanka Stoyanova
Data sanitization policy: How to ensure thorough data scrubbing
As technology integrates into every aspect of business practices, digital information protection becomes of the utmost importance. Businesses must protect against phishing, scamming and skimming, but who would think to protect against the disposal of old IT assets that are supposedly already sanitized? Given the progressively shorter lifespan of these assets, coupled with larger storage capacities, IT assets tend to hold confidential business data beyond the end of their useful life.
To define our terms, IT assets include, but are not limited to, standard computing devices such as desktop systems and notebooks, flash media, and non-traditional devices such as cell phones, smartphones and cameras. When a business' IT asset nears the end of its useful life, the device needs to be sanitized to make sure the confidential data it carries is removed before the device is retired or reused. Common methods of sanitization include imaging (or cloning), formatting and FDISKing. These methods appear to sanitize the devices on first glance; however, research has shown that residual data remains after employing such sanitization techniques.
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Source: searchsecurity.techtarget.com
By: Ashley Podhradsky
To define our terms, IT assets include, but are not limited to, standard computing devices such as desktop systems and notebooks, flash media, and non-traditional devices such as cell phones, smartphones and cameras. When a business' IT asset nears the end of its useful life, the device needs to be sanitized to make sure the confidential data it carries is removed before the device is retired or reused. Common methods of sanitization include imaging (or cloning), formatting and FDISKing. These methods appear to sanitize the devices on first glance; however, research has shown that residual data remains after employing such sanitization techniques.
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Source: searchsecurity.techtarget.com
By: Ashley Podhradsky
Legal-IT Collaboration: An Oxymoron No Longer?
At a recent corporate client meeting held to determine whether an in-house legal e-discovery tool would be a good fit, the first item on the agenda was the cost. Before getting started, however, we had to stop the meeting so the IT and legal personnel charged with e-discovery compliance could introduce themselves to each other. Here it was, a meeting in 2011 about e-discovery, and the key players on both sides had never met.
This is not an atypical situation. In fact, findings from the recent benchmark study from the Compliance Governance and Oversight Council illustrate that corporate legal departments and the chief information officer's office still have a long way to go in establishing the necessary linkage and collaboration to tackle information governance (records & information management or RIM for purposes of this article) and specifically, to be ready for e-discovery. According to the study, "50% of companies had executive committees in place, yet only 17% felt that the right stakeholders were at the table."
"This is an untenable situation," says Deidre Paknad, CGOC founder and president and CEO of PSS Systems, an IBM company. "Without the right team in place, organizations can't make the right decisions about the disposition of data. And without these decisions, organizations can quickly face devastating costs and risk."
As Bill Chulak, director of information systems for Amgen, points out, "There is no choice, the worlds have come together and new processes need to emerge that allow for contribution and consumption of information from each group that makes collaborative processes possible and meaningful for their combined stakeholders."
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Source: law.com
By: Jake Frazier
This is not an atypical situation. In fact, findings from the recent benchmark study from the Compliance Governance and Oversight Council illustrate that corporate legal departments and the chief information officer's office still have a long way to go in establishing the necessary linkage and collaboration to tackle information governance (records & information management or RIM for purposes of this article) and specifically, to be ready for e-discovery. According to the study, "50% of companies had executive committees in place, yet only 17% felt that the right stakeholders were at the table."
"This is an untenable situation," says Deidre Paknad, CGOC founder and president and CEO of PSS Systems, an IBM company. "Without the right team in place, organizations can't make the right decisions about the disposition of data. And without these decisions, organizations can quickly face devastating costs and risk."
As Bill Chulak, director of information systems for Amgen, points out, "There is no choice, the worlds have come together and new processes need to emerge that allow for contribution and consumption of information from each group that makes collaborative processes possible and meaningful for their combined stakeholders."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Jake Frazier
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Employee's Use of a Work Computer to Communicate with Attorney "Akin to Consulting her Lawyer in her Employer's Conference Room, in a Loud Voice, with
Holmes v. Petrovich Dev. Co., LLC, 2011 WL 117230 (Cal. Ct. App. Jan. 13, 2011)
Where plaintiff used her company’s computer to communicate with her attorney despite knowledge of policies prohibiting such use and establishing that employees had no right of privacy as to such materials, the court found that the emails “did not constitute ‘confidential communication between client and lawyer’ within the meaning of Evidence Code section 952” and thus were not privileged and affirmed the holdings of the trial court.
Plaintiff worked as an executive assistant. Upon her hire, plaintiff read and signed the company’s policies related to use of technology resources. Those policies prohibited personal use, informed employees that they had no right of privacy with respect to any personal information created or maintained on company computers, and warned that all such information was subject to inspection and monitoring.
The time came that plaintiff felt that she was being discriminated against at work and used her company’s computer to communicate with an attorney. Soon thereafter, the plaintiff quit her job and sued her former employer. In the course of litigation, the emails between her and her attorney were brought up in deposition and then attached to defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Despite plaintiff’s protests that the emails were privileged, they were not excluded from evidence at trial. Rather, the trial court ruled that the emails “were not protected … because they were not private.” In the end, plaintiff did not prevail on any of her claims. On appeal, plaintiff claimed the court erred in failing to exclude the emails.
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Source: ediscoverylaw.com
Where plaintiff used her company’s computer to communicate with her attorney despite knowledge of policies prohibiting such use and establishing that employees had no right of privacy as to such materials, the court found that the emails “did not constitute ‘confidential communication between client and lawyer’ within the meaning of Evidence Code section 952” and thus were not privileged and affirmed the holdings of the trial court.
Plaintiff worked as an executive assistant. Upon her hire, plaintiff read and signed the company’s policies related to use of technology resources. Those policies prohibited personal use, informed employees that they had no right of privacy with respect to any personal information created or maintained on company computers, and warned that all such information was subject to inspection and monitoring.
The time came that plaintiff felt that she was being discriminated against at work and used her company’s computer to communicate with an attorney. Soon thereafter, the plaintiff quit her job and sued her former employer. In the course of litigation, the emails between her and her attorney were brought up in deposition and then attached to defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Despite plaintiff’s protests that the emails were privileged, they were not excluded from evidence at trial. Rather, the trial court ruled that the emails “were not protected … because they were not private.” In the end, plaintiff did not prevail on any of her claims. On appeal, plaintiff claimed the court erred in failing to exclude the emails.
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Source: ediscoverylaw.com
N.Y. Bar Association Provides Opinion on ‘Cloud Computing’
In September, the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Professional Ethics released its Opinion 842, which was issued in response to an inquiry from a lawyer seeking guidance as to whether or not lawyers may use online computing resources — often referred to as “cloud computing” resources — to backup and store confidential client information. The committee indicated that the use of such resources is permitted so long as a lawyer takes reasonable steps to ensure that the information will be kept confidential and meets certain other requirements.
This post summarizes the committee’s decision and provides some additional factors counsel (both inside and outside) may want to consider to ensure that the use of on line resources does not compromise their obligations to their clients.
The committee’s opinion hinged on its interpretation of Rule 1.6 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct that establishes a lawyer’s affirmative duty to safeguard confidential client information. Other states have similar if not identical confidentiality requirements. The duty applies not only to the lawyer but extends to service providers, such as online providers, the lawyer retains in the course of working for a client. Relying on a prior decision of the committee concerning the use of e-mail, and opinions from New Jersey and Arizona concerning the use of on line resources, the committee concluded that a lawyer may make use of cloud computing resources “provided that the lawyer takes reasonable care to ensure that the system is secure and that client confidentiality will be maintained.”
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: Westlaw News & Insight
By: Philip D. Robben
This post summarizes the committee’s decision and provides some additional factors counsel (both inside and outside) may want to consider to ensure that the use of on line resources does not compromise their obligations to their clients.
The committee’s opinion hinged on its interpretation of Rule 1.6 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct that establishes a lawyer’s affirmative duty to safeguard confidential client information. Other states have similar if not identical confidentiality requirements. The duty applies not only to the lawyer but extends to service providers, such as online providers, the lawyer retains in the course of working for a client. Relying on a prior decision of the committee concerning the use of e-mail, and opinions from New Jersey and Arizona concerning the use of on line resources, the committee concluded that a lawyer may make use of cloud computing resources “provided that the lawyer takes reasonable care to ensure that the system is secure and that client confidentiality will be maintained.”
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: Westlaw News & Insight
By: Philip D. Robben
Australian Government Outlines Cloud Computing Requirements for Agencies & Vendors
Cloud computing brings in many benefits to enterprises, governments included. The government of Australia has recently expressed its interest in moving its systems to the cloud, and is in the process of issuing guidelines for its diverse set of departments and agencies.
The Australian Government Information Management Office has recently issued a draft Cloud Computing Strategic Direction Paper, which aims to explore the benefits and opportunities of cloud computing for the Australian government. The paper described the Australian government as "highly dependent upon ICT … spending an estimated AUD 4.3 billion (US$ 4.26 billion) per annum on ICT."
A study undertaken by the department has determined that over the next 10 to 15 years, development of a data center strategy will result in AUD 1 billion (US$ 990 million) in savings, a task which is to be undertaken through the Australian Government Data Center Strategy.
Several key agencies of the Australian government have already adopted cloud computing in one form or another. Some are currently using private clouds, while others use hybrid cloud deployments. Given the differences in the nature of work and mandates of each government agency though, the draft white paper has recognized that a one-size-fits-all approach might not be applicable.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: cmswire.com
By: J. Angelo Racoma
The Australian Government Information Management Office has recently issued a draft Cloud Computing Strategic Direction Paper, which aims to explore the benefits and opportunities of cloud computing for the Australian government. The paper described the Australian government as "highly dependent upon ICT … spending an estimated AUD 4.3 billion (US$ 4.26 billion) per annum on ICT."
A study undertaken by the department has determined that over the next 10 to 15 years, development of a data center strategy will result in AUD 1 billion (US$ 990 million) in savings, a task which is to be undertaken through the Australian Government Data Center Strategy.
Several key agencies of the Australian government have already adopted cloud computing in one form or another. Some are currently using private clouds, while others use hybrid cloud deployments. Given the differences in the nature of work and mandates of each government agency though, the draft white paper has recognized that a one-size-fits-all approach might not be applicable.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: cmswire.com
By: J. Angelo Racoma
Your Business: Make your social media policy clear
We have all seen the headlines about social media sites such as Twitter, MySpace and Facebook becoming integral parts of the social and professional lives of most of today's work force.
As these sites continue to move toward becoming indispensable business tools for employees and employers, it becomes imperative for businesses to examine their potential risks and to safeguard against those risks.
For example, searching social media sites can reveal attitudes and/or behaviors in applicants or current employees that do not fit well with an employer's core values. In addition, poor conduct or other indicators that represent potential liability for employers could be the deciding factor when it comes to hiring.
However, many laws protect applicants and employees, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Stored Communications Act, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Federal Trade Commission Regulations
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Source: pressherald.com
By: Melinda J. Caterine
As these sites continue to move toward becoming indispensable business tools for employees and employers, it becomes imperative for businesses to examine their potential risks and to safeguard against those risks.
For example, searching social media sites can reveal attitudes and/or behaviors in applicants or current employees that do not fit well with an employer's core values. In addition, poor conduct or other indicators that represent potential liability for employers could be the deciding factor when it comes to hiring.
However, many laws protect applicants and employees, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Stored Communications Act, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Federal Trade Commission Regulations
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Source: pressherald.com
By: Melinda J. Caterine
E-Discovery Burden, the Judges’ Guide, and an Alternative to AFAs
In light of a new E-Discovery guide distributed to judges, lawyers should address their ESI processes to avoid losing credibility.
For years judges have relied heavily on the counsel appearing before them to learn how electronically stored information (ESI) had to be processed for review and production. Of course, at times the lawyers for the producing parties had more interest in arguing how burdensome and oppressive the production requests were than in enlightening the court about cost-effectiveness; at other times counsel may have had only limited experience with new technology.
The eDiscovery Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research organization, has just released a publication for judges that provides a detailed, vendor-neutral look at technologies and processes that can greatly reduce the cost of handling ESI, the “Judges’ Guide to Cost-Effective E-Discovery,” by Anne Kershaw and myself, with a foreword by the Hon. James C. Francis IV, Magistrate Judge for the Southern District of New York.
Used in combination, those technologies can cut ESI costs by 90 percent or more, a fact that seems particularly relevant given that ESI review costs can be the largest single budget item for litigation.
Among the technologies and processes covered in the Guide are:
- deNISTing (i.e. not processing files known to be associated with commercial software, such as help files, user documentation, templates, etc., as compiled by the National Institute of Standards and Technology)
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Source: insidecounsel.com
By: Joe Howie
International Data Privacy Day is January 28 - Rebecca Herold, The Privacy Professor, Uncovers 2011's Top Five Privacy Predictions
As electronic privacy becomes increasingly complex, it’s more crucial than ever that consumers and businesses understand their exposure and take steps to ensure their information is not compromised. January 28 is Data Privacy Day, as recognized by governments and technology leaders around the world.
Des Moines, IA, January 24, 2011 --(PR.com)-- To honor Data Privacy Day, kick off the year and the new website secureyourwireless.org, Rebecca Herold, the Privacy Professor, reveals the top five privacy predictions for 2011:
1. All types of organizations must consider the risks involved with using cloud computing.
More organizations will use outsourced cloud (remote computing and storage) services. Particularly small and medium-sized companies will move their information security and IT functions to outsourced clouds because they simply do not have the expertise internally to effectively manage security and privacy, and cannot afford to hire traditional hourly consultants to help them. This will also be the case for education institutions currently struggling with budget cuts. Cloud services can be quite secure, but some simply aren’t. Organizations must know the right questions to ask, and get satisfactory answers, prior to using one.
2. Every organization is affected by social media sites.
Companies will use social media sites even more to communicate about their services and practices, and as a result of human error, malicious intent or even lack of knowledge, there will be significant privacy breaches (unauthorized use or release of personal information) through these sites. Companies must ensure they have policies and supporting procedures in place for their personnel to follow with regard to posting (and actually not posting) information about the business, coworkers, customers and clients, even when employees are away from work, using their own computers.
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Source: pr.com
Des Moines, IA, January 24, 2011 --(PR.com)-- To honor Data Privacy Day, kick off the year and the new website secureyourwireless.org, Rebecca Herold, the Privacy Professor, reveals the top five privacy predictions for 2011:
1. All types of organizations must consider the risks involved with using cloud computing.
More organizations will use outsourced cloud (remote computing and storage) services. Particularly small and medium-sized companies will move their information security and IT functions to outsourced clouds because they simply do not have the expertise internally to effectively manage security and privacy, and cannot afford to hire traditional hourly consultants to help them. This will also be the case for education institutions currently struggling with budget cuts. Cloud services can be quite secure, but some simply aren’t. Organizations must know the right questions to ask, and get satisfactory answers, prior to using one.
2. Every organization is affected by social media sites.
Companies will use social media sites even more to communicate about their services and practices, and as a result of human error, malicious intent or even lack of knowledge, there will be significant privacy breaches (unauthorized use or release of personal information) through these sites. Companies must ensure they have policies and supporting procedures in place for their personnel to follow with regard to posting (and actually not posting) information about the business, coworkers, customers and clients, even when employees are away from work, using their own computers.
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Source: pr.com
Monday, January 24, 2011
Wall Street Traders Trust Computers, Why Don’t Lawyers?
A hot legal topic is predictive coding in e-discovery. In the automated approach to reviewing discovery documents for responsiveness, computers do much of the work instead of armies of humans reviewing each document. Those who doubt the reliability - and I would argue inevitability - of predictive coding could learn a lesson from how Wall Street automates trading.
Computers That Trade on the News (New York Times, 23 Dec 2010) reports that the “number-crunchers on Wall Street are starting to crunch something else: the news.” It describes ‘robo-readers", software that digests large volumes of text reports about companies and markets, assessing the meaning of news and social media. The analysis triggers real-time trades, without human intervention.
Predictive (automated) coding is conceptually similar. Just as a trader’s computer analyzes news to execute trade, a lawyer’s computer can analyze documents to determine responsiveness and privilege. The challenge with predictive coding is the question of judicial defensibility. For more on predictive coding, see the October 2010 eDiscovery Institute Survey on Predictive Coding (PDF) and my colleague Foster Gibbon’s July 2010 Integreon blog post, The Future of Automated Document Review.
If the stewards of large sums of money trust computers to decide what to do with their money, why don’t courts and litigators trust computers to make decisions about documents?
Today, lawyers and courts typically presume that predictive coding is unreliable. For example, the January 2011 Inside Counsel reader poll found that 53% answered no to “Do you think computer review of documents for e-discovery purposes is as accurate as human review?” Perhaps the percent will change after respondents read, in the same issue, Computerized E-Discovery Document Review is Accurate and Defensible.)
Why do predictive coding proponents have the burden of proof to rebut the presumption that predictive coding is unreliable? And note that burden of proof is high.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: Prism Legal
By: Ron Friedmann
Computers That Trade on the News (New York Times, 23 Dec 2010) reports that the “number-crunchers on Wall Street are starting to crunch something else: the news.” It describes ‘robo-readers", software that digests large volumes of text reports about companies and markets, assessing the meaning of news and social media. The analysis triggers real-time trades, without human intervention.
Predictive (automated) coding is conceptually similar. Just as a trader’s computer analyzes news to execute trade, a lawyer’s computer can analyze documents to determine responsiveness and privilege. The challenge with predictive coding is the question of judicial defensibility. For more on predictive coding, see the October 2010 eDiscovery Institute Survey on Predictive Coding (PDF) and my colleague Foster Gibbon’s July 2010 Integreon blog post, The Future of Automated Document Review.
If the stewards of large sums of money trust computers to decide what to do with their money, why don’t courts and litigators trust computers to make decisions about documents?
Today, lawyers and courts typically presume that predictive coding is unreliable. For example, the January 2011 Inside Counsel reader poll found that 53% answered no to “Do you think computer review of documents for e-discovery purposes is as accurate as human review?” Perhaps the percent will change after respondents read, in the same issue, Computerized E-Discovery Document Review is Accurate and Defensible.)
Why do predictive coding proponents have the burden of proof to rebut the presumption that predictive coding is unreliable? And note that burden of proof is high.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: Prism Legal
By: Ron Friedmann
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Social Media Is Not Snake Oil
In 1996, Clifford Stoll wrote a popular book entitled "Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway." It was well received because it was contrarian, made us second-guess our assumptions about computers, and contained a warning for those looking to benefit from this new thing called the internet. In retrospect, Stoll was dead wrong. He suggested the internet would never be good for commerce; that people would always prefer playing card games face to face; and that the acoustics of a working typewriter were in many ways superior to a keyboard and word processing program.
A similar argument is raging in the blogosphere, and has been for some time. The latest installment is from the ABA Journal: "Social Media or Snake Oil: Does Social Media Measure Up to the Hype?" My friends at Great Jakes Marketing Co. noticed a similar trend in their article, "Brace yourself for the backlash against social media marketing." Why does it seem this topic keeps resurfacing?
Contrarian views are always popular because they make the Luddites feel safe. But the people making decisions at your firm need to take care not to dismiss social media based on a reliance on the old ways, or they may be setting themselves up for failure. It was this kind of thinking that almost put the Eastman Kodak Co. out of business when digital cameras came out. This same backwards thinking has led to the failure of countless businesses, as documented in Clayton Christensen's book, "The Innovator's Dilemma." Time and again, businesses fail when they refuse to recognize the importance of disruptive innovation. Clifford Stoll made that mistake in his book, and now many law firms are falling into the same trap over social media.
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Source: law.com
By: Adrian Dayton
A similar argument is raging in the blogosphere, and has been for some time. The latest installment is from the ABA Journal: "Social Media or Snake Oil: Does Social Media Measure Up to the Hype?" My friends at Great Jakes Marketing Co. noticed a similar trend in their article, "Brace yourself for the backlash against social media marketing." Why does it seem this topic keeps resurfacing?
Contrarian views are always popular because they make the Luddites feel safe. But the people making decisions at your firm need to take care not to dismiss social media based on a reliance on the old ways, or they may be setting themselves up for failure. It was this kind of thinking that almost put the Eastman Kodak Co. out of business when digital cameras came out. This same backwards thinking has led to the failure of countless businesses, as documented in Clayton Christensen's book, "The Innovator's Dilemma." Time and again, businesses fail when they refuse to recognize the importance of disruptive innovation. Clifford Stoll made that mistake in his book, and now many law firms are falling into the same trap over social media.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Adrian Dayton
Legal battles brew over crackdown in the workplace on social media
As more companies — and their workers — tap into the world of blogs, Twitter and Facebook, employers are tripping over legal potholes in social media, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
This week, for example, a National Labor Relations Board judge will consider whether a medical-transportation company illegally fired a worker after she criticized her boss on Facebook, in the federal agency's first complaint linked to social media.
So while job seekers and employees have long been warned that risqué revelations on Facebook can jeopardize their career prospects, companies are now increasingly facing their own challenges for blunders they or their employees are making in social media.
Part of the problem is that social networks are brimming over with employees' and job applicants' personal information. Along with various suits that have grabbed media attention, the potential for further litigation is broad, lawyers caution. For example, a worker could file a sexual-harassment suit after a manager repeatedly tries to friend her on Facebook. Or an applicant might accuse a hiring manager of reneging on a job offer after learning the candidate's religious affiliation on Twitter.
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Source: recordonline.com
By: NewsCore
This week, for example, a National Labor Relations Board judge will consider whether a medical-transportation company illegally fired a worker after she criticized her boss on Facebook, in the federal agency's first complaint linked to social media.
So while job seekers and employees have long been warned that risqué revelations on Facebook can jeopardize their career prospects, companies are now increasingly facing their own challenges for blunders they or their employees are making in social media.
Part of the problem is that social networks are brimming over with employees' and job applicants' personal information. Along with various suits that have grabbed media attention, the potential for further litigation is broad, lawyers caution. For example, a worker could file a sexual-harassment suit after a manager repeatedly tries to friend her on Facebook. Or an applicant might accuse a hiring manager of reneging on a job offer after learning the candidate's religious affiliation on Twitter.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: recordonline.com
By: NewsCore
iPhones and E-Discovery
As the number of iPhone users has skyrocketed since the smartphone was introduced in 2007, one concern has been security. Experts have issued warnings that the iPhone is not secure simply because forensic experts have had the ability to access information on it. This led some people to suggest that lawyers should not use the iPhone. That's absurd; it's like saying that forensic experts know how to access data on a laptop computer running Windows, therefore it's unsafe for any lawyer to use a laptop running Windows.
It's a given that if a skilled professional thief with ill motives gained access to any smartphone or any computer (or for that matter, gained entry to my law office), confidential information could be compromised. But this doesn't mean lawyers should stop using smartphones or computers, or that lawyers should stop writing things down on legal pads that might be stolen one day. Nor does it mean that lawyers should advise their clients to do the same.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Jeff Richardson
It's a given that if a skilled professional thief with ill motives gained access to any smartphone or any computer (or for that matter, gained entry to my law office), confidential information could be compromised. But this doesn't mean lawyers should stop using smartphones or computers, or that lawyers should stop writing things down on legal pads that might be stolen one day. Nor does it mean that lawyers should advise their clients to do the same.
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Source: law.com
By: Jeff Richardson
Friday, January 21, 2011
Employers Tread a Minefield
Firings for Alleged Social-Media Infractions Sometimes Backfire on Companies.
Facebook gaffes that can cause trouble in the workplace aren't unique to drunken college students anymore. As more companies and their workers tap into the world of blogs, Twitter and Facebook, employers are tripping over legal potholes in social media.
Next week a National Labor Relations Board judge will consider whether a medical-transportation company illegally fired a worker after she criticized her boss on Facebook, in the federal agency's first complaint linked to social media.
In another case, workers sued a restaurant company when they were dismissed after managers accessed a private Myspace page the employees set up to chat about work.
Ashley Payne
Ashley Payne claims she lost her job because of Facebook postings, such as this vacation photo.
.Job seekers and employees have long been warned that risqué revelations on Facebook can jeopardize career prospects. But now companies are facing their own challenges for alleged blunders in dealing with social media.
"The intersection of social media and the office is a potential minefield,"”said Philip L. Gordon, the Denver-based chairman of the privacy and data-protection practice group at law firm Littler Mendelson PC. Even when a company prevails in such legal actions, "there are reputational risks,"”Mr. Gordon added. "The company can become a poster child for a particular type of employment claim."”
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Source: online.wsj.com
By: Jeanette Borzo
Facebook gaffes that can cause trouble in the workplace aren't unique to drunken college students anymore. As more companies and their workers tap into the world of blogs, Twitter and Facebook, employers are tripping over legal potholes in social media.
Next week a National Labor Relations Board judge will consider whether a medical-transportation company illegally fired a worker after she criticized her boss on Facebook, in the federal agency's first complaint linked to social media.
In another case, workers sued a restaurant company when they were dismissed after managers accessed a private Myspace page the employees set up to chat about work.
Ashley Payne
Ashley Payne claims she lost her job because of Facebook postings, such as this vacation photo.
.Job seekers and employees have long been warned that risqué revelations on Facebook can jeopardize career prospects. But now companies are facing their own challenges for alleged blunders in dealing with social media.
"The intersection of social media and the office is a potential minefield,"”said Philip L. Gordon, the Denver-based chairman of the privacy and data-protection practice group at law firm Littler Mendelson PC. Even when a company prevails in such legal actions, "there are reputational risks,"”Mr. Gordon added. "The company can become a poster child for a particular type of employment claim."”
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: online.wsj.com
By: Jeanette Borzo
Work E-Mail Not Protected by Attorney-Client Privilege, Court Says
E-mails between a client and attorney are no longer considered privileged and confidential if the client writes the messages from a work e-mail account, a California court of appeals has ruled.
The 3-0 decision Thursday by the Sacramento Third Appellate District means that if you intend to sue your employer, don’t discuss the suit with an attorney using company e-mail. The company has a right to access it and use it against you in a court.
“… [T]he e-mails sent via company computer under the circumstances of this case were akin to consulting her lawyer in her employer’s conference room, in a loud voice, with the door open, so that any reasonable person would expect that their discussion of her complaints about her employer would be overheard,” (.pdf) the court wrote.
Case law on electronic privacy in the workplace is slowly evolving, and not always for the best.
The U.S. Supreme Court in July ruled that a police officer’s texts on department pagers were not private. But that ruling was based on grounds other than the Ontario Police Department’s policy that said text messages on work pagers were not private.
The New Jersey Supreme Court said e-mail messages on a personal web-based e-mail account accessed from an employer’s computer were private. But that decision was contingent on the fact that use of such an account was not clearly covered by the company’s policy, and the e-mails in question contained a standard warning that the communications were personal, confidential, attorney-client communications.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: Wired
By: David Kravets
The 3-0 decision Thursday by the Sacramento Third Appellate District means that if you intend to sue your employer, don’t discuss the suit with an attorney using company e-mail. The company has a right to access it and use it against you in a court.
“… [T]he e-mails sent via company computer under the circumstances of this case were akin to consulting her lawyer in her employer’s conference room, in a loud voice, with the door open, so that any reasonable person would expect that their discussion of her complaints about her employer would be overheard,” (.pdf) the court wrote.
Case law on electronic privacy in the workplace is slowly evolving, and not always for the best.
The U.S. Supreme Court in July ruled that a police officer’s texts on department pagers were not private. But that ruling was based on grounds other than the Ontario Police Department’s policy that said text messages on work pagers were not private.
The New Jersey Supreme Court said e-mail messages on a personal web-based e-mail account accessed from an employer’s computer were private. But that decision was contingent on the fact that use of such an account was not clearly covered by the company’s policy, and the e-mails in question contained a standard warning that the communications were personal, confidential, attorney-client communications.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: Wired
By: David Kravets
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Can Artificial Intelligence Ease the EDD Burden?
We don't handwrite letters or sit on park benches to confer with each other anymore, do we? We text-message each other, write e-mails, or use still other forms of instant communication. We may even send signals up to a satellite and then down to the person in the same room.
Welcome to the age of legal informatics. Legal informatics is a sort of fusion between artificial intelligence and the law. It presents the question "Will AI put information management, that far left and oft-neglected process described by the Electronic Discovery Reference Model, in the e-discovery spotlight?" In other words, can AI help prevent or alleviate our e-discovery burdens?
It's safe to say that the vast majority of our business and personal information is stored and transmitted in digital format. And we create a lot of it. According to IBM, every day we create enough information to fill all the libraries in the United States; oh, sorry, eight times all the libraries in the U.S., every day.
In this coming year alone, we humans will create as much information as we created in all the years that preceded it, combined -- all of them. Which brings me to what I learned at TEDxCaltech, a conference I attended as an alum on January 14, 2011.
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Source: law.com
By: Nick Brestoff
Welcome to the age of legal informatics. Legal informatics is a sort of fusion between artificial intelligence and the law. It presents the question "Will AI put information management, that far left and oft-neglected process described by the Electronic Discovery Reference Model, in the e-discovery spotlight?" In other words, can AI help prevent or alleviate our e-discovery burdens?
It's safe to say that the vast majority of our business and personal information is stored and transmitted in digital format. And we create a lot of it. According to IBM, every day we create enough information to fill all the libraries in the United States; oh, sorry, eight times all the libraries in the U.S., every day.
In this coming year alone, we humans will create as much information as we created in all the years that preceded it, combined -- all of them. Which brings me to what I learned at TEDxCaltech, a conference I attended as an alum on January 14, 2011.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Nick Brestoff
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Duke Law Review Article Points to Increases in Electronic Discovery Sanctions
As the old saw goes, “you don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” I recently read the recent Duke Law Journal article “Sanction for E-Discovery Violations: By the Numbers.” And, my initial reaction (as someone who tries to read all the electronic discovery cases as they come off the presses) wasn’t one of surprise. For me, most of the interesting e-discovery cases all seem to involve sanctions as they usually provide lessons about “worst” practices, from which we hopefully can infer “best” or at least “better” practices.
But, after a deeper dive into the piece I was fascinated by the metrics and granular trending analysis. The article summarized 401 cases involving motions for sanctions related to discovery of electronically stored information (ESI) in federal courts prior to January 1, 2010:
“We analyzed these cases for a variety of factors, including sanctioning court, sanctioning authority, sanctioned party, sanction type, and sanctioned misconduct. Our analysis indicates that although the annual number of e-discovery sanction cases is generally increasing, there has been a significant increase in both motions and awards since 2004. Motions for sanctions have been filed in all types of cases and all types of courts. The sanctions imposed against parties in many cases are severe, including dismissals, adverse jury instructions, and significant monetary awards. Sanctions against counsel, although uncommon, are on the rise as well. All the while, the safe harbor provisions of Rule 37(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure2 have provided little protection to parties or counsel.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: eDiscovery 2.0
By: Dean Gonsowski
But, after a deeper dive into the piece I was fascinated by the metrics and granular trending analysis. The article summarized 401 cases involving motions for sanctions related to discovery of electronically stored information (ESI) in federal courts prior to January 1, 2010:
“We analyzed these cases for a variety of factors, including sanctioning court, sanctioning authority, sanctioned party, sanction type, and sanctioned misconduct. Our analysis indicates that although the annual number of e-discovery sanction cases is generally increasing, there has been a significant increase in both motions and awards since 2004. Motions for sanctions have been filed in all types of cases and all types of courts. The sanctions imposed against parties in many cases are severe, including dismissals, adverse jury instructions, and significant monetary awards. Sanctions against counsel, although uncommon, are on the rise as well. All the while, the safe harbor provisions of Rule 37(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure2 have provided little protection to parties or counsel.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: eDiscovery 2.0
By: Dean Gonsowski
Discovery As Abuse
In my last blog I discussed the Tamburo opinion by Magistrate Judge Nan R. Nolan in Chicago. Tamburo v. Dworkin, 2010 WL 4867346 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 17, 2010). That opinion provides a good guide for the use of proportionality, cooperation, and phasing to prevent abuse of e-discovery. This blog will discuss the discovery thoughts of another great Chicago jurist, Frank H. Easterbrook, Chief Judge of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
The issue of abusive discovery is not new and certainly did not originate with electronic discovery. It goes back to the seventies and eighties when copy machines dramatically increased the number of copies of paper documents. Requests for productions then ballooned from hundreds of pages of documents to tens of thousands of pages. That is quant by today’s standards of trillions of pages, but still, it was an exponential increase. Unscrupulous attorneys then, as now, abused discovery to drive up the costs of litigation and thus the settlement value of their case.
Judge Easterbrook
Judge Frank H. Easterbrook raised these issues in the eighties in his famous article, Discovery As Abuse, 69 B.U. L. REV. 635 (1989). Judge Easterbrook is not only an appellate judge, but a renowned scholar and Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. Although Judge Easterbrook is primarily an expert on corporate and antitrust law, his article, Discovery As Abuse, delves deeply into the use of discovery, excessive impositional discovery, not to uncover the truth, but to extort higher settlements
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: e-discoveryteam.com
By: Ralph Losey
The issue of abusive discovery is not new and certainly did not originate with electronic discovery. It goes back to the seventies and eighties when copy machines dramatically increased the number of copies of paper documents. Requests for productions then ballooned from hundreds of pages of documents to tens of thousands of pages. That is quant by today’s standards of trillions of pages, but still, it was an exponential increase. Unscrupulous attorneys then, as now, abused discovery to drive up the costs of litigation and thus the settlement value of their case.
Judge Easterbrook
Judge Frank H. Easterbrook raised these issues in the eighties in his famous article, Discovery As Abuse, 69 B.U. L. REV. 635 (1989). Judge Easterbrook is not only an appellate judge, but a renowned scholar and Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. Although Judge Easterbrook is primarily an expert on corporate and antitrust law, his article, Discovery As Abuse, delves deeply into the use of discovery, excessive impositional discovery, not to uncover the truth, but to extort higher settlements
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: e-discoveryteam.com
By: Ralph Losey
40% of executives not planning to adopt the cloud
Forty percent of C-level executives have stated that they are not planning to adopt cloud computing, according to a report by ISACA. Respondents who do not plan to use cloud computing at all in the near future list security (47%) and privacy concerns (50%), followed closely by legacy infrastructure investments (35%), as barriers to adoption.
The 2011 study polled 834 executives from 21 countries, divided almost evenly between business executives (CEOs, CFOs and COOs) and IT executives (CIOs and heads of IT).
Of the executives who use or plan to use cloud computing for IT services 60 percent was non-mission critical and 40 percent would also trust the cloud for mission-critical IT services. Organizations are also actively employing outsourcing, with 93 percent fully or partially outsourcing some of their IT activities.
Key findings include:
Value creation of IT investments is one of the most important dimensions of IT’s contribution to the business (mentioned by more than nine out of 10 respondents). But challenges exist: increasing IT costs and an insufficient number of IT staff are the most common IT-related issues experienced by respondents in the past 12 months.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: net-security.org
The 2011 study polled 834 executives from 21 countries, divided almost evenly between business executives (CEOs, CFOs and COOs) and IT executives (CIOs and heads of IT).
Of the executives who use or plan to use cloud computing for IT services 60 percent was non-mission critical and 40 percent would also trust the cloud for mission-critical IT services. Organizations are also actively employing outsourcing, with 93 percent fully or partially outsourcing some of their IT activities.
Key findings include:
Value creation of IT investments is one of the most important dimensions of IT’s contribution to the business (mentioned by more than nine out of 10 respondents). But challenges exist: increasing IT costs and an insufficient number of IT staff are the most common IT-related issues experienced by respondents in the past 12 months.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: net-security.org
Gibson Dunn Report: Sanctions Dropping in E-Discovery Disputes
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher has released its latest report on electronic discovery, and, as usual, it's must-reading for anyone who wants to keep pace with this unsettled area of the law. (We wrote about the firm's last report in July.) This comprehensive analysis, based on a review of 323 decision, contains one surprising finding. Courts are imposing fewer e-discovery sanctions: Last year they imposed sanctions in 55 percent of the cases where they were sought, compared to 70 percent in 2009. In absolute numbers, sanctions are dropping, too, from 62 in 2009 to 55 last year.
On Friday we talked to three lawyers who worked on this report: Gareth Evans, the co-chair of Gibson Dunn's Electronic Discovery and Information Law Practice Group, partner Jennifer Rearden, and of counsel Farrah Pepper.
"What we've seen [in 2010] is a lot of courts are being more careful and examining the circumstances [before issuing sanctions]," said Evans. They're requiring a showing that any lost electronic materials are not just relevant to the case but would have been prejudicial to the party that lost them, he said. "We've seen [this approach] even in the Southern District of New York, which is pretty important," he added.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Susan Beck
On Friday we talked to three lawyers who worked on this report: Gareth Evans, the co-chair of Gibson Dunn's Electronic Discovery and Information Law Practice Group, partner Jennifer Rearden, and of counsel Farrah Pepper.
"What we've seen [in 2010] is a lot of courts are being more careful and examining the circumstances [before issuing sanctions]," said Evans. They're requiring a showing that any lost electronic materials are not just relevant to the case but would have been prejudicial to the party that lost them, he said. "We've seen [this approach] even in the Southern District of New York, which is pretty important," he added.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Susan Beck
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Private Clouds Taking Off
Evidence is accumulating that as public clouds gain strength, enterprises are increasingly interested in building their own clouds in the data center.
The evidence is still anecdotal, but many companies appear to be building out private clouds as much as test-driving public ones. Or perhaps they've concluded what works in the public cloud will work just fine in the private enterprise data center as well.
In a recent interview with Bryson Koehler, for example, senior VP for InterContinental Hotels Group, said his firm is using Salesforce CRM for customer relationship management. It develops software in Amazon Web Services' EC2 infrastructure; and it is making use of both Savvis and Verizon Business cloud centers to host customer information on the Web.
But the thing that kept him talking about cloud computing was InterContinental's intent to build out of its own private cloud. Koehler hopes one day his private cloud will run the mainframe room reservation system, loyalty club updates, and customer analytics, with which he hopes to deliver a more distinct style of customer service. So one of the early goals of InterContinental's private cloud is to serve as a training ground for the IT staff to understand cloud architecture and how to manage it, whether on premises or off.
"Right now, one-third of our staff is up to speed and understands the details of cloud computing. One-third is dedicated to legacy apps that won't make the migration into the cloud. And one-third needs to go through this learning curve in the first half of 2011," he said.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------
Source: Informationweek
By: Charles Babcock
The evidence is still anecdotal, but many companies appear to be building out private clouds as much as test-driving public ones. Or perhaps they've concluded what works in the public cloud will work just fine in the private enterprise data center as well.
In a recent interview with Bryson Koehler, for example, senior VP for InterContinental Hotels Group, said his firm is using Salesforce CRM for customer relationship management. It develops software in Amazon Web Services' EC2 infrastructure; and it is making use of both Savvis and Verizon Business cloud centers to host customer information on the Web.
But the thing that kept him talking about cloud computing was InterContinental's intent to build out of its own private cloud. Koehler hopes one day his private cloud will run the mainframe room reservation system, loyalty club updates, and customer analytics, with which he hopes to deliver a more distinct style of customer service. So one of the early goals of InterContinental's private cloud is to serve as a training ground for the IT staff to understand cloud architecture and how to manage it, whether on premises or off.
"Right now, one-third of our staff is up to speed and understands the details of cloud computing. One-third is dedicated to legacy apps that won't make the migration into the cloud. And one-third needs to go through this learning curve in the first half of 2011," he said.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------
Source: Informationweek
By: Charles Babcock
What Factors Justify the Use of Apache Hadoop?
The question posed at this week’s San Francisco Hadoop User Group is a common one: “what factors justify the use of an Apache Hadoop cluster vs. traditional approaches?” The answer you receive depends on who you ask.
Relational database authors and advocates have two criticisms of Hadoop. First, that most users have little need for Big Data. Second, that MapReduce is more complex than traditional SQL queries.
Both of these criticisms are valid.
In a post entitled “Terabytes is not big data, petabytes is,” Henrik Ingo argued that the gigabytes and terabytes I referenced as Big Data did not justify that term. He is correct. Further, it is true that the number of enterprises worldwide with petabyte scale data management challenges is limited.
MapReduce, for its part, is in fact challenging. Challenging enough that there are two separate projects (Hive and Pig) that add SQL-like interfaces as a complement to the core Hadoop MapReduce functionality. Besides being more accessible, SQL skills are an order of magnitude more common from a resource availability standpoint.
Hadoop supporters, meanwhile, counter both of those concerns.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------
Source: RedMonk
By Stephen O'Grady
Relational database authors and advocates have two criticisms of Hadoop. First, that most users have little need for Big Data. Second, that MapReduce is more complex than traditional SQL queries.
Both of these criticisms are valid.
In a post entitled “Terabytes is not big data, petabytes is,” Henrik Ingo argued that the gigabytes and terabytes I referenced as Big Data did not justify that term. He is correct. Further, it is true that the number of enterprises worldwide with petabyte scale data management challenges is limited.
MapReduce, for its part, is in fact challenging. Challenging enough that there are two separate projects (Hive and Pig) that add SQL-like interfaces as a complement to the core Hadoop MapReduce functionality. Besides being more accessible, SQL skills are an order of magnitude more common from a resource availability standpoint.
Hadoop supporters, meanwhile, counter both of those concerns.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------
Source: RedMonk
By Stephen O'Grady
Email Overload Costing Organizations Time and Money. New study shows that 1 in 5 UK Workers Spend 32 Days a Year Managing their Email
A press release recently claimed that 1 in 5 UK workers spend 32 days per year managing their email. This finding is based on a survey of 1,000 UK workers by Star, a provider of on-demand computing and communication services to UK businesses. The survey revealed that 19% of employees spend up to an hour each day managing emails, with another20% spending more than an hour each day. Do the math, and that’s the equivalent of 32.5, 8-hour work days a year.
Surprised? I’m not. But the first question that comes to mind is: What does “managing” email entail? The press release doesn’t define “email management,” but other organizations have noted the following activities:
■ Searching for older emails for reuse and reference in both their mailbox and PSTs
■ Recreating data that can’t be found during mailbox and PST search
■ Responding to IT notices to delete emails and keep mailboxes within functional limits
■ Creating PSTs of older emails to keep (outside the system) for later reference
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: blog.ironmountain.com
By: Bill Tolson
Surprised? I’m not. But the first question that comes to mind is: What does “managing” email entail? The press release doesn’t define “email management,” but other organizations have noted the following activities:
■ Searching for older emails for reuse and reference in both their mailbox and PSTs
■ Recreating data that can’t be found during mailbox and PST search
■ Responding to IT notices to delete emails and keep mailboxes within functional limits
■ Creating PSTs of older emails to keep (outside the system) for later reference
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: blog.ironmountain.com
By: Bill Tolson
Bringing eDiscovery In-house: What Corporate Counsel Wants Versus What They Need
2011 will be the year that a significant percentage of eDiscovery technology and services moves “in-house”. Historically, Corporate Counsel collaborated with outside counsel, litigation service providers, computer forensic companies and litigation technology consulting organizations to have this work completed. I would suspect that the reasoning or justification behind this outsourcing mentality was a byproduct of the days when litigation required thousands and thousands of boxes of documents to be scanned, digitized and reviewed using one of the document review technologies. And, this had always been done by third parties. This outsourcing partnership was part of the cultural fabric of “how things are done” and therefore most corporate legal staff didn’t and probably still don’t believe that it is something that should be or needs to be changed. After all, if its not broke… However, many casual observers think that it is broke and therefore does need to change. But, does that mean if you are an attorney / litigator that you need to do all of this eDiscovery technical stuff yourself?
Practicing Law not Technology Aside from the practice of medicine, practicing the art of law has risen to the very top of the intellectual food chain. However, having many friends that fit neatly into both categories, I have always found my doctor friends to be much more technically savvy and “up-to-date” on available technology than my lawyer friends (please note that I have identified gross exceptions on both sides of the isle). It may be that the technology demands of practicing medicine have advanced much more quickly than those of the legal profession. Or, it may be that the healthcare industry has already gone through the technology paradigm shift.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: e-discoverynews.com
By: Haley
Practicing Law not Technology Aside from the practice of medicine, practicing the art of law has risen to the very top of the intellectual food chain. However, having many friends that fit neatly into both categories, I have always found my doctor friends to be much more technically savvy and “up-to-date” on available technology than my lawyer friends (please note that I have identified gross exceptions on both sides of the isle). It may be that the technology demands of practicing medicine have advanced much more quickly than those of the legal profession. Or, it may be that the healthcare industry has already gone through the technology paradigm shift.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: e-discoverynews.com
By: Haley
The government is driving some people away from the cloud
Legal subpoenas to cloud providers serve as reminders that you lose control and even awareness of who can access your data
Paul Carr from TechCrunch did a good job making the case why some of us may want to reconsider blanket uses for the cloud: "I've been growing increasingly alarmed by stories such as the U.S. government subpoenaing Twitter (and reportedly Gmail and Facebook) users over their support of WikiLeaks. The casual use of subpoenas, including against foreign citizens is worrying enough -- the New York Times says more than 50,000 'national security letters' are sent each year -- but even more concerning is the fact that often these subpoenas are sealed, preventing the companies from notifying the users they affect."
In other words, you're putting your personal data on a cloud provider, and the government can go directly to it for that data, bypassing you altogether. While you might think your cloud provider would stand up to such requests, most are legally bound to hand over the information.
[ Get the no-nonsense explanations and advice you need to take real advantage of cloud computing in InfoWorld editors' 21-page Cloud Computing Deep Dive PDF special report. Stay up on the cloud with InfoWorld's Cloud Computing Report newsletter. ]
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: InfoWorld
By: David inthicum
Paul Carr from TechCrunch did a good job making the case why some of us may want to reconsider blanket uses for the cloud: "I've been growing increasingly alarmed by stories such as the U.S. government subpoenaing Twitter (and reportedly Gmail and Facebook) users over their support of WikiLeaks. The casual use of subpoenas, including against foreign citizens is worrying enough -- the New York Times says more than 50,000 'national security letters' are sent each year -- but even more concerning is the fact that often these subpoenas are sealed, preventing the companies from notifying the users they affect."
In other words, you're putting your personal data on a cloud provider, and the government can go directly to it for that data, bypassing you altogether. While you might think your cloud provider would stand up to such requests, most are legally bound to hand over the information.
[ Get the no-nonsense explanations and advice you need to take real advantage of cloud computing in InfoWorld editors' 21-page Cloud Computing Deep Dive PDF special report. Stay up on the cloud with InfoWorld's Cloud Computing Report newsletter. ]
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: InfoWorld
By: David inthicum
Digital information overload can hamper the legal process
Digital information, commonly referred to as Electronically Stored Information or ESI, has experienced exponential growth in recent years and has become a critical source of evidence in legal actions across the world. And this growth is set only to accelerate, with a recent study by IDC revealing that by the end of 2010 the amount of ESI will have grown to 1.2 million petabytes.
ESI has gained popularity because it takes up less space than physical documentation and offers advanced capability designed to speed up the search process. But with the massive growth expected in the amounts of this information, is this search capability enough for the legal sector or has finding evidence become akin to finding a mythical needle in a haystack?
Electronic search capability has been thought of as a boon to the legal industry, where in the past investigators would have had to search through thousands of paper-based documents to assemble evidence. In theory ESI allows investigators to search through these thousands of records electronically using intelligent search terms, which would speed up the search process to just a matter of minutes. In practice however, this virtual mountain of information is made difficult by sheer data volumes and compounded by poor data management.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: MyBroadband.co.za
ESI has gained popularity because it takes up less space than physical documentation and offers advanced capability designed to speed up the search process. But with the massive growth expected in the amounts of this information, is this search capability enough for the legal sector or has finding evidence become akin to finding a mythical needle in a haystack?
Electronic search capability has been thought of as a boon to the legal industry, where in the past investigators would have had to search through thousands of paper-based documents to assemble evidence. In theory ESI allows investigators to search through these thousands of records electronically using intelligent search terms, which would speed up the search process to just a matter of minutes. In practice however, this virtual mountain of information is made difficult by sheer data volumes and compounded by poor data management.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: MyBroadband.co.za
Monday, January 17, 2011
EU warns governments on cloud computing
Public clouds should be used only for non-critical apps, says security agency Enisa
Private cloud computing environments are much more suited to the needs of government bodies than their public cloud equivalents, despite the latter offering higher service availability and improved cost benefits, according to the latest report from the European Network and Information Security Agency (Enisa).
The Security and Resilience in Governmental Clouds report presents senior management with a decision-making model with which to appraise the cloud solution which provides the best fit with their organisation.
Enisa concluded that, although cloud computing could theoretically offer better value, improved availability and stronger security than traditional environments, there are many weaknesses and threats "mainly linked to the lack of governance and control over IT operations and the potential lack of compliance with laws and regulations".
Public clouds are said to be the most risky from this standpoint because they can be owned by non-EU companies, and provide inadequate transparency about security and resilience measures and potential breaches.
The report also warns that internet connectivity may not be adequate in several member states to support such models.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: v3.co.uk
By: Phil Muncaster
Private cloud computing environments are much more suited to the needs of government bodies than their public cloud equivalents, despite the latter offering higher service availability and improved cost benefits, according to the latest report from the European Network and Information Security Agency (Enisa).
The Security and Resilience in Governmental Clouds report presents senior management with a decision-making model with which to appraise the cloud solution which provides the best fit with their organisation.
Enisa concluded that, although cloud computing could theoretically offer better value, improved availability and stronger security than traditional environments, there are many weaknesses and threats "mainly linked to the lack of governance and control over IT operations and the potential lack of compliance with laws and regulations".
Public clouds are said to be the most risky from this standpoint because they can be owned by non-EU companies, and provide inadequate transparency about security and resilience measures and potential breaches.
The report also warns that internet connectivity may not be adequate in several member states to support such models.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: v3.co.uk
By: Phil Muncaster
Saturday, January 15, 2011
The Lure and Lore of EDD Commodity Pricing
In theory, e-discovery services ought to be easy to sell. After all, the legal profession has been working to define and standardize the process of obtaining, producing, and searching electronic records in litigation for many years. Vendors now offer more standardized pricing, but many lawyers say that e-discovery continues to defy easy pricing models. "Consumers push hard for commodity pricing, assuming vendors will do the same tasks the same way for the same price," says George Socha, an attorney and e-discovery consultant in St. Paul, Minn. "But we're not talking a commodity like a bushel of grain. Almost all pieces of the e-discovery process defy commoditization."
Over the past few years, there has been a vigorous debate over whether e-discovery services may become a commodity -- a service with set pricing models for industry standard practices. In fact, much of what e-discovery vendors do has now become a repeatable, commodity process. Pieces of the discovery process like loading data, eliminating duplicate copies, and document production, are now relatively routine. However, it turns out that pricing e-discovery services is just not easy to standardize.
Until recently, commodity pricing was considered something of a panacea, offering a simplified business model that would take the uncertainty and complexity out of the process. But simplified pricing does not appeal to everyone in the field. "Two years ago I would have said (commodity pricing) was the end game," says Bill Speros, a Cleveland-based e-discovery consultant. "But even if there is a pricing model commoditizing e-discovery services and processing, I realize that I don't want to work with a commodity provider."
That's because even through the basic function of discovery is the same in most cases, once lawyers start dealing with actual electronic data sets, complications are inevitable and even the best budgets can get out of their control. Not only are implementations of software systems different in different organizations, but advances in computing, like recent developments in cloud computing and mobile applications bring unpredictability to the process. That demands specialized attention and customer support from litigation support vendors. "If information technology stops and does not change or advance; if we could tell Microsoft and Apple not to release any new versions of their software or operating systems or make no new iPads, then we might be able to have more predictable processing," says Socha. "But that's the only way I can see that happening."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: law.com
By: Jason Krause
Over the past few years, there has been a vigorous debate over whether e-discovery services may become a commodity -- a service with set pricing models for industry standard practices. In fact, much of what e-discovery vendors do has now become a repeatable, commodity process. Pieces of the discovery process like loading data, eliminating duplicate copies, and document production, are now relatively routine. However, it turns out that pricing e-discovery services is just not easy to standardize.
Until recently, commodity pricing was considered something of a panacea, offering a simplified business model that would take the uncertainty and complexity out of the process. But simplified pricing does not appeal to everyone in the field. "Two years ago I would have said (commodity pricing) was the end game," says Bill Speros, a Cleveland-based e-discovery consultant. "But even if there is a pricing model commoditizing e-discovery services and processing, I realize that I don't want to work with a commodity provider."
That's because even through the basic function of discovery is the same in most cases, once lawyers start dealing with actual electronic data sets, complications are inevitable and even the best budgets can get out of their control. Not only are implementations of software systems different in different organizations, but advances in computing, like recent developments in cloud computing and mobile applications bring unpredictability to the process. That demands specialized attention and customer support from litigation support vendors. "If information technology stops and does not change or advance; if we could tell Microsoft and Apple not to release any new versions of their software or operating systems or make no new iPads, then we might be able to have more predictable processing," says Socha. "But that's the only way I can see that happening."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: law.com
By: Jason Krause
Friday, January 14, 2011
SEC: Wall Street, Meet the FCPA.
When we think of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases, we tend to think of big, multi-national companies. Technology behemoths. Manufacturing companies. Shipping concerns.
But scrutiny under the FCPA, a 1977 law that essentially criminalizes bribery of foreign officials, seems to be making its way to Wall Street.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether banks and private-equity firms violated bribery laws in their dealings with sovereign-wealth funds, according to people familiar with the matter. Click here for Dionne Searcey and Randall Smith’s article in today’s WSJ; click here for the NYT story; here for the Bloomberg story.
According to the WSJ, the SEC has sent letters of inquiry to banks such as Citigroup as well as private-equity firms including Blackstone Group, the people said. Though the letters didn’t contain specific allegations of bribery, they requested that firms retain documents and asked about the firms’ dealings with sovereign-wealth funds, the people said.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: wsj.com
By: Ashby Jones
But scrutiny under the FCPA, a 1977 law that essentially criminalizes bribery of foreign officials, seems to be making its way to Wall Street.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether banks and private-equity firms violated bribery laws in their dealings with sovereign-wealth funds, according to people familiar with the matter. Click here for Dionne Searcey and Randall Smith’s article in today’s WSJ; click here for the NYT story; here for the Bloomberg story.
According to the WSJ, the SEC has sent letters of inquiry to banks such as Citigroup as well as private-equity firms including Blackstone Group, the people said. Though the letters didn’t contain specific allegations of bribery, they requested that firms retain documents and asked about the firms’ dealings with sovereign-wealth funds, the people said.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: wsj.com
By: Ashby Jones
Thursday, January 13, 2011
An Old Case With a New Opinion Demonstrating Perfect Proportionality
Magistrate Judge Nan R. Nolan has written a discovery order with perfect proportions that has not yet received the attention it deserves. Tamburo v. Dworkin, 2010 WL 4867346 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 17, 2010). She has written a new, state of the art e-discovery opinion invoking important principles of phased discovery, cooperation, and proportionality. This arises from an old pre-Zubulake case that started in 2004. Even though John F. Tamburo, doing business as Man’s Best Friend Software, filed suit in 2004, discovery did not even begin until late 2010.
Mr. Tamburo’s earlier pleadings had, after a mere seven attempts, all been dismissed for failure to state a cause of action. Some counts were also dismissed for lack of personal jurisdictional involving interesting Internet contact issues. The final order of dismissal with prejudice was appealed to the Seventh Circuit. The appeals court eventually affirmed the dismissal of the anti-trust claims, but reversed to allow the intentional tort claims to proceed against some of the defendants. Tamburo v. Dworkin, 2010 WL 1387299 (7th Cir., April 8, 2010). The anti-trust claims dismissals were, by the way, affirmed under Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007), an opinion barely on the horizon when Mr. Tamburo started his case. On another side note, I am sad to report that the lead defendant, Steven Dworkin, passed away before the appellate court ruling, but his Estate remains a party defendant. So much for the “speedy” part of the Rule One directive. After seven years of lawyers bills, I’m willing to bet that the “inexpensive” dictate of Rule One has also been missed. That leaves us with the important question of justice.
Eight Strikes and You’re Out
After years of procedural delays, the case was finally remanded back to the trial court to proceed on the merits. The plaintiff then filed a seventh Amended Complaint (that would make it his eighth try), as the appeals court had allowed. The defendants then responded with their eighth motion to dismiss. They had apparently come up with new arguments that the Seventh Circuit had not already addressed. I don’t know about you, but I’m impressed by such prodigious litigation efforts.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: e-discoveryteam.com
By: Ralph Losey
Mr. Tamburo’s earlier pleadings had, after a mere seven attempts, all been dismissed for failure to state a cause of action. Some counts were also dismissed for lack of personal jurisdictional involving interesting Internet contact issues. The final order of dismissal with prejudice was appealed to the Seventh Circuit. The appeals court eventually affirmed the dismissal of the anti-trust claims, but reversed to allow the intentional tort claims to proceed against some of the defendants. Tamburo v. Dworkin, 2010 WL 1387299 (7th Cir., April 8, 2010). The anti-trust claims dismissals were, by the way, affirmed under Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007), an opinion barely on the horizon when Mr. Tamburo started his case. On another side note, I am sad to report that the lead defendant, Steven Dworkin, passed away before the appellate court ruling, but his Estate remains a party defendant. So much for the “speedy” part of the Rule One directive. After seven years of lawyers bills, I’m willing to bet that the “inexpensive” dictate of Rule One has also been missed. That leaves us with the important question of justice.
Eight Strikes and You’re Out
After years of procedural delays, the case was finally remanded back to the trial court to proceed on the merits. The plaintiff then filed a seventh Amended Complaint (that would make it his eighth try), as the appeals court had allowed. The defendants then responded with their eighth motion to dismiss. They had apparently come up with new arguments that the Seventh Circuit had not already addressed. I don’t know about you, but I’m impressed by such prodigious litigation efforts.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: e-discoveryteam.com
By: Ralph Losey
Data Deletion Processes & Standards
Creating Data Deletion Practices Is Just As Important As Choosing A Storage Strategy
Even with widespread awareness of data storage and data deletion practices, the numbers from a recent Kroll Ontrack survey are eye-opening. The information management firm found that of the 49% of businesses that are systematically deploying a data erasure method, 75% don’t delete data securely, leaving them susceptible to data breaches.
Only 19% of those surveyed use data deletion software and even fewer, 6%, use a degausser to erase media. When asked if and how businesses verify that data has been deleted, 16% noted that they rely on a product or service for confirmation, but 22% simply reboot the drive and look to see if data is still there.
“The survey results don’t surprise me at all,” notes Jeff Pederson, manager of Ontrack Data Recovery operations at Kroll Ontrack (www.krollontrack.com). “A lot of people believe their data is erased, but they don’t have a way to check that’s very effective. Or they don’t have a system in place that really works. This is a challenge for many enterprises, and it’s putting them at risk.”
Major Problem
At a former employer, Pederson found that the IT department often tried to repurpose machines as soon as an employee had left. This can be a major issue, because if that person is involved in any litigation with the company, the data involved needs to be saved until those issues are resolved. These “litigation holds” are very common, and an enterprise that deletes data when one is in place could face significant penalties.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: processor.com
By: Elizabeth Milard
Even with widespread awareness of data storage and data deletion practices, the numbers from a recent Kroll Ontrack survey are eye-opening. The information management firm found that of the 49% of businesses that are systematically deploying a data erasure method, 75% don’t delete data securely, leaving them susceptible to data breaches.
Only 19% of those surveyed use data deletion software and even fewer, 6%, use a degausser to erase media. When asked if and how businesses verify that data has been deleted, 16% noted that they rely on a product or service for confirmation, but 22% simply reboot the drive and look to see if data is still there.
“The survey results don’t surprise me at all,” notes Jeff Pederson, manager of Ontrack Data Recovery operations at Kroll Ontrack (www.krollontrack.com). “A lot of people believe their data is erased, but they don’t have a way to check that’s very effective. Or they don’t have a system in place that really works. This is a challenge for many enterprises, and it’s putting them at risk.”
Major Problem
At a former employer, Pederson found that the IT department often tried to repurpose machines as soon as an employee had left. This can be a major issue, because if that person is involved in any litigation with the company, the data involved needs to be saved until those issues are resolved. These “litigation holds” are very common, and an enterprise that deletes data when one is in place could face significant penalties.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: processor.com
By: Elizabeth Milard
If You Don't Get the EDD You Ordered, Send It Back
If you received food not cooked to your specifications, you would send it back, right? Funny, but it's the same with electronically stored information (ESI).
In a very recent case, Jannx Med. Sys. v. Methodist Hosps., Inc., 2010 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 122574 (N.D. Ind. Nov. 17, 2010), the requesting party did not specify the format of the documents it was requesting. Seizing upon this perceived "opening," the producing party delivered documents in PDF format.
Was the receiving party stuck? No. First, the court agreed with the requesting party that the ESI that had been produced did not comply with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, rule 34: the ESI had not been produced "in a form or forms in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form or forms." Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(b)(2)(E)(ii).
But, more to the point, the court referred to paragraph 13 of the Advisory Committee's Notes to the 2006 ESI amendments. The Advisory Committee cautioned that:
the option to produce in a reasonably usable form does not mean that a responding party is free to convert electronically stored information from the form in which it is ordinarily maintained to a different form that makes it more difficult or burdensome for the requesting party to use the information efficiently in the litigation. Fed. R. Civ. P. 34 Advisory Committee's Note on the 2006 Amendments (italics added).
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Nick Brestoff
In a very recent case, Jannx Med. Sys. v. Methodist Hosps., Inc., 2010 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 122574 (N.D. Ind. Nov. 17, 2010), the requesting party did not specify the format of the documents it was requesting. Seizing upon this perceived "opening," the producing party delivered documents in PDF format.
Was the receiving party stuck? No. First, the court agreed with the requesting party that the ESI that had been produced did not comply with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, rule 34: the ESI had not been produced "in a form or forms in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form or forms." Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(b)(2)(E)(ii).
But, more to the point, the court referred to paragraph 13 of the Advisory Committee's Notes to the 2006 ESI amendments. The Advisory Committee cautioned that:
the option to produce in a reasonably usable form does not mean that a responding party is free to convert electronically stored information from the form in which it is ordinarily maintained to a different form that makes it more difficult or burdensome for the requesting party to use the information efficiently in the litigation. Fed. R. Civ. P. 34 Advisory Committee's Note on the 2006 Amendments (italics added).
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Nick Brestoff
E-Discovery Sanctions Reach All-Time High for Litigants and Lawyers
E-discovery sanctions have reached an all-time high after three decades of litigation over alleged discovery wrongdoing, and lawyers are increasingly being targeted.
A study by three King & Spalding lawyers identified 30 cases in which attorneys were sanctioned for e-discovery violations, seven of them in 2009, according to a summary on the Catalyst E-Discovery Blog. Overall, 46 sanctions were awarded in 2009, the last year covered by the study.
Before 2009, the highest number of sanctions awarded against lawyers in a single year was five, in 2008 and 2007.
“Sanction motions and sanction awards for e-discovery violations have been trending ever-upward for the last 10 years and have now reached historic highs,” according to the King & Spalding study, published in the Duke Law Journal (PDF).
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: abajournal.com
By: Debra Cassens Weiss
A study by three King & Spalding lawyers identified 30 cases in which attorneys were sanctioned for e-discovery violations, seven of them in 2009, according to a summary on the Catalyst E-Discovery Blog. Overall, 46 sanctions were awarded in 2009, the last year covered by the study.
Before 2009, the highest number of sanctions awarded against lawyers in a single year was five, in 2008 and 2007.
“Sanction motions and sanction awards for e-discovery violations have been trending ever-upward for the last 10 years and have now reached historic highs,” according to the King & Spalding study, published in the Duke Law Journal (PDF).
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: abajournal.com
By: Debra Cassens Weiss
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Proofpoint Predicts Move Toward Cloud-Based eDiscovery in 2011
According to the security and archiving experts at Proofpoint, Inc., the trend towards in-house management of eDiscovery processes will continue to grow rapidly in 2011. The leading provider of SaaS email security, email archiving and data loss prevention solutions says this trend will be driven by organizations looking to lower legal expenses while gaining more control over the eDiscovery workflow. Proofpoint also expects cost to be a driving factor in accelerating the adoption of archiving in the cloud over traditional on-premise technologies.
Based on its close work with customers and legal professionals in email archiving and eDiscovery, Proofpoint predicts that the top ten eDiscovery trends in 2011 will be:
1. eDiscovery 'In-Sourcing' Focus Shifts to Legal Risk Management: Companies have rushed to bring eDiscovery in-house largely to fulfill the objective of legal cost reduction. However, this investment has placed additional legal risk on the organization, including their ability to protect chains of custody and build legally defensible eDiscovery processes. Consequently, companies will increasingly view the eDiscovery 'in-sourcing' decision as one of a trade-off of reduced eDiscovery cost against the potential increase in legal risk exposure.
2. Adoption of eDiscovery in the Cloud Will Accelerate: Organizations will increasingly evaluate cloud approaches to eDiscovery in order to reduce cost and technological complexity associated with aging in-house systems. Driving this adoption will be an increasing number of organizations that are considering cloud alternatives to further hardware and infrastructure upgrades.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: pr-usa.net
Based on its close work with customers and legal professionals in email archiving and eDiscovery, Proofpoint predicts that the top ten eDiscovery trends in 2011 will be:
1. eDiscovery 'In-Sourcing' Focus Shifts to Legal Risk Management: Companies have rushed to bring eDiscovery in-house largely to fulfill the objective of legal cost reduction. However, this investment has placed additional legal risk on the organization, including their ability to protect chains of custody and build legally defensible eDiscovery processes. Consequently, companies will increasingly view the eDiscovery 'in-sourcing' decision as one of a trade-off of reduced eDiscovery cost against the potential increase in legal risk exposure.
2. Adoption of eDiscovery in the Cloud Will Accelerate: Organizations will increasingly evaluate cloud approaches to eDiscovery in order to reduce cost and technological complexity associated with aging in-house systems. Driving this adoption will be an increasing number of organizations that are considering cloud alternatives to further hardware and infrastructure upgrades.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: pr-usa.net
The key to keeping e-discovery cheap
Don't pay lawyers to sift through your junk files
Every company gets sued eventually. Or sues someone. Or has to go to court or hearings that look a lot like court to demonstrate they're being good citizens by keeping all the financial records in order required by Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and a host of other shorthand nicknames for anal-retention.
Compliance is eating up so much of the average IT security budget that security managers complain they can't buy gear they consider to be the minimum required to keep valuable bits inside the building from going outside without permission.
A big part of compliance is data collection, though. And a big part of data collection is efficiency, according to John Palumbo, senior litigation support manager for high-tech Boston-based law firm Foley Hoag, LLP.
Palumbo, whose job title boils down to a combination of chief records expert and CIO, has spent four years upgrading and automating the way Foley Hoag deals with the mountains of unstructured data the firm has to take in from clients for every case.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: itworld.com
By: Kevin Fogarty
Every company gets sued eventually. Or sues someone. Or has to go to court or hearings that look a lot like court to demonstrate they're being good citizens by keeping all the financial records in order required by Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and a host of other shorthand nicknames for anal-retention.
Compliance is eating up so much of the average IT security budget that security managers complain they can't buy gear they consider to be the minimum required to keep valuable bits inside the building from going outside without permission.
A big part of compliance is data collection, though. And a big part of data collection is efficiency, according to John Palumbo, senior litigation support manager for high-tech Boston-based law firm Foley Hoag, LLP.
Palumbo, whose job title boils down to a combination of chief records expert and CIO, has spent four years upgrading and automating the way Foley Hoag deals with the mountains of unstructured data the firm has to take in from clients for every case.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: itworld.com
By: Kevin Fogarty
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
NARA: OSD 'likely' not properly managing email and shared file records
The office of secretary of defense is likely not undertaking proper records disposition of emails and shared files, says a National Archives and Records Administration inspection report (.pdf) obtained by FierceGovernmentIT. The report, dated December 2010, is not classified nor otherwise restricted from public distribution.
The report examines, in particular, record keeping by the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, but also other wider OSD records management efforts. Because OUSD(I) staff do not consistently properly manage old emails and shared drive files, "NARA therefore considers it likely that proper disposition is not being carried out for emails and shared drives files throughout OSD," the report states.
Emails with a classification rating of up to "secret" from within OUSD(I) and the rest of OSD--with the notable exception of secretary of defense and deputy secretary of defense emails--currently get uploaded into a Symantec system called Enterprise Vault. Shared drive files, again up to the "secret" level, not modified for a year automatically also move into a file storage part of eVault. OSD plans to expand eVault to include documents at higher classification levels, the report says.
But, eVault isn't a records management application and the OSD chief information officer treats files within it as "non-records." The system's main purpose is for e-discovery, the report adds.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
--------------------------------------------
Source: Fierce GovernmentIT
By: David Perera
The report examines, in particular, record keeping by the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, but also other wider OSD records management efforts. Because OUSD(I) staff do not consistently properly manage old emails and shared drive files, "NARA therefore considers it likely that proper disposition is not being carried out for emails and shared drives files throughout OSD," the report states.
Emails with a classification rating of up to "secret" from within OUSD(I) and the rest of OSD--with the notable exception of secretary of defense and deputy secretary of defense emails--currently get uploaded into a Symantec system called Enterprise Vault. Shared drive files, again up to the "secret" level, not modified for a year automatically also move into a file storage part of eVault. OSD plans to expand eVault to include documents at higher classification levels, the report says.
But, eVault isn't a records management application and the OSD chief information officer treats files within it as "non-records." The system's main purpose is for e-discovery, the report adds.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
--------------------------------------------
Source: Fierce GovernmentIT
By: David Perera
The last mile of virtualization
Virtualization has been one of the biggest shifts over the last year and will continue to influence IT in 2011.
Companies everywhere are achieving the benefits of virtualization by reducing the number of servers in their environments. In addition, the ability to backup and recover applications and data from both physical and virtual environments with a single solution will help organizations reduce overall costs and IT complexity. However, it does lead to an increase in management costs, and without a plan to protect these environments; companies may not realize the full ROI.
The rapid adoption, yet fragmented implementation and lack of standardization when it comes to virtual infrastructure will expose gaps in the security and backup of virtual environments over the next year.
Gap in disaster recovery for virtual environments
The number of applications and amount of data in virtual environments will grow significantly in 2011, increasing the need for disaster recovery solutions that protect these applications.
The 2010 Symantec Disaster Recovery Survey found that while a little more than half of data within virtual systems is regularly backed up, there is significant room for improvement.
Remembering that virtual machine protection carries with it the same expectation that customers have of physical environments, organizations should implement disaster recovery technologies to ensure their mission-critical data in virtual environments is protected from everyday business risks to devastating disasters.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
---------------------------------------------
Source: Informationweek (India)
By: Anand Naik
Companies everywhere are achieving the benefits of virtualization by reducing the number of servers in their environments. In addition, the ability to backup and recover applications and data from both physical and virtual environments with a single solution will help organizations reduce overall costs and IT complexity. However, it does lead to an increase in management costs, and without a plan to protect these environments; companies may not realize the full ROI.
The rapid adoption, yet fragmented implementation and lack of standardization when it comes to virtual infrastructure will expose gaps in the security and backup of virtual environments over the next year.
Gap in disaster recovery for virtual environments
The number of applications and amount of data in virtual environments will grow significantly in 2011, increasing the need for disaster recovery solutions that protect these applications.
The 2010 Symantec Disaster Recovery Survey found that while a little more than half of data within virtual systems is regularly backed up, there is significant room for improvement.
Remembering that virtual machine protection carries with it the same expectation that customers have of physical environments, organizations should implement disaster recovery technologies to ensure their mission-critical data in virtual environments is protected from everyday business risks to devastating disasters.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
---------------------------------------------
Source: Informationweek (India)
By: Anand Naik
Getting a Grip on Data Classification
Data classification essentially means assigning a level of sensitivity to data used by an organization, and it forms a critical component of Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). While classification systems vary from country to country, and indeed organization to organization, most have levels corresponding to the following general definitions (from the highest level to lowest): top secret, secret, confidential, restricted (or sensitive) and unclassified.
While computer programs exist that can help with data classification, ultimately it is a subjective business and is often best done as a collaborative task that considers business, technical and other points of view. Different departments within an organization all need to be consulted and will have different views on what is, and isn’t, sensitive and how it is best protected. An additional aspect to consider is whether a document that is confidential today will remain so for the duration of its life. For example, a public company’s financial results will be extremely sensitive prior to announcement, yet, once in the public domain, confidentiality is no longer an issue.
With so many people involved in the decision process, and the constantly changing status of information, it is easy to see what causes delays or even the complete downfall of many data classification projects.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
---------------------------------------------
Source: CTO EDGE
By: Sean Glynn
While computer programs exist that can help with data classification, ultimately it is a subjective business and is often best done as a collaborative task that considers business, technical and other points of view. Different departments within an organization all need to be consulted and will have different views on what is, and isn’t, sensitive and how it is best protected. An additional aspect to consider is whether a document that is confidential today will remain so for the duration of its life. For example, a public company’s financial results will be extremely sensitive prior to announcement, yet, once in the public domain, confidentiality is no longer an issue.
With so many people involved in the decision process, and the constantly changing status of information, it is easy to see what causes delays or even the complete downfall of many data classification projects.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
---------------------------------------------
Source: CTO EDGE
By: Sean Glynn
Legal expert warns over staff use of Twitter
COMPANY bosses in the region are being warned to keep a careful eye on their Tweeters to stop loose words costing business.
As social networking increases across the region’s business community, the technology is throwing up all manner of issues for company executives, according to legal experts at regional legal practice BHP Law.
Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook have become part of daily activities to establish relationships with other businesses in the North-East.
But this micro-blogging can lead to time-wasting, computer viruses and public humiliation, which is giving many executives sleepless nights.
BHP innovation team consultant Deb McGargle said: “One bad comment could leave your business reputation in tatters and it’s not scaremongering, it’s already happened.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: thenorthernecho.co.uk
By: Andy Richardson
As social networking increases across the region’s business community, the technology is throwing up all manner of issues for company executives, according to legal experts at regional legal practice BHP Law.
Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook have become part of daily activities to establish relationships with other businesses in the North-East.
But this micro-blogging can lead to time-wasting, computer viruses and public humiliation, which is giving many executives sleepless nights.
BHP innovation team consultant Deb McGargle said: “One bad comment could leave your business reputation in tatters and it’s not scaremongering, it’s already happened.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: thenorthernecho.co.uk
By: Andy Richardson
US anti-Twitter subpoena fuels data privacy debate
Twitter won a legal battle to protect its customers from a secret US gagging order
A court order potentially giving US security services access to data on all 637,000 people who follow the WikiLeaks Twitter account has added fuel to the fire of an EU debate on data retention.
The online short-message service Twitter on Friday (7 January) announced it won a legal battle to disclose that the US has issued a court order seeking private information on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, his alleged source for the classified US documents, Bradley Manning and three of his supporters - Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir, Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp and US programmer Jacob Appelbaum.
The US subpoena also requires the disclosure of "non-content information associated with any communication or file stored by or for the accounts, such as the source and the destination e-mail addresses and IP addresses." In short, this means that all the 637,000 Twitter users following the WikiLeaks account may be a potential target.
The news, which will enable the five named people to appeal the order, comes just as US foreign policy chief Hillary Clinton starts a Middle East trip she herself dubbed an "apology tour" after leaked cables revealed US-Arab intrigues against Iran.
Iceland, for one, does not think US embarrassment justifies the sweeping court injunction against WikiLeaks supporters, however.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: euobserver.com
By: Valentina Pop
A court order potentially giving US security services access to data on all 637,000 people who follow the WikiLeaks Twitter account has added fuel to the fire of an EU debate on data retention.
The online short-message service Twitter on Friday (7 January) announced it won a legal battle to disclose that the US has issued a court order seeking private information on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, his alleged source for the classified US documents, Bradley Manning and three of his supporters - Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir, Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp and US programmer Jacob Appelbaum.
The US subpoena also requires the disclosure of "non-content information associated with any communication or file stored by or for the accounts, such as the source and the destination e-mail addresses and IP addresses." In short, this means that all the 637,000 Twitter users following the WikiLeaks account may be a potential target.
The news, which will enable the five named people to appeal the order, comes just as US foreign policy chief Hillary Clinton starts a Middle East trip she herself dubbed an "apology tour" after leaked cables revealed US-Arab intrigues against Iran.
Iceland, for one, does not think US embarrassment justifies the sweeping court injunction against WikiLeaks supporters, however.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: euobserver.com
By: Valentina Pop
Monday, January 10, 2011
Is per-gig pricing dead?
Costs can add up.
Several years ago, a leading car company purchased an eDiscovery analytics appliance. For a relatively small amount of money up front and what seemed like a reasonable per-gig charge, they got quality processing and analytics capabilities. Since the company had only minimal amounts of eDiscovery work, the per-gig charge amounted to little more than an annoyance and all seemed well.
Unfortunately things were about to change. After some serious quality issues arose with their cars, law suits came pouring in, and the company was faced with an overwhelming amount of litigation. With no time to go through another request for proposal (RFP) process and the desire to keep much of the work in-house, the company began feeding the data through their appliance and the results aren’t hard to imagine. As the data poured through, the per-gig pricing began to take its toll. $5 million dollars was the charge in a single year, and the register is still ringing up charges.
Now, when an organization is facing litigation of this scale, $5 million probably seems like a trivial expense. However, when you compare it to what they could have paid for a solution with equivalent capabilities, the irrationality of the per-gig pricing model becomes clear.
For or Against Proportionality?
Any discussion on the costs of eDiscovery would be remiss without the introduction of the fundamental concept of proportionality. At its root, proportionality is the notion that a party should not pay more for discovery than what the case as a whole is worth. It is a legal concept that calls for containment of eDiscovery costs. I’ll be so bold as to state a party should pay nowhere near the value of the case for discovery.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: ediscoveryinsight.com
By: Devin Krugly
Several years ago, a leading car company purchased an eDiscovery analytics appliance. For a relatively small amount of money up front and what seemed like a reasonable per-gig charge, they got quality processing and analytics capabilities. Since the company had only minimal amounts of eDiscovery work, the per-gig charge amounted to little more than an annoyance and all seemed well.
Unfortunately things were about to change. After some serious quality issues arose with their cars, law suits came pouring in, and the company was faced with an overwhelming amount of litigation. With no time to go through another request for proposal (RFP) process and the desire to keep much of the work in-house, the company began feeding the data through their appliance and the results aren’t hard to imagine. As the data poured through, the per-gig pricing began to take its toll. $5 million dollars was the charge in a single year, and the register is still ringing up charges.
Now, when an organization is facing litigation of this scale, $5 million probably seems like a trivial expense. However, when you compare it to what they could have paid for a solution with equivalent capabilities, the irrationality of the per-gig pricing model becomes clear.
For or Against Proportionality?
Any discussion on the costs of eDiscovery would be remiss without the introduction of the fundamental concept of proportionality. At its root, proportionality is the notion that a party should not pay more for discovery than what the case as a whole is worth. It is a legal concept that calls for containment of eDiscovery costs. I’ll be so bold as to state a party should pay nowhere near the value of the case for discovery.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: ediscoveryinsight.com
By: Devin Krugly
Mobile Devices: A Singular Threat to Corporate Compliance and E-Discovery
The proliferation of an ever-expanding array of mobile devices promises greater employee productivity while introducing greater risk for corporate compliance and e-discovery efforts. Is your enterprise up to the task?
It’s no secret that corporate compliance programs continue to evolve as the corporate infrastructure, once tethered and isolated by wire, continues to change. The IT framework of yesterday’s enterprise bears little resemblance to the typical modern corporation – one which increasingly reflects our insatiable desire to stay connected.
Mobile device use continues to grow exponentially, accelerated by the corresponding explosion in social media, the nearly instantaneous news cycle made possible by the Internet, and mobile entertainment. Many experts predict that smartphone use alone will double in the next few years and data sharing will likewise increase at a comparable rate. Cisco predicts that mobile data traffic will double each year until 2014 – a reflection not only of increased consumer use of mobile devices, but also the significant increase in the use of mobile enterprise applications.
With so much information being accessed and shared via smartphones, iPads, PDAs, notebooks, laptops and other devices, the potential impact on enterprises and compliance initiatives is great. A recent survey by Ovum, titled, “Corporate mobile device use and security,” found that seventy percent of respondents reported using corporate devices for personal activities and nearly 50 percent said they use personal mobile devices to access company networks and business applications.
Further evidence of the blurring of the line that once shielded corporate networks from employees’ personal devices and activities can be seen in research from Forrester – a synopsis of which can be read at SearchMobileComputing.com. Forrester’s recent survey of 432 workers found that 42 percent use their personal smartphones to search the Internet or corporate intranet for work-related information, and 48 percent check corporate e-mail.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: Corporate Compliance Insights
By: Jeffery C. Fehrman
It’s no secret that corporate compliance programs continue to evolve as the corporate infrastructure, once tethered and isolated by wire, continues to change. The IT framework of yesterday’s enterprise bears little resemblance to the typical modern corporation – one which increasingly reflects our insatiable desire to stay connected.
Mobile device use continues to grow exponentially, accelerated by the corresponding explosion in social media, the nearly instantaneous news cycle made possible by the Internet, and mobile entertainment. Many experts predict that smartphone use alone will double in the next few years and data sharing will likewise increase at a comparable rate. Cisco predicts that mobile data traffic will double each year until 2014 – a reflection not only of increased consumer use of mobile devices, but also the significant increase in the use of mobile enterprise applications.
With so much information being accessed and shared via smartphones, iPads, PDAs, notebooks, laptops and other devices, the potential impact on enterprises and compliance initiatives is great. A recent survey by Ovum, titled, “Corporate mobile device use and security,” found that seventy percent of respondents reported using corporate devices for personal activities and nearly 50 percent said they use personal mobile devices to access company networks and business applications.
Further evidence of the blurring of the line that once shielded corporate networks from employees’ personal devices and activities can be seen in research from Forrester – a synopsis of which can be read at SearchMobileComputing.com. Forrester’s recent survey of 432 workers found that 42 percent use their personal smartphones to search the Internet or corporate intranet for work-related information, and 48 percent check corporate e-mail.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: Corporate Compliance Insights
By: Jeffery C. Fehrman
NARA: OSD 'likely' not properly managing email and shared files records
The office of secretary of defense is likely not undertaking proper records disposition of emails and shared files, says a National Archives and Records Administration inspection report (.pdf) obtained by FierceGovernmentIT. The report, dated December 2010, is not classified nor otherwise restricted from public distribution.
The report examines, in particular, record keeping by the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, but also other wider OSD records management efforts. Because OUSD(I) staff do not consistently properly manage old emails and shared drive files, "NARA therefore considers it likely that proper disposition is not being carried out for emails and shared drives files throughout OSD," the report states.
Emails with a classification rating of up to "secret" from within OUSD(I) and the rest of OSD--with the notable exception of secretary of defense and deputy secretary of defense emails--currently get uploaded into a Symantec system called Enterprise Vault. Shared drive files, again up to the "secret" level, not modified for a year automatically also move into a file storage part of eVault. OSD plans to expand eVault to include documents at higher classification levels, the report says.
But, eVault isn't a records management application and the OSD chief information officer treats files within it as "non-records." The system's main purpose is for e-discovery, the report adds.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: fiercegovernmentit.com
By: David Perera
The report examines, in particular, record keeping by the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, but also other wider OSD records management efforts. Because OUSD(I) staff do not consistently properly manage old emails and shared drive files, "NARA therefore considers it likely that proper disposition is not being carried out for emails and shared drives files throughout OSD," the report states.
Emails with a classification rating of up to "secret" from within OUSD(I) and the rest of OSD--with the notable exception of secretary of defense and deputy secretary of defense emails--currently get uploaded into a Symantec system called Enterprise Vault. Shared drive files, again up to the "secret" level, not modified for a year automatically also move into a file storage part of eVault. OSD plans to expand eVault to include documents at higher classification levels, the report says.
But, eVault isn't a records management application and the OSD chief information officer treats files within it as "non-records." The system's main purpose is for e-discovery, the report adds.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: fiercegovernmentit.com
By: David Perera
Keeping your legal head above the cloud
Cloud computing can be good for business – so long as you have got the legal issues right, reports Jemima Kiss
From Gmail and Flickr to Marks & Spencer and Mothercare, you would be hard-pushed to find a consumer or business in the UK that does not rely on at least one cloud-based service.
An umbrella term for outsourced technology services, such as email and web hosting, cloud computing allows businesses to outsource a crucial but highly specialised part of their operation to a specialist firm. But with cloud services now so ubiquitous and easy to use, could companies be overlooking the legal implications of such a major shift in their business?
"Small businesses in particular have access to all sorts of facilities through computing functionality they have never been able to afford before – data centres, support staff and maintenance – when delivered out of the cloud they are available to anybody" says John Manley, director of Hewlett-Packard's automated infrastructure lab in Bristol.
Manley says the industry is still nascent and that as competition increases, providers will take much more care over service-level agreements. "They will want to differentiate themselves – some will be cheaper, some faster, some more secure. You have to make that choice based on your requirements, but there will be a lot more detail and legal force in these agreements."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: guardian.co.uk
By: Jemima Kiss
From Gmail and Flickr to Marks & Spencer and Mothercare, you would be hard-pushed to find a consumer or business in the UK that does not rely on at least one cloud-based service.
An umbrella term for outsourced technology services, such as email and web hosting, cloud computing allows businesses to outsource a crucial but highly specialised part of their operation to a specialist firm. But with cloud services now so ubiquitous and easy to use, could companies be overlooking the legal implications of such a major shift in their business?
"Small businesses in particular have access to all sorts of facilities through computing functionality they have never been able to afford before – data centres, support staff and maintenance – when delivered out of the cloud they are available to anybody" says John Manley, director of Hewlett-Packard's automated infrastructure lab in Bristol.
Manley says the industry is still nascent and that as competition increases, providers will take much more care over service-level agreements. "They will want to differentiate themselves – some will be cheaper, some faster, some more secure. You have to make that choice based on your requirements, but there will be a lot more detail and legal force in these agreements."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: guardian.co.uk
By: Jemima Kiss
Saturday, January 08, 2011
Your Cloud Checklist for 2015
This much we know for certain: Cloud computing will have matured significantly in the next five years.
Five years ago, the cloud computing discussion was in its relative infancy. Big companies recoiled in fear at the thought of giving up any precious data to nascent cloud services. Amazon.com’s Elastic Compute Cloud was just a twinkle in some developer’s eye. Salesforce.com had yet to launch its cloud-based application development platform, Force.com.
Fast-forward to the present day. Corporate America is tapping the cloud for everything but the most sensitive mission-critical applications. Amazon’s EC2 has become the dominant on-demand computing capacity resource for companies of all sizes. And many of Salesforce.com’s customers are using Force.com to build just about every application they need.
So, what do the next five years hold? Industry analysts and IT decision-makers interviewed by CIO Insight expect cloud providers to offer an array of tools for governing their cloud services. These will make it possible for enterprise users to monitor cloud performance, manage cloud resources efficiently, comply with policies and regulations, and perform legal discovery, also known as “e-discovery.”
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: cioinsight.com
By: Tony Kontzer
Five years ago, the cloud computing discussion was in its relative infancy. Big companies recoiled in fear at the thought of giving up any precious data to nascent cloud services. Amazon.com’s Elastic Compute Cloud was just a twinkle in some developer’s eye. Salesforce.com had yet to launch its cloud-based application development platform, Force.com.
Fast-forward to the present day. Corporate America is tapping the cloud for everything but the most sensitive mission-critical applications. Amazon’s EC2 has become the dominant on-demand computing capacity resource for companies of all sizes. And many of Salesforce.com’s customers are using Force.com to build just about every application they need.
So, what do the next five years hold? Industry analysts and IT decision-makers interviewed by CIO Insight expect cloud providers to offer an array of tools for governing their cloud services. These will make it possible for enterprise users to monitor cloud performance, manage cloud resources efficiently, comply with policies and regulations, and perform legal discovery, also known as “e-discovery.”
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------------
Source: cioinsight.com
By: Tony Kontzer
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