The biggest security problems associated with mobile devices are their portability and data capacity, an expert says.
“We take it out of our pocket, set it down and look away,” said Sarah Stephens, San Francisco-based assistant vp with Aon Risk Solutions, a unit of Aon Corp.
As their capacity to store data grows, sensitive information can be at risk in a device that easily can be stolen or misplaced, Ms. Stephens told attendees last month at the International Risk Management Institute Inc.'s first Cyber & Privacy Risk Conference.
“Often, we don't even have passwords protecting our phones unless it's mandated by corporate policies,” she said. Furthermore, now that cell phones and other mobile devices have high-resolution cameras, gyroscopes and GPS technology, it sets up privacy and security risks, she said.
Mobile devices also can provide a portal for criminals to hack into personal or corporate information. “We're seeing a huge shift in cyber crime that's targeted towards mobile devices,” Ms. Stephens said.
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Source: businessinsurance.com
By: Judy Greenwald
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Bit by Bit: Building a Better eDiscovery Collection Solution
Is there a place in eDiscovery today for hard drive imaging and bit by bit copies, which collect deleted items or slack/unused hard disk space? The answer is yes with some important limitations. For the vast majority of matters, ESI can be collected without imaging drives or utilizing proprietary container files. However, I occasionally still encounter folks who are victims of the dated and costly misconception that eDiscovery always requires the bit-level imaging of hard drives.
There are situations, though, where the existence of data (as opposed to its content) is central to the matter – when companies suspect employees of stealing proprietary information or when employees leave a company under suspicious circumstances. In these and other similar situations, it may make sense to have the employee’s workstation hard drive imaged for full forensic analysis. Even in these scenarios, I find that companies are more likely to hire an external investigator to perform this task to allay suspicions of tampering or bias, and the company generally would prefer that this investigator be the one to testify about this sensitive data acquisition. Then, for ESI beyond the target employee’s hard drive, other collection methods may be used. As we’re now midway through 2011 – a year in which I expect to see eDiscovery fully embraced by many corporations as a true business process – I wanted to analyze why the forensic disk image myth still exists, where it came from, and what the law really requires of an eDiscovery collections process.
Traditionally, cases that mentioned full forensic imaging of hard drives began their captions with United States v. or State v. because they were criminal matters. In traditional civil litigation – even the behemoth eDiscovery cases that get all the bloggers blogging – forensic imaging simply is not required or needed. In fact, in most cases, it will dramatically increase the cost associated with electronic discovery – this process adds unnecessary complexity in downstream phases of eDiscovery and leads to vast over-collection. Why collect the Microsoft Office suite 50 times when what you are really required to preserve and collect are the files created with those programs? When using disk imaging, program files are collected which drives up storage costs and requires the post-collection step of deNISTing (removing system files based on the NIST list). Why not leave those system files behind and perform a targeted collection of only user-created content? In addition, the primary rules governing civil litigation – the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Federal Rules of Evidence – simply do not require exact duplication of electronic files. I am amazed that there are so many experts who are still pushing full forensic imaging and duplication in every case. In fact, this goes against best practices published by The Sedona Conference, EDRM, and in the E-Discovery textbook co-authored by Judge Shira A. Sheindlin.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: eDiscovery 2.0
By: Brando A'Gostino
There are situations, though, where the existence of data (as opposed to its content) is central to the matter – when companies suspect employees of stealing proprietary information or when employees leave a company under suspicious circumstances. In these and other similar situations, it may make sense to have the employee’s workstation hard drive imaged for full forensic analysis. Even in these scenarios, I find that companies are more likely to hire an external investigator to perform this task to allay suspicions of tampering or bias, and the company generally would prefer that this investigator be the one to testify about this sensitive data acquisition. Then, for ESI beyond the target employee’s hard drive, other collection methods may be used. As we’re now midway through 2011 – a year in which I expect to see eDiscovery fully embraced by many corporations as a true business process – I wanted to analyze why the forensic disk image myth still exists, where it came from, and what the law really requires of an eDiscovery collections process.
Traditionally, cases that mentioned full forensic imaging of hard drives began their captions with United States v. or State v. because they were criminal matters. In traditional civil litigation – even the behemoth eDiscovery cases that get all the bloggers blogging – forensic imaging simply is not required or needed. In fact, in most cases, it will dramatically increase the cost associated with electronic discovery – this process adds unnecessary complexity in downstream phases of eDiscovery and leads to vast over-collection. Why collect the Microsoft Office suite 50 times when what you are really required to preserve and collect are the files created with those programs? When using disk imaging, program files are collected which drives up storage costs and requires the post-collection step of deNISTing (removing system files based on the NIST list). Why not leave those system files behind and perform a targeted collection of only user-created content? In addition, the primary rules governing civil litigation – the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Federal Rules of Evidence – simply do not require exact duplication of electronic files. I am amazed that there are so many experts who are still pushing full forensic imaging and duplication in every case. In fact, this goes against best practices published by The Sedona Conference, EDRM, and in the E-Discovery textbook co-authored by Judge Shira A. Sheindlin.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: eDiscovery 2.0
By: Brando A'Gostino
Customers, Service Providers May Have E-Discovery Gap
E-discovery customers and service providers need to better understand each other to improve the state of early case assessment tools, analysts at Enterprise Strategy Group found in their latest legal technology report.
Law firms and legal departments too often underappreciate service providers' expertise, while service providers focus too broadly on custom projects and too narrowly on research and development, analysts Brian Babineau and Katey Wood concluded in Initial Case Assessments with e-Discovery: Integrating e-Discovery Tools in Corporate Investigations.
The disconnect is a major reason why software companies rule the e-discovery market despite common complaints about legal technology being overly influenced by engineers. "In ESG's conversations with general counsel over the last five years, many in-house attorneys found that the software market's concept of ECA didn't sufficiently support their approach," the report from Milford, Mass.-based ESG states.
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Source: law.com
By: Evan Koblentz
Law firms and legal departments too often underappreciate service providers' expertise, while service providers focus too broadly on custom projects and too narrowly on research and development, analysts Brian Babineau and Katey Wood concluded in Initial Case Assessments with e-Discovery: Integrating e-Discovery Tools in Corporate Investigations.
The disconnect is a major reason why software companies rule the e-discovery market despite common complaints about legal technology being overly influenced by engineers. "In ESG's conversations with general counsel over the last five years, many in-house attorneys found that the software market's concept of ECA didn't sufficiently support their approach," the report from Milford, Mass.-based ESG states.
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Source: law.com
By: Evan Koblentz
Friday, July 29, 2011
Doing e-Discovery / Message Retention / Legal Recovery in
The topic has come up many times recently on how organizations can leverage Microsoft Exchange 2010 (on-premise) or Microsoft Office 365 (in the cloud) to retain messages, legally hold and recover messages, and successfully perform eDiscovery tasks as required by legal counsel, by law, and/or as needed.
This document clarifies what’s included “in the box” in Exchange 2010 and Office 365, and goes through the step by step procedures for setting up what is necessary to retain content and detailed procedures on how to query and look up information.
Basic Background
To be able to retrieve information for legal or official purposes, information must be properly retained so that the integrity of the information retrieved is valid. As an example, if the Human Resources department, Legal department, or outside Legal Counsel wants to gather information, it’s not good enough to just go into a user’s mailbox and extract information because the information in a mailbox is considered “fragile.” It is fragile because a user can easily “delete” a key message or the user can even go in using the Microsoft Outlook client and EDIT a message. If someone opens a user’s mailbox, the messages in the Outlook client can be tampered with and are NOT considered valid evidence.
In the past with Exchange 2007, Exchange 2003, or earlier, it required specific technologies and practices to protect the messages from tampering. The old way of doing things was to buy a 3rd party archiving product like Symantec Enterprise Vault, Iron Mountain / Mimosa NearPoint for Exchange, EMC EmailXtender, Zantaz EAS, or the like. The 3rd party tools required a separate server, typically a special agent to be installed on all Exchange servers and clients, and a relatively high expense to manage, maintain, and support the archiving server and services.
With Exchange 2007, Microsoft included email “Journaling” that allowed a copy of any/all emails to be forwarded to a Journaling Server so that while a user’s mailbox content might have been tampered with, the Journaling Server mailbox would have a un-modified version of the content. Legal review of the Journal copy provided assurances that the copy has not been edited.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: networkworld.com
By: Rand Morimoto
This document clarifies what’s included “in the box” in Exchange 2010 and Office 365, and goes through the step by step procedures for setting up what is necessary to retain content and detailed procedures on how to query and look up information.
Basic Background
To be able to retrieve information for legal or official purposes, information must be properly retained so that the integrity of the information retrieved is valid. As an example, if the Human Resources department, Legal department, or outside Legal Counsel wants to gather information, it’s not good enough to just go into a user’s mailbox and extract information because the information in a mailbox is considered “fragile.” It is fragile because a user can easily “delete” a key message or the user can even go in using the Microsoft Outlook client and EDIT a message. If someone opens a user’s mailbox, the messages in the Outlook client can be tampered with and are NOT considered valid evidence.
In the past with Exchange 2007, Exchange 2003, or earlier, it required specific technologies and practices to protect the messages from tampering. The old way of doing things was to buy a 3rd party archiving product like Symantec Enterprise Vault, Iron Mountain / Mimosa NearPoint for Exchange, EMC EmailXtender, Zantaz EAS, or the like. The 3rd party tools required a separate server, typically a special agent to be installed on all Exchange servers and clients, and a relatively high expense to manage, maintain, and support the archiving server and services.
With Exchange 2007, Microsoft included email “Journaling” that allowed a copy of any/all emails to be forwarded to a Journaling Server so that while a user’s mailbox content might have been tampered with, the Journaling Server mailbox would have a un-modified version of the content. Legal review of the Journal copy provided assurances that the copy has not been edited.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: networkworld.com
By: Rand Morimoto
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Managing Records Means Managing Assets, Risks and Cost
Data is an asset -- and a risk, which is why companies are starting to pay more attention.
Employees are producing records at a record pace in the form of emails, instant message chats, spreadsheets, documents and reports. Those records are posing a challenge for companies as they run out of disk storage and are forced to decide what to save, what to toss, where to store and how to create a formal policy that manages records while meeting compliance standards.
To do that, record management is becoming a group effort among the legal, compliance, IT and records management offices.
"What we're seeing is a much more methodical and interdisciplinary approach because, frankly, this stuff is getting way too hard for one department to handle or for one department to dictate what another one is supposed to do," says Christine Taylor, an analyst at The Taneja Group, an analyst and consulting firm for the technology storage industry. "There's just too much, too many implications, too many questions, too much uncertainty."
The difficulty with records management is that records aren't being produced exclusively by one department like HR applications are for HR, says Sue Trombley, director of consulting at Iron Mountain, a vendor in information protection and storage. "Everybody is creating records to some degree and in all sorts of media -- paper, electronic -- stored all over the place. That's what makes it such a challenge because it's everywhere."
Since records will continue to be produced, managing them will continue to be important. Since 90 percent of business records are shared electronically, companies must be proactive.
IT can't go down one path, compliance another, records management another and legal yet another, Trombley says. There needs to be collaboration through a governance board, advisory body or steering committee so all aspects of the problem are addressed jointly.
"There has to be a plan, there has to be a strategy or roadmap with all of those people involved in order to determine where resources need to be deployed, where there's the highest risk, where's there the highest risk to brand exposure or where are we potentially going to be sanctioned or fined because we're not in compliance with the regulatory body," Trombley says. "All of those pieces have to come together."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: Business Finance
By: Nicole Stempak
Will the government get serious on cloud security, data privacy?
When the federal government finally does undertake the task of legislating around cloud computing, it seems very likely that security measures and data privacy will drive the ship. On Tuesday the TechAmerica Foundation’s CLOUD2 commission announced a data- and security-heavy set of recommendations to guide the federal government’s efforts in regulating, adopting and promoting the cloud, following up on a recent Brookings Institution discussion on a proposed Cloud Computing Act that focuses on those two issues. This isn’t surprising, given that these are two areas in which the government can most directly affect the nature of the cloud.
I covered TechAmerica’s CLOUD2 commission when it kicked off in April, highlighting its mission to advise the Obama administration on cloud computing best practices. The commission is comprised of representatives of more than 70 organizations and is spearheaded by Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. Of the 14 recommendations it made today, 8 of them are focused on security and/or data privacy. They call for everything from the creation of an industry-wide security framework to updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (also the goal of the Digital Due Process coalition) to leading the charge to open up transnational data flows across cloud infrastructure.
The commission also calls for, among other things, increased data portability among clouds — something Commissioner Kurt Roemer of Citrix told me it would back in April — and for the modernization of our broadband infrastructure to better support cloud services.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: reuters.com
By: Derrick Harris
I covered TechAmerica’s CLOUD2 commission when it kicked off in April, highlighting its mission to advise the Obama administration on cloud computing best practices. The commission is comprised of representatives of more than 70 organizations and is spearheaded by Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. Of the 14 recommendations it made today, 8 of them are focused on security and/or data privacy. They call for everything from the creation of an industry-wide security framework to updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (also the goal of the Digital Due Process coalition) to leading the charge to open up transnational data flows across cloud infrastructure.
The commission also calls for, among other things, increased data portability among clouds — something Commissioner Kurt Roemer of Citrix told me it would back in April — and for the modernization of our broadband infrastructure to better support cloud services.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: reuters.com
By: Derrick Harris
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Managing Records Means Managing Assets, Risks and Cost
Data is an asset -- and a risk, which is why companies are starting to pay more attention.
Employees are producing records at a record pace in the form of emails, instant message chats, spreadsheets, documents and reports. Those records are posing a challenge for companies as they run out of disk storage and are forced to decide what to save, what to toss, where to store and how to create a formal policy that manages records while meeting compliance standards.
To do that, record management is becoming a group effort among the legal, compliance, IT and records management offices.
"What we're seeing is a much more methodical and interdisciplinary approach because, frankly, this stuff is getting way too hard for one department to handle or for one department to dictate what another one is supposed to do," says Christine Taylor, an analyst at The Taneja Group, an analyst and consulting firm for the technology storage industry. "There's just too much, too many implications, too many questions, too much uncertainty."
The difficulty with records management is that records aren't being produced exclusively by one department like HR applications are for HR, says Sue Trombley, director of consulting at Iron Mountain, a vendor in information protection and storage. "Everybody is creating records to some degree and in all sorts of media -- paper, electronic -- stored all over the place. That's what makes it such a challenge because it's everywhere."
Since records will continue to be produced, managing them will continue to be important. Since 90 percent of business records are shared electronically, companies must be proactive.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
----------------------------------------------
Source: businessfinancemag.com
By: Nicole Stempak
Employees are producing records at a record pace in the form of emails, instant message chats, spreadsheets, documents and reports. Those records are posing a challenge for companies as they run out of disk storage and are forced to decide what to save, what to toss, where to store and how to create a formal policy that manages records while meeting compliance standards.
To do that, record management is becoming a group effort among the legal, compliance, IT and records management offices.
"What we're seeing is a much more methodical and interdisciplinary approach because, frankly, this stuff is getting way too hard for one department to handle or for one department to dictate what another one is supposed to do," says Christine Taylor, an analyst at The Taneja Group, an analyst and consulting firm for the technology storage industry. "There's just too much, too many implications, too many questions, too much uncertainty."
The difficulty with records management is that records aren't being produced exclusively by one department like HR applications are for HR, says Sue Trombley, director of consulting at Iron Mountain, a vendor in information protection and storage. "Everybody is creating records to some degree and in all sorts of media -- paper, electronic -- stored all over the place. That's what makes it such a challenge because it's everywhere."
Since records will continue to be produced, managing them will continue to be important. Since 90 percent of business records are shared electronically, companies must be proactive.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: businessfinancemag.com
By: Nicole Stempak
Legal issues in the Cloud: What CIOs need to worry about
How a lack of negotiation, offshoring of data and international law affect your contracts
The inability to negotiate terms of Cloud computing contracts, as well as the offshoring of data by vendors are two issues CIOs should be concerned about, a Sydney lawyer has said.
Speaking at the SecureSydney conference, Truman Hoyle Lawyers partner, Mark Vincent, presented his study of 25 standard Cloud contracts in a snapshot of the IT industry and found CIOs had no idea what their rights are, even after signing on the dotted line.
“Your contract often comes without someone to negotiate with,” Vincent said.
“There’s no-one at the end of the phone to talk to about a contract.”
As well as a lack of knowledge about Cloud contracts, Vincent said CIOs should be aware of the international laws that govern access to data stored in the Cloud.
“Generally, Australia’s jurisdiction stops on the border and for that reason ... there’s a limited ability for the Australian government to do anything about it,” he said.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: cio.com.au
By: Lisa Banks
The inability to negotiate terms of Cloud computing contracts, as well as the offshoring of data by vendors are two issues CIOs should be concerned about, a Sydney lawyer has said.
Speaking at the SecureSydney conference, Truman Hoyle Lawyers partner, Mark Vincent, presented his study of 25 standard Cloud contracts in a snapshot of the IT industry and found CIOs had no idea what their rights are, even after signing on the dotted line.
“Your contract often comes without someone to negotiate with,” Vincent said.
“There’s no-one at the end of the phone to talk to about a contract.”
As well as a lack of knowledge about Cloud contracts, Vincent said CIOs should be aware of the international laws that govern access to data stored in the Cloud.
“Generally, Australia’s jurisdiction stops on the border and for that reason ... there’s a limited ability for the Australian government to do anything about it,” he said.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: cio.com.au
By: Lisa Banks
Mitigating cloud computing risks
Cloud computing is not without its risks, but it’s up to corporations to do due diligence before they hand over their data, says one lawyer who specializes in electronic discovery.
Cloud computing services provide data storage over the Internet, commonly referred to as being “in the cloud.” Although it does have its benefits, there are risks associated with this increasingly popular phenomenon, such as potential data breaches.
A recent data breach occurred within cloud computing service provider Dropbox, which allows users to transfer their computer files to the company’s Internet servers. One of the company’s users launched a lawsuit in California alleging it didn’t secure users’ private data or notify all of them about the data breach.
The lawsuit claims Dropbox suffered a glitch where logged-in users were able to access other users’ data. It also claims instead of notifying users of the breach, it simply mentioned it in a blog post. The post allegedly said the glitch was fixed five minutes after it was discovered and that only a small group of users was affected.
That kind of response “wouldn’t fly in Canada,” says Kelly Friedman, a partner at Davis LLP and chairwoman of the steering committee at Sedona Canada. That’s because Canada has more stringent privacy rules under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: canadianlawyermag.com
By: Heather Gardiner
Cloud computing services provide data storage over the Internet, commonly referred to as being “in the cloud.” Although it does have its benefits, there are risks associated with this increasingly popular phenomenon, such as potential data breaches.
A recent data breach occurred within cloud computing service provider Dropbox, which allows users to transfer their computer files to the company’s Internet servers. One of the company’s users launched a lawsuit in California alleging it didn’t secure users’ private data or notify all of them about the data breach.
The lawsuit claims Dropbox suffered a glitch where logged-in users were able to access other users’ data. It also claims instead of notifying users of the breach, it simply mentioned it in a blog post. The post allegedly said the glitch was fixed five minutes after it was discovered and that only a small group of users was affected.
That kind of response “wouldn’t fly in Canada,” says Kelly Friedman, a partner at Davis LLP and chairwoman of the steering committee at Sedona Canada. That’s because Canada has more stringent privacy rules under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: canadianlawyermag.com
By: Heather Gardiner
Friday, July 22, 2011
Assessing Cost-Shifting for Electronic Discovery in Federal and State Court
Introduction
The plaintiff files an action against the defendant, her former employer, alleging gender discrimination and retaliatory firing. During the course of discovery, the plaintiff requests the production of e-mails relating to discrimination against the plaintiff and other women employed by the defendant. The cost of producing the e-mails is approximately $225,000.00. The defendant requests that the court shift the cost of production to the plaintiff who has the potential to receive a multi-million dollar recovery. How should the court rule on the defendant’s cost shifting-request?[2]
The increase in the use of electronic discovery has made this type of problem common. This article briefly examines when cost-shifting in the context of electronic discovery is deemed appropriate in federal and state court.
Cost-Shifting in Federal Court
As a general rule, “the responding party must bear the expense of complying with discovery requests.”[3] This rule applies equally to the discovery of paper documents and the discovery of electronically stored information.[4] The 2006 amendments to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 provide an exception to this general rule by dividing electronically stored information into two categories: accessible information, which is presumptively discoverable, and inaccessible information, which is presumptively undiscoverable.[5]
Specifically, amended Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(2)(B) provides that the responding party “need not provide discovery of electronically stored information from sources that the party identifies as not reasonably accessible because of undue burden or cost.”[6] The burden is on the responding party to show that the electronically stored information at issue is “not reasonably accessible in light of the burdens and costs required to search for, retrieve, and produce” the information.[7]
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Source: DULR Online
By: Sudee Mirsafian Wright
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Are Student Cell Phone Records Discoverable?
The debate over when officials can search a student's cell phone is an emerging e-discovery issue. This is illustrated in the recent case N.N. v. Tunkhannock Area School District, Civil Action No. 3:10-CV-1080, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
In this case, a student at Tunkhannock Area High School in Tunkhannock, Pa., violated a school policy requiring cell phones to be turned off and stored in lockers during the school day by placing a call from her cell phone while on school property. A teacher confiscated the phone. School officials then examined the contents of the cell phone and discovered what appeared to be inappropriate photographs stored in the phone's memory.
The phone was turned over to the police. The court opinion states that, "Aside from one photograph taken by a female friend, the photographs were taken by [the student] alone, and were intended for the sole consumption of herself and her long-term boyfriend. The photographs were taken off school property, were saved to the cell phone, were never e-mailed or uploaded to the internet, and were not shared with other students."
While the police did not seem intent on pursuing charges -- a detective allegedly told the student that "had she only waited until her 18th birthday, she could have submitted the photographs directly to Playboy magazine instead of getting in trouble -- the district attorney took the matter more seriously. He wrote a letter to the student threatening to bring child felony pornography charges against her unless the student (and some others) completed a re-education course on sexual violence and victimization.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Joshua A. Engel
In this case, a student at Tunkhannock Area High School in Tunkhannock, Pa., violated a school policy requiring cell phones to be turned off and stored in lockers during the school day by placing a call from her cell phone while on school property. A teacher confiscated the phone. School officials then examined the contents of the cell phone and discovered what appeared to be inappropriate photographs stored in the phone's memory.
The phone was turned over to the police. The court opinion states that, "Aside from one photograph taken by a female friend, the photographs were taken by [the student] alone, and were intended for the sole consumption of herself and her long-term boyfriend. The photographs were taken off school property, were saved to the cell phone, were never e-mailed or uploaded to the internet, and were not shared with other students."
While the police did not seem intent on pursuing charges -- a detective allegedly told the student that "had she only waited until her 18th birthday, she could have submitted the photographs directly to Playboy magazine instead of getting in trouble -- the district attorney took the matter more seriously. He wrote a letter to the student threatening to bring child felony pornography charges against her unless the student (and some others) completed a re-education course on sexual violence and victimization.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Joshua A. Engel
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Electronic Discovery and Your Practice
Designed to make our professional and personal lives easier, this technology places everything and everyone at our fingertips in an instant. But is there a price for such convenience? When it comes to litigation and discovery, there may be a very real and significant financial cost.
Many of us enjoy these devices as they allow us to offer immediate feedback and praise ourselves on our responsiveness. Oftentimes, we prioritize quick feedback over accuracy. Likewise, as we tend to use these devices in private, we often assume that our comments, suggestions and even playful give-and-take will remain confidential. This is not the case, and our cavalier attitude should be tempered.
In many cases, electronically stored information (ESI) is as discoverable as a patient’s paper chart. It is, therefore, imperative that all potentially relevant electronic information be preserved as soon as litigation is reasonably anticipated. Failure to do so can result in harsh consequences, including monetary sanctions and even an adverse judgment. Your attorney will be able to guide you through this process to ensure that the preservation is effectuated in a forensically sound manner so that even inadvertent alteration of records cannot occur.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
----------------------------------------------------
Source: MD News
By:
Discovery of Widespread Illegal e-Discovery Dooms the Media Empire of Rupert Murdoch
The scandal of Rupert Murdoch, the world’s most powerful media mogul, is essentially a story of e-discovery, the seamy dark side of e-discovery that operates underground and in violation of the law – the world of hackers. Segments of Murdoch’s media empire have been caught in the practice of illegal discovery of voice mail messages, a practice misnamed phone hacking.
Murdoch’s over 4,000 victims include the British Royal family, British and world political leaders, celebrities, families of NY 9/11 victims (which the FBI is investigating), parents of a kidnapped child, and pretty much anyone else in the world that Murdoch’s British scandal rags wanted to investigate and exploit. You know the story, just don’t look for it on Fox or the Wall Street Journal or hundreds of other media companies that Murdoch owns. Don’t ask Scotland Yard either; they appear to have buckled under to Murdoch’s immense political influence in Great Britain. This is an important story, for although the power of big media has been diminished by the Internet, decentralization, and individual empowerment, there is still much truth in Learned Hand’s statement:
The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen and the far-spread magazine, rules the country.
This blog will go into the Murdoch story from the perspective of electronic discovery and explore the legal, technical, and ethical implications of voice mail hacking. I will explain what it is, and some of the most common ways it’s done. All of the bad guy hackers already know how to do it, so you should too. In that way you can protect yourself and your clients. We are not talking about complex Lulzsec type hacks here. You will be astonished to see how easy it is.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: Summify
By: Ralph Losey
Business Embracing Social Media, But Not Always What Employees Say
If you recruit in Italy, don’t check the social networks when you background a candidate. In Spain, you can monitor the time your workers spend on social networks, if you warn them in advance you’re going to. But without their permission you can’t monitor the content.
And do you have a company policy regarding social networking? Only 55 percent of the companies do, according to a survey by the International Labor & Employment Group at Proskauer Rose.
The high-powered law firm conducted what it describes as an “informal survey on emerging trends and practices on the use of social media in the workplace,” finding that 76 percent of the 120 responding companies use social media for business purposes.
The results of the 10-question survey are supplemented by brief summaries of rules and regulations around the world, which, as in the U.S., can be fairly loose, or, as in Italy, so restrictive that employers can’t even monitor what their workers are doing on company time using company equipment. (Employers there can, however, prohibit the use of social networking sites during work hours.)
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: ere.net
By: John Zappe
And do you have a company policy regarding social networking? Only 55 percent of the companies do, according to a survey by the International Labor & Employment Group at Proskauer Rose.
The high-powered law firm conducted what it describes as an “informal survey on emerging trends and practices on the use of social media in the workplace,” finding that 76 percent of the 120 responding companies use social media for business purposes.
The results of the 10-question survey are supplemented by brief summaries of rules and regulations around the world, which, as in the U.S., can be fairly loose, or, as in Italy, so restrictive that employers can’t even monitor what their workers are doing on company time using company equipment. (Employers there can, however, prohibit the use of social networking sites during work hours.)
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: ere.net
By: John Zappe
Monday, July 18, 2011
Can you comply with court orders for data from the cloud?
The very nature of cloud storage, and one of its selling points, is that the cloud is dynamic. You only use what you need and shut down what you don’t. So if the court orders a forensic recovery of the lost data from the cloud hard drives:
• Do we even know which specific drives were in use by XYZ before the crash at EC2?
• Would Amazon have the ability to remove those drives and replace with others if ordered to do so?
• How many other companies' data have been written on those drives in the interim?
• If the original XYZ data have been overwritten by other companies and the drives are removed for recovery attempts, does the removal mean that the later users have now lost control of their data?
• Do the current users of the removed drives have to be served with a notice that the drives are being forensically reviewed?
• Is there a legal requirement that the current users need to be notified?
• Are the current users due a description of how their data was handled during the recovery and how it was destroyed when the exam was complete in order for them to produce the same to their customers as ordered for compliance with applicable laws?
One last concern facing most companies legally is that of legal hold orders and/or search warrants.
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Source: networkworld.com
By: M. E. Kabay and Gordon Merrill Gordon Merrill
• Would Amazon have the ability to remove those drives and replace with others if ordered to do so?
• How many other companies' data have been written on those drives in the interim?
• If the original XYZ data have been overwritten by other companies and the drives are removed for recovery attempts, does the removal mean that the later users have now lost control of their data?
• Do the current users of the removed drives have to be served with a notice that the drives are being forensically reviewed?
• Is there a legal requirement that the current users need to be notified?
• Are the current users due a description of how their data was handled during the recovery and how it was destroyed when the exam was complete in order for them to produce the same to their customers as ordered for compliance with applicable laws?
One last concern facing most companies legally is that of legal hold orders and/or search warrants.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: networkworld.com
By: M. E. Kabay and Gordon Merrill Gordon Merrill
Saturday, July 16, 2011
How to Manage ESI to Rein In Runaway Costs
The swelling cost of electronic discovery is a pressing issue for businesses everywhere, and many GCs are now resigned to spending ever-larger shares of their companies' budgets on managing and producing massive amounts of electronically stored information. Yet, even amid the rolling waves of e-mails, text messages, spreadsheets, and other digital documents that wash into and out of just about any company during the average workday, proper management of ESI need not translate into a budget-busting nightmare. Indeed, by taking an informed and systematic approach to the problem, many businesses stand to dramatically lower their e-discovery costs.
For most companies, the biggest expense in this area comes in the form of billable hours for document-review attorneys. These teams of specialists are tasked with sifting through digital files for information that could be relevant to ongoing legal matters. Sometimes, the reviews center on oceans of ones and zeros -- volumes of data so vast they are measured in terabytes. (One terabyte equals 1,000 gigabytes, or a trillion bytes.) Naturally, an overarching goal of any e-discovery cost-reduction effort should be to figure out how to tighten this review process. Is it possible for attorneys to be given fewer documents to review from the outset? Are there ways in which the review process itself could be sped up without sacrificing accuracy?
A logical place to start is the data in hand -- all of the information stored on servers, hard drives, back-up tapes, and the like in systems old and new. Despite the high cost of its painstaking preservation and storage, much of this data will never be relevant to any legal case. (Think of those ubiquitous e-mails with the likes of "Happy Birthday, Jan!" or "Super-cute YouTube baby!" in the subject line.) Indeed, according to a 2009 survey by Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, 60 to 80 percent of the information retained by corporations in America has no value from a business or legal perspective.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Dennis R. Kiker
For most companies, the biggest expense in this area comes in the form of billable hours for document-review attorneys. These teams of specialists are tasked with sifting through digital files for information that could be relevant to ongoing legal matters. Sometimes, the reviews center on oceans of ones and zeros -- volumes of data so vast they are measured in terabytes. (One terabyte equals 1,000 gigabytes, or a trillion bytes.) Naturally, an overarching goal of any e-discovery cost-reduction effort should be to figure out how to tighten this review process. Is it possible for attorneys to be given fewer documents to review from the outset? Are there ways in which the review process itself could be sped up without sacrificing accuracy?
A logical place to start is the data in hand -- all of the information stored on servers, hard drives, back-up tapes, and the like in systems old and new. Despite the high cost of its painstaking preservation and storage, much of this data will never be relevant to any legal case. (Think of those ubiquitous e-mails with the likes of "Happy Birthday, Jan!" or "Super-cute YouTube baby!" in the subject line.) Indeed, according to a 2009 survey by Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, 60 to 80 percent of the information retained by corporations in America has no value from a business or legal perspective.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Dennis R. Kiker
Google+: The Complete Guide
Google+: It’s the hot social network on the block. In just three weeks, Google’s competitor to Facebook and Twitter has amassed more than 10 million users, and its users are sharing more than 1 billion pieces of content daily. It’s become a hotbed for early adopters, tech luminaries, marketers and businesses around the world.
Google+ isn’t the easiest thing to understand, though. It has a lot of features that can confuse beginners. Even advanced users can miss a lot of the little gems and nuances that define Google+.
That’s why we decided to dig into every aspect of Google+, from Hangouts to Circles, from Google+ for businesses to what’s next for Google’s social network. The result is an extensive guide on all of Google+’s key features, as well as an introduction to the service and the important things you need to know about it. We’ve included commentary, videos, photos and more in our in-depth guide. In addition, we will update this guide regularly with the newest information on Google’s Facebook competitor.
So, without further ado, here is Mashable‘s complete guide to Google+:
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: mashable.com
By: Ben Parr
Google+ isn’t the easiest thing to understand, though. It has a lot of features that can confuse beginners. Even advanced users can miss a lot of the little gems and nuances that define Google+.
That’s why we decided to dig into every aspect of Google+, from Hangouts to Circles, from Google+ for businesses to what’s next for Google’s social network. The result is an extensive guide on all of Google+’s key features, as well as an introduction to the service and the important things you need to know about it. We’ve included commentary, videos, photos and more in our in-depth guide. In addition, we will update this guide regularly with the newest information on Google’s Facebook competitor.
So, without further ado, here is Mashable‘s complete guide to Google+:
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: mashable.com
By: Ben Parr
Bloomberg Unfolds E-Discovery Road Map
Bloomberg, the financial news company, is building a comprehensive e-discovery service in addition to its recently expanded legal research service, Global Business Manager Harald Collet said.
As Bloomberg rival and legal industry stalwart LexisNexis bolsters its own e-discovery goals -- and with e-discovery overall growing into a multibillion-dollar market, according to recent Gartner and Socha-Gelbmann reports -- the sector is "definitely an interesting space and you can imagine with my background we have insight into that market," Collet said.
Few details are public. Collet observed that Bloomberg has more than 3,000 engineers on staff, so the new features will be developed in-house, not acquired from other companies. Whether the software will be ready this year or in 2012 isn't yet determined, he said. He declined to say how far the technology may expand into the Electronic Discovery Reference Model and whether it will ship in parts or as a full system.
But it's something that financial services customers want. "The market is definitely evolving very quickly. What we hear from our clients is they want us to assist them with their e-discovery needs. We're definitely planning to continue to support that workflow with even more capabilities," Collet explained. Any such technology could also be useful in other industries that have government regulation, he said.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Evan Koblentz
As Bloomberg rival and legal industry stalwart LexisNexis bolsters its own e-discovery goals -- and with e-discovery overall growing into a multibillion-dollar market, according to recent Gartner and Socha-Gelbmann reports -- the sector is "definitely an interesting space and you can imagine with my background we have insight into that market," Collet said.
Few details are public. Collet observed that Bloomberg has more than 3,000 engineers on staff, so the new features will be developed in-house, not acquired from other companies. Whether the software will be ready this year or in 2012 isn't yet determined, he said. He declined to say how far the technology may expand into the Electronic Discovery Reference Model and whether it will ship in parts or as a full system.
But it's something that financial services customers want. "The market is definitely evolving very quickly. What we hear from our clients is they want us to assist them with their e-discovery needs. We're definitely planning to continue to support that workflow with even more capabilities," Collet explained. Any such technology could also be useful in other industries that have government regulation, he said.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Evan Koblentz
It's 1 am - do you know where your data is?
If you're using a US-owned or hosted cloud service provider, then there's no way of knowing.
That's because the US's PATRIOT Act means the US government can access and copy your data, without you knowing. And it's not just data that's on disks in the US that can be requested - it can be data held anywhere in the world. National and EU data protection and privacy rules don't apply, and the Safe Harbour provisions turn out to be neither safe nor a haven.
A group of us had suspected that was the case for some time, and have been trying to get a straight answer from any cloud provider - getting bounced back and forth from PR to legal and back again, in the end it was our ZDNet US colleague Zack Whittaker who got the answer we'd been waiting for, from Microsoft UK's MD Gordon Frazer at the Office 365 launch event a couple of weeks ago. It was an answer that's opened an enormous can of worms, and sparked debate in the European Parliament, as Frazer confirmed that the US PATRIOT Act overruled European privacy directives and the Safe Harbour agreement, as well as the UK Data Protection Act for US owned organisations and US-situated subsidiaries of European companies.
That means that US government can (under the auspices of the act) request the data of any individual or company that's using US-owned or hosted services, no matter where that data is actually being held. It doesn't matter if you've geo-locked your data, and it only resides in European data centres, it can still be requisitioned and taken to the US. Yes, it's an issue of national security, but when results can be found by machine learning and trawling massive data sets (the larger the better), there's a temptation for governments to take all they can and more.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: ZDNet.co.uk
By: Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe
That's because the US's PATRIOT Act means the US government can access and copy your data, without you knowing. And it's not just data that's on disks in the US that can be requested - it can be data held anywhere in the world. National and EU data protection and privacy rules don't apply, and the Safe Harbour provisions turn out to be neither safe nor a haven.
A group of us had suspected that was the case for some time, and have been trying to get a straight answer from any cloud provider - getting bounced back and forth from PR to legal and back again, in the end it was our ZDNet US colleague Zack Whittaker who got the answer we'd been waiting for, from Microsoft UK's MD Gordon Frazer at the Office 365 launch event a couple of weeks ago. It was an answer that's opened an enormous can of worms, and sparked debate in the European Parliament, as Frazer confirmed that the US PATRIOT Act overruled European privacy directives and the Safe Harbour agreement, as well as the UK Data Protection Act for US owned organisations and US-situated subsidiaries of European companies.
That means that US government can (under the auspices of the act) request the data of any individual or company that's using US-owned or hosted services, no matter where that data is actually being held. It doesn't matter if you've geo-locked your data, and it only resides in European data centres, it can still be requisitioned and taken to the US. Yes, it's an issue of national security, but when results can be found by machine learning and trawling massive data sets (the larger the better), there's a temptation for governments to take all they can and more.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: ZDNet.co.uk
By: Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Is your company ready for legal holds and compliance with mobility and the cloud?
It has not been too long since Google lost millions of e-mails and struggled to get most (!) of them back for customers. Amazon recently had cloud issues where they were not able to restore all the data their cloud customers had placed on their servers.
I recently sat in on a presentation hosted by the Chattanooga Technology Council called "Cloud Computing: Separating Fact from Fiction." The Google and Amazon situations were discussed in this meeting and IT leaders questioned whether the cloud was secure enough yet for any other than benign data.
Are you ready for the cloud? If so, will you use a public service or a private cloud?
Companies are being urged to go virtual and into the cloud to be competitive. We usually read advice to use private clouds, not public clouds. Controlling our own cloud can afford some degree of protection beyond security on public clouds; however, they are both accessible through an IP address, making both types of cloud vulnerable.
But in addition to the security and data integrity of cloud computing, legal and compliance issues become more ah, clouded, – OK, more complex – when we enter the cloud.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: networkworld.com
By: M. E. Kabay and Gordon Merrill Gordon Merrill
I recently sat in on a presentation hosted by the Chattanooga Technology Council called "Cloud Computing: Separating Fact from Fiction." The Google and Amazon situations were discussed in this meeting and IT leaders questioned whether the cloud was secure enough yet for any other than benign data.
Are you ready for the cloud? If so, will you use a public service or a private cloud?
Companies are being urged to go virtual and into the cloud to be competitive. We usually read advice to use private clouds, not public clouds. Controlling our own cloud can afford some degree of protection beyond security on public clouds; however, they are both accessible through an IP address, making both types of cloud vulnerable.
But in addition to the security and data integrity of cloud computing, legal and compliance issues become more ah, clouded, – OK, more complex – when we enter the cloud.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: networkworld.com
By: M. E. Kabay and Gordon Merrill Gordon Merrill
Be Careful What You Put On Social Media?
Report says content might cause problems later with the law
Let’s face it. Most people who use social media these days put just about anything and everything up on a Facebook or MySpace account without giving it a second thought.
Names, dates, places, where they’ve been, where they are going to be, what they just bought, who their friends are, photos of darned near everything, what they eat, where they eat, opinions on everything, the works.
But few give pause to think about the ways that could work against them if they ever have a problem with the law down the road.
Why might that be an issue?
Because U.S. law-enforcement agencies are increasingly getting warrants to search Facebook, “often gaining detailed access to users' accounts without their knowledge,” according to a new report by Fox news.
One review of the Westlaw legal database by a news service shows that since 2008, federal judges have authorized at least two dozen warrants to search individuals' Facebook accounts and, “many of the warrants requested a laundry list of personal data such as messages, status updates, links to videos and photographs, calendars of future and past events, "Wall postings" and "rejected Friend requests."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: skyvalleychronicle.com
Let’s face it. Most people who use social media these days put just about anything and everything up on a Facebook or MySpace account without giving it a second thought.
Names, dates, places, where they’ve been, where they are going to be, what they just bought, who their friends are, photos of darned near everything, what they eat, where they eat, opinions on everything, the works.
But few give pause to think about the ways that could work against them if they ever have a problem with the law down the road.
Why might that be an issue?
Because U.S. law-enforcement agencies are increasingly getting warrants to search Facebook, “often gaining detailed access to users' accounts without their knowledge,” according to a new report by Fox news.
One review of the Westlaw legal database by a news service shows that since 2008, federal judges have authorized at least two dozen warrants to search individuals' Facebook accounts and, “many of the warrants requested a laundry list of personal data such as messages, status updates, links to videos and photographs, calendars of future and past events, "Wall postings" and "rejected Friend requests."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: skyvalleychronicle.com
US cops addicted to Facebook data
Users never know
US coppers are getting warrants for detailed access to users' Facebook accounts without their knowledge.
According to Reuters, since 2008, federal judges have authorised at least two dozen warrants to search individuals' Facebook accounts to the FBI, DEA and ICE. The investigations range from arson to rape to terrorism.
Facebook gives the cops a detailed package of profile and photo information that is not even available to users themselves.
It looks like the cops are getting so addicted to the amount of useful data that they can get from these profiles that they are hitting the courts for more warrants. Federal agencies were granted at least 11 warrants to search Facebook since the beginning of 2011, double the number for all of 2010.
However, that figure may be much higher becase some records are sealed.
Facebook's chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, told Reuters that Facebook was sensitive to user privacy and that it regularly pushes back against law-enforcement "fishing expeditions".
But Reuters hacks found that none of the warrants discovered in the review have been challenged on the grounds that it violated a person's Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful search and seizure.
This is alarming constitutional-law experts who think this is because the defendants and their "friends" never knew about them.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: techeye.net
By: Nick Farrell
US coppers are getting warrants for detailed access to users' Facebook accounts without their knowledge.
According to Reuters, since 2008, federal judges have authorised at least two dozen warrants to search individuals' Facebook accounts to the FBI, DEA and ICE. The investigations range from arson to rape to terrorism.
Facebook gives the cops a detailed package of profile and photo information that is not even available to users themselves.
It looks like the cops are getting so addicted to the amount of useful data that they can get from these profiles that they are hitting the courts for more warrants. Federal agencies were granted at least 11 warrants to search Facebook since the beginning of 2011, double the number for all of 2010.
However, that figure may be much higher becase some records are sealed.
Facebook's chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, told Reuters that Facebook was sensitive to user privacy and that it regularly pushes back against law-enforcement "fishing expeditions".
But Reuters hacks found that none of the warrants discovered in the review have been challenged on the grounds that it violated a person's Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful search and seizure.
This is alarming constitutional-law experts who think this is because the defendants and their "friends" never knew about them.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: techeye.net
By: Nick Farrell
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Why cloud computing must evolve
Commentary: Unstructured data are a challenge to current technologies
The adoption of cloud computing — with businesses running a significant portion of their applications in the cloud — is on the verge of becoming ubiquitous. This marked increase in the use of the Internet for accessing computing resources will necessitate an evolution in the cloud computing network, which will include accessing public and private data.
For one thing, cloud computing networks will move from the relatively homogeneous multi-client-to-single-server networks of today, to vastly more-complex heterogeneous multi-client-to-multi-server networks needed to integrate applications and data distributed across the Internet.
Beyond this, there will be a need to amalgamate and analyze vast amounts of data — enterprise data, market data and social media data — most of which is unstructured corporate information that is not in a pre-defined database.
Integrating all this data will necessitate replacing archaic, 40-year-old data-management systems with more advanced programs capable of managing data of all kinds — structured or unstructured — that’s distributed anywhere across heterogeneous global networks.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: marketwatch.com
By: Charles Silver
The adoption of cloud computing — with businesses running a significant portion of their applications in the cloud — is on the verge of becoming ubiquitous. This marked increase in the use of the Internet for accessing computing resources will necessitate an evolution in the cloud computing network, which will include accessing public and private data.
For one thing, cloud computing networks will move from the relatively homogeneous multi-client-to-single-server networks of today, to vastly more-complex heterogeneous multi-client-to-multi-server networks needed to integrate applications and data distributed across the Internet.
Beyond this, there will be a need to amalgamate and analyze vast amounts of data — enterprise data, market data and social media data — most of which is unstructured corporate information that is not in a pre-defined database.
Integrating all this data will necessitate replacing archaic, 40-year-old data-management systems with more advanced programs capable of managing data of all kinds — structured or unstructured — that’s distributed anywhere across heterogeneous global networks.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: marketwatch.com
By: Charles Silver
Who Has to Pay for E-Discovery?
The prevalence and cost of electronic discovery have grown substantially within the past 10 years. Many parties, particularly corporate defendants, have become increasingly concerned and frustrated after having to pay for e-discovery searches to respond to requests that seem overly broad or to be pure fishing expeditions.
While it may not always be possible to avoid the expense of e-discovery, the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provide for shifting the cost of production to the requesting party under certain circumstances.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(2)(B) states:
A party need not provide discovery of electronically stored information from sources that the party identifies as not reasonably accessible because of undue burden or cost. On motion to compel discovery or for a protective order, the party from whom discovery is sought must show that the information is not reasonably accessible because of undue burden or cost. If that showing is made, the court may nonetheless order discovery from such sources if the requesting party shows good cause considering the limitations of Rule 26(b)(2)(C). The court may specify conditions for the discovery.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Ileana Blanco
While it may not always be possible to avoid the expense of e-discovery, the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provide for shifting the cost of production to the requesting party under certain circumstances.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(2)(B) states:
A party need not provide discovery of electronically stored information from sources that the party identifies as not reasonably accessible because of undue burden or cost. On motion to compel discovery or for a protective order, the party from whom discovery is sought must show that the information is not reasonably accessible because of undue burden or cost. If that showing is made, the court may nonetheless order discovery from such sources if the requesting party shows good cause considering the limitations of Rule 26(b)(2)(C). The court may specify conditions for the discovery.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Ileana Blanco
Use of Social Media in Dispute Proceedings
Whether one “tweets,” “friends” or otherwise communicates on any of the many social networking websites available for personal or business communications, you should realize that what is said, posted or received may be used in the course of court or arbitral proceedings.
Social networking is now an integral part of our communication tool box and has greatly facilitated the exchange of information. However, it has also expanded the scope of accountability in a way that paper trails seldom do. Depending upon the importance of the issues or money at stake, these are trails that litigation will inevitably explore and expose.
This article briefly considers the way in which core aspects of dispute resolution have been affected by social media, namely notice; preservation, production and discovery of documents; and the use of documents in a court or arbitral proceeding.
Notice of Legal Proceedings
Historically, notice of an originating legal proceeding had to be served personally or by a limited number of alternatives to personal service. Depending upon the facts and the need for immediate court response, any method of bringing the proceeding to the recipient’s attention is acceptable if it can be demonstrated that there is a high probability of the notice being received. The reason for these procedural safeguards is to ensure fairness and provide the recipient with an opportunity to be heard.
In the event that the proceeding goes forward in the absence of the recipient, the result can be set aside if it can be demonstrated that the notice had not come to the recipient’s attention through no fault of the recipient.
Canadian courts have always had jurisdiction to order service by a non-routine method, called substituted service, where it was impractical to effect prompt personal service or where it was necessary in the interests of justice to do so.
Even if an order for substituted service is not obtained in advance, courts can always validate service, provided that it can be established that the recipient received such notice and was attempting to evade service. However, even where evasion has not been an issue, courts have validated service where it can be demonstrated that notice came to the attention of the recipient.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: blakes.com
By: Alan Aucoin
Social networking is now an integral part of our communication tool box and has greatly facilitated the exchange of information. However, it has also expanded the scope of accountability in a way that paper trails seldom do. Depending upon the importance of the issues or money at stake, these are trails that litigation will inevitably explore and expose.
This article briefly considers the way in which core aspects of dispute resolution have been affected by social media, namely notice; preservation, production and discovery of documents; and the use of documents in a court or arbitral proceeding.
Notice of Legal Proceedings
Historically, notice of an originating legal proceeding had to be served personally or by a limited number of alternatives to personal service. Depending upon the facts and the need for immediate court response, any method of bringing the proceeding to the recipient’s attention is acceptable if it can be demonstrated that there is a high probability of the notice being received. The reason for these procedural safeguards is to ensure fairness and provide the recipient with an opportunity to be heard.
In the event that the proceeding goes forward in the absence of the recipient, the result can be set aside if it can be demonstrated that the notice had not come to the recipient’s attention through no fault of the recipient.
Canadian courts have always had jurisdiction to order service by a non-routine method, called substituted service, where it was impractical to effect prompt personal service or where it was necessary in the interests of justice to do so.
Even if an order for substituted service is not obtained in advance, courts can always validate service, provided that it can be established that the recipient received such notice and was attempting to evade service. However, even where evasion has not been an issue, courts have validated service where it can be demonstrated that notice came to the attention of the recipient.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: blakes.com
By: Alan Aucoin
Background check companies can save social media posts for 7 years
Posting pictures and comments on social media sites can be risky if the content is deemed inappropriate especially to a potential employer.
But now, that content could still be accessible several years down the road.
The Federal Trade Commission ruled that your postings on any social media site can be saved by on-line background companies for up to seven years.
It may not sound so bad if you're a teen, but those postings could come back to haunt you in the future when you're job hunting.
Allen Ramirez hasn't seen this MySpace page in three years, but with a quick search of his name the page popped up.
"It's kind of scary to think that you're so vulnerable through the social network," said Allen Ramirez who uses social media.
The Federal Trade Commision ruled it is legal for social media sites like MySpace to save people's postings for up to seven years.
Many employers use social media background screening services in their hiring process.
"It just makes you that much more weary of what you post online," said Ramirez.
He wants to be a child development psychologist, a profession that would require an extensive background check.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: valleycentral.com
By: Erika Flores
But now, that content could still be accessible several years down the road.
The Federal Trade Commission ruled that your postings on any social media site can be saved by on-line background companies for up to seven years.
It may not sound so bad if you're a teen, but those postings could come back to haunt you in the future when you're job hunting.
Allen Ramirez hasn't seen this MySpace page in three years, but with a quick search of his name the page popped up.
"It's kind of scary to think that you're so vulnerable through the social network," said Allen Ramirez who uses social media.
The Federal Trade Commision ruled it is legal for social media sites like MySpace to save people's postings for up to seven years.
Many employers use social media background screening services in their hiring process.
"It just makes you that much more weary of what you post online," said Ramirez.
He wants to be a child development psychologist, a profession that would require an extensive background check.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: valleycentral.com
By: Erika Flores
Monday, July 11, 2011
Google+: And You Thought Facebook Is a Privacy Nightmare
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG ) is opening Google+ to more users as private invites remain available to existing users. There have been hiccups, and the population remains very limited, but Google is already facing privacy concerns that can only grow as more users enter the stream.
The launch of Google+ has been nothing short of stunning, as the limited user base initiated a monumental grassroots marketing campaign for the network that is apparently Google's strongest weapon to fight Facebook and Twitter for advertising revenue. If you have been among a small group of first-week Google+ users, you could have thought that scarce invites are about as valuable as the first spot in the line for the next iPhone.
Google opened the doors to its network a bit more last week and apparently doubled the population of its network. Despite hiccups that included flooded Google hard drives and caused a wave of Plus spam on the network, it seems that the service is scaling fast, as invites remain largely available to be sent out by users. A friend exporter has been blocked by Facebook, but there is now a tool that enables users to import the Facebook stream to Google+, and Facebook status messages can be posted directly from within Google+. To view, comment, or reply to posts, users will have to switch to Facebook, however.
What particularly surprised us here at ConceivablyTech is the virtually nonexistent privacy on Google+. If you have complained about a lack of privacy on Facebook before, you surely won't like Google+, and if you freely voice your opinion that could get you in legal trouble, you may want to think twice about using Google+. The company's general terms of service also apply to this new service, which would include these paragraphs:
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: fool.com
By: Kurt Bakke
The launch of Google+ has been nothing short of stunning, as the limited user base initiated a monumental grassroots marketing campaign for the network that is apparently Google's strongest weapon to fight Facebook and Twitter for advertising revenue. If you have been among a small group of first-week Google+ users, you could have thought that scarce invites are about as valuable as the first spot in the line for the next iPhone.
Google opened the doors to its network a bit more last week and apparently doubled the population of its network. Despite hiccups that included flooded Google hard drives and caused a wave of Plus spam on the network, it seems that the service is scaling fast, as invites remain largely available to be sent out by users. A friend exporter has been blocked by Facebook, but there is now a tool that enables users to import the Facebook stream to Google+, and Facebook status messages can be posted directly from within Google+. To view, comment, or reply to posts, users will have to switch to Facebook, however.
What particularly surprised us here at ConceivablyTech is the virtually nonexistent privacy on Google+. If you have complained about a lack of privacy on Facebook before, you surely won't like Google+, and if you freely voice your opinion that could get you in legal trouble, you may want to think twice about using Google+. The company's general terms of service also apply to this new service, which would include these paragraphs:
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: fool.com
By: Kurt Bakke
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Data Residency and Legal Questions About the Cloud
With the official Microsoft Office 365 launch last week, and all its related build-up and hoopla, I've been speaking with a lot of cloud vendors lately. Naturally, everyone wants to share what they can do to help customers who plan to adopt Microsoft's cloud-based collaborations suite that features Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Office Web Apps, among other features. However, one topic that continues to surface around cloud solutions such as Office 365 is growing legislation that mandates where data can be stored.
Perhaps the best-known example of this type of requirement comes from Canada where, in reaction to the US Patriot Act, Canadian companies are forbidden to use cloud services that store data on US soil. Basically, Canada and other governments that enact such legislation are trying to protect their citizens by ensuring that data about their citizens is stored where that particular government body has legal control over what happens to the data. So, the Canadian government doesn't want its citizens' data to be seized as a result of provisions of the Patriot Act if it happens to reside in a data center in the United States.
I spoke specifically about this issue of data residency with Martin Tuip, an Exchange and messaging expert with information management services company, Iron Mountain. "Countries will adopt these laws and regulations to protect their citizens," Tuip said. "Certain types of data must be stored where governments have legal jurisdiction over it, which technically means within its borders." Tuip pointed out European legislation as well as recent laws passed in US states such as Massachusetts and Nevada as the possible start of a trend down this more restrictive road.
The question that arises, if this trend continues, is what effect will it have on adoption of cloud computing overall, and specifically on adoption of hosted messaging and collaboration services which rely on storing personal data? Rami Habal, director of product marketing for email security vendor Proofpoint, said, "Data residency, the issue around where I store my data, is extremely important, especially for multinationals with geographically disbursed offices in different jurisdictions." Habal was quick to point out that Proofpoint customers are able to choose the specific data center where their data is stored; many other cloud vendors have told me the same thing (although I haven't heard this said about Office 365).
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Source: windowsitpro.com
By: Brian Winstead
Perhaps the best-known example of this type of requirement comes from Canada where, in reaction to the US Patriot Act, Canadian companies are forbidden to use cloud services that store data on US soil. Basically, Canada and other governments that enact such legislation are trying to protect their citizens by ensuring that data about their citizens is stored where that particular government body has legal control over what happens to the data. So, the Canadian government doesn't want its citizens' data to be seized as a result of provisions of the Patriot Act if it happens to reside in a data center in the United States.
I spoke specifically about this issue of data residency with Martin Tuip, an Exchange and messaging expert with information management services company, Iron Mountain. "Countries will adopt these laws and regulations to protect their citizens," Tuip said. "Certain types of data must be stored where governments have legal jurisdiction over it, which technically means within its borders." Tuip pointed out European legislation as well as recent laws passed in US states such as Massachusetts and Nevada as the possible start of a trend down this more restrictive road.
The question that arises, if this trend continues, is what effect will it have on adoption of cloud computing overall, and specifically on adoption of hosted messaging and collaboration services which rely on storing personal data? Rami Habal, director of product marketing for email security vendor Proofpoint, said, "Data residency, the issue around where I store my data, is extremely important, especially for multinationals with geographically disbursed offices in different jurisdictions." Habal was quick to point out that Proofpoint customers are able to choose the specific data center where their data is stored; many other cloud vendors have told me the same thing (although I haven't heard this said about Office 365).
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: windowsitpro.com
By: Brian Winstead
Digging Up Social Media's Treasure Trove of Discovery
Despite recent reports that Facebook may be losing users in the United States, it remains an epic phenomenon. According to "Why Facebook Is Losing U.S. Users," a June 14 article on PCMag.com, the consensus is that Facebook has around 150 million users in the United States -- about half of the country's population.
Facebook, and other social media sites such as MySpace and Twitter, allow users to express themselves and share information. In personal injury and employment suits, disclosure of plaintiffs' personal information can impact the litigation dramatically. Not surprisingly, plaintiffs' privacy rights are colliding with the broad parameters of discovery on what I call the Facebook frontier.
On May 19, Judge Charles H. Saylor of the Court of Common Pleas of Northumberland County, Pa., issued a thorough opinion analyzing the Facebook frontier. According to that opinion, the plaintiff in Zimmerman v. Weis Markets Inc. sought damages for a workplace accident that left him with a scarred leg. He testified in his deposition that he was embarrassed by the scar, would not wear shorts, and had diminished enjoyment of life.
Defense counsel reviewed the public portions of Zimmerman's Facebook and MySpace pages and found photos of him wearing shorts and going about normal activities. Defense counsel sought access to the nonpublic portions of the Facebook and MySpace pages, and Zimmerman opposed the discovery based on his privacy interests.
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Source: law.com
By: Vianei Lopez Robinson
Facebook, and other social media sites such as MySpace and Twitter, allow users to express themselves and share information. In personal injury and employment suits, disclosure of plaintiffs' personal information can impact the litigation dramatically. Not surprisingly, plaintiffs' privacy rights are colliding with the broad parameters of discovery on what I call the Facebook frontier.
On May 19, Judge Charles H. Saylor of the Court of Common Pleas of Northumberland County, Pa., issued a thorough opinion analyzing the Facebook frontier. According to that opinion, the plaintiff in Zimmerman v. Weis Markets Inc. sought damages for a workplace accident that left him with a scarred leg. He testified in his deposition that he was embarrassed by the scar, would not wear shorts, and had diminished enjoyment of life.
Defense counsel reviewed the public portions of Zimmerman's Facebook and MySpace pages and found photos of him wearing shorts and going about normal activities. Defense counsel sought access to the nonpublic portions of the Facebook and MySpace pages, and Zimmerman opposed the discovery based on his privacy interests.
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Source: law.com
By: Vianei Lopez Robinson
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Facebook wins access to material cited in NY suit
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will soon have access to a contract and email files that a one-time business acquaintance contends make him part owner of the multibillion-dollar social media company, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
The judge also granted Zuckerberg's attorneys' request to have forensics experts examine Paul Ceglia's computers, floppy discs, CDs and hard drives as they seek to discredit the New York man's claims that he and Zuckerberg signed a contract in 2003 that entitles Ceglia to half of Facebook and discussed the arrangement via email.
Ceglia was given until July 15 to produce the materials.
Ceglia will in turn gain access to some of Zuckerberg's emails and handwriting samples from his days as a Harvard University student, when the two men met.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Leslie Foschio instructed lawyers to agree on where and how to examine the original 2003 contract, which is now stored in a bank safe deposit box.
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Source: mercurynews.com
By: Carolyn Thompson
The judge also granted Zuckerberg's attorneys' request to have forensics experts examine Paul Ceglia's computers, floppy discs, CDs and hard drives as they seek to discredit the New York man's claims that he and Zuckerberg signed a contract in 2003 that entitles Ceglia to half of Facebook and discussed the arrangement via email.
Ceglia was given until July 15 to produce the materials.
Ceglia will in turn gain access to some of Zuckerberg's emails and handwriting samples from his days as a Harvard University student, when the two men met.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Leslie Foschio instructed lawyers to agree on where and how to examine the original 2003 contract, which is now stored in a bank safe deposit box.
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Source: mercurynews.com
By: Carolyn Thompson
'Cost of being Google rises' amid social, legal hurdles
Google is learning that search dominance and attempts to wedge into the social-networking party come with some expenses.
It's no small secret that Google intends to spend whatever it takes to make a splash in social networking against rival Facebook and that it has taken on some added legal costs as it goes up against multiple fronts -- the FTC and the EU -- to defend its dominance in search.
Now, financial analyst Hudson Square Research wants to quantify those costs. The researcher reports in a note, titled "The Cost of Being Google Rises", that the firm is lowering its earnings forecast for the search giant.
"Driven by our assumption that Google's operating costs for advertising, R&D, and operations in general and legal in particular are rising we are lowering our 2011 and 2012 estimates," Hudson analyst Rory Maher noted.
Hudson says that costs are on the rise from various product moves including in display advertising, mobile, cloud computing, software and social areas.
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Source: usatoday.com
By: Scott Martin
It's no small secret that Google intends to spend whatever it takes to make a splash in social networking against rival Facebook and that it has taken on some added legal costs as it goes up against multiple fronts -- the FTC and the EU -- to defend its dominance in search.
Now, financial analyst Hudson Square Research wants to quantify those costs. The researcher reports in a note, titled "The Cost of Being Google Rises", that the firm is lowering its earnings forecast for the search giant.
"Driven by our assumption that Google's operating costs for advertising, R&D, and operations in general and legal in particular are rising we are lowering our 2011 and 2012 estimates," Hudson analyst Rory Maher noted.
Hudson says that costs are on the rise from various product moves including in display advertising, mobile, cloud computing, software and social areas.
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Source: usatoday.com
By: Scott Martin
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
EU upset by Microsoft warning on U.S. access to EU cloud
IDG News Service - Members of the European Parliament have demanded to know what lawmakers intend to do about the conflict between the European Union's Data Protection Directive and the U.S. Patriot Act.
The issue has been raised following Microsoft's admission last week that it may have to hand over European customers' data on a new cloud service to U.S. authorities. The company may also be compelled by the Patriot Act to keep details of any such data transfer secret. This is directly contrary to the European directive, which states that organizations must inform users when they disclose personal information.
"Does the Commission consider that the U.S. Patriot Act thus effectively overrules the E.U. Directive on Data Protection? What will the Commission do to remedy this situation, and ensure that E.U. data protection rules can be effectively enforced and that third country legislation does not take precedence over E.U. legislation?" asked Sophia In't Veld, a member of the Parliament's civil liberties committee.
Commissioner Viviane Reding, who is responsible for data protection, has in the past seemed to welcome a privacy protection bill introduced by senators John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, and John McCain, an Arizona Republican, as a possible solution. "I welcome a draft Bill of Rights just introduced in the U.S. Congress as a bipartisan initiative of Democrats and Republicans. The Commission also shares the main objective of the Bill: strengthening individuals' trust in new technologies through compatible standards," she said.
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Source: computerworld.com
By: Jennifer Baker
The issue has been raised following Microsoft's admission last week that it may have to hand over European customers' data on a new cloud service to U.S. authorities. The company may also be compelled by the Patriot Act to keep details of any such data transfer secret. This is directly contrary to the European directive, which states that organizations must inform users when they disclose personal information.
"Does the Commission consider that the U.S. Patriot Act thus effectively overrules the E.U. Directive on Data Protection? What will the Commission do to remedy this situation, and ensure that E.U. data protection rules can be effectively enforced and that third country legislation does not take precedence over E.U. legislation?" asked Sophia In't Veld, a member of the Parliament's civil liberties committee.
Commissioner Viviane Reding, who is responsible for data protection, has in the past seemed to welcome a privacy protection bill introduced by senators John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, and John McCain, an Arizona Republican, as a possible solution. "I welcome a draft Bill of Rights just introduced in the U.S. Congress as a bipartisan initiative of Democrats and Republicans. The Commission also shares the main objective of the Bill: strengthening individuals' trust in new technologies through compatible standards," she said.
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Source: computerworld.com
By: Jennifer Baker
Microsoft to retire Office XP, Vista SP1 next week
Microsoft Corp. will retire 2001's Office XP and the first service pack for Windows Vista next week, according to the company's published schedule.
Both Office XP and Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) will exit all support July 12, this month's Patch Tuesday. That date will be the last time Microsoft issues security updates for the aging suite and Vista SP1.
Microsoft supports its business products for 10 years, the first five in what it calls "mainstream support," and the second five in "extended support." The biggest difference between the two phases is that in the latter, non-security fixes are provided only to companies that have paid for special support contracts.
Microsoft generally patches security vulnerabilities in its products throughout the entire 10-year stretch.
Although Office XP's support expires next week, Vista users can continue to receive security updates by upgrading to SP2, the service pack Microsoft launched in May 2009.
Users can install Vista SP2 through Windows Update, or by manually downloading the 32-bit or 64-bit version of the service pack.
The consumer editions of Vista SP2 -- Vista Home Basic, Home Premium and Ultimate -- exit support in April 2012, while the corporate versions of Vista Business and Vista Enterprise will be supported with security patches through mid-April 2017.
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Source: Computerworld
By: Greg Keizer
Both Office XP and Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) will exit all support July 12, this month's Patch Tuesday. That date will be the last time Microsoft issues security updates for the aging suite and Vista SP1.
Microsoft supports its business products for 10 years, the first five in what it calls "mainstream support," and the second five in "extended support." The biggest difference between the two phases is that in the latter, non-security fixes are provided only to companies that have paid for special support contracts.
Microsoft generally patches security vulnerabilities in its products throughout the entire 10-year stretch.
Although Office XP's support expires next week, Vista users can continue to receive security updates by upgrading to SP2, the service pack Microsoft launched in May 2009.
Users can install Vista SP2 through Windows Update, or by manually downloading the 32-bit or 64-bit version of the service pack.
The consumer editions of Vista SP2 -- Vista Home Basic, Home Premium and Ultimate -- exit support in April 2012, while the corporate versions of Vista Business and Vista Enterprise will be supported with security patches through mid-April 2017.
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Source: Computerworld
By: Greg Keizer
Automated Management of Legal Holds
Recent federal court cases have reinforced that legal holds are an indispensable element of electronic discovery. A legal hold is a corporation’s legal duty to preserve electronically stored information (“ESI”). A hold issued internally within a corporation places potentially key custodians on notice to retain materials that may be relevant to legal claims of a pending or anticipated matter. Although these cases are highly fact-specific, federal courts have noted that the duty to preserve is invoked “when the party has notice that the evidence is relevant to the litigation or when a party should have known that the evidence may be relevant to future litigation.” Instituting and managing a legal hold must thus take place from inception through release.
The recent trend toward harsh discovery sanctions, including contempt of court, for violations of legal holds, include Judge Paul Grimm’s famous holding in Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc. (D. Md. 2008), and the recent decision in Green v. Blitz (E.D. Tex. Mar. 1, 2011). These decisions may well be a natural reaction to corporate legal executives’ attempts to avoid liability in this regard. According to Joshua Rosenberg, the Senior Director of Strategy and Operations at LexisNexis:
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Source: Forbes
By: Ben Kerschberg
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Lawyers Object As Computer Program Does Job Better
First doctors, now lawyers. I can hear them now: “I didn’t go through all those years of school just to be replaced by a computer.”
As Watson bones up on his medical knowledge in hopes of giving doctor’s a helping hand, lawyers are becoming increasingly antsy over computer programs that are finding their way into the law firms–and doing something lawyers do but faster, better, and cheaper.
The part the computers are hijacking is a step early in the process of two parties suing each other. Called “discovery,” each side asks the other to produce information relevant to the case. As you can imagine this is a very labor-intensive and costly endeavor. Back in the day when information was entirely in the form of documents, it wasn’t uncommon for companies to have warehouses filled with boxes containing files. Lawyers and paralegals would scour one pile after another, hour after hour, day after day, looking for something that might be important. Today, the vast majority of a company’s information is stored electronically. Gone are the days of peering over stacks of paper, but the electronic data jungle is formidable in its own right. Pertinent information can be stored in a multitude of formats. Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PDF files are common forms of documentation. But relevant information can also be stored as video or audio media, and of course the juicy format that always seems to nail the big guys: email. “E-discovery” became a part of the litigation vernacular to describe this new electronic discovery process. It’s vastly superior to a paper search, but e-discovery still requires digging through an enormous amount of material.
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Source: singularityhub.com
By: Peter Murray
As Watson bones up on his medical knowledge in hopes of giving doctor’s a helping hand, lawyers are becoming increasingly antsy over computer programs that are finding their way into the law firms–and doing something lawyers do but faster, better, and cheaper.
The part the computers are hijacking is a step early in the process of two parties suing each other. Called “discovery,” each side asks the other to produce information relevant to the case. As you can imagine this is a very labor-intensive and costly endeavor. Back in the day when information was entirely in the form of documents, it wasn’t uncommon for companies to have warehouses filled with boxes containing files. Lawyers and paralegals would scour one pile after another, hour after hour, day after day, looking for something that might be important. Today, the vast majority of a company’s information is stored electronically. Gone are the days of peering over stacks of paper, but the electronic data jungle is formidable in its own right. Pertinent information can be stored in a multitude of formats. Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PDF files are common forms of documentation. But relevant information can also be stored as video or audio media, and of course the juicy format that always seems to nail the big guys: email. “E-discovery” became a part of the litigation vernacular to describe this new electronic discovery process. It’s vastly superior to a paper search, but e-discovery still requires digging through an enormous amount of material.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: singularityhub.com
By: Peter Murray
Text analytics finds dynamic growth in e-discovery and customer feedback
"Previously we were using key words to identify relevant documents, but text analytics gives us a much clearer picture of the data set..."
Text analytics is a process for extracting information from documents. It is particularly useful in tasks requiring the analysis of large quantities of information that would be impossible to do manually. Linguistic and statistical techniques are used to classify and categorize the documents, and to discover concepts and relationships within them. Linguistic techniques include identifying synonyms, determining parts of speech and disambiguation, in which context is used to determine which of several possible alternative meanings a word might have. Statistical techniques include calculations of word frequency and proximity as well as pattern analysis.
E-discovery application
Although text analytics has long been used for drawing meaning out of large quantities of data in many fields, without a doubt the most dynamic areas right now are e-discovery and analysis of customer information from social media.
LeClairRyan is a law firm that offers corporate and litigation services, including e-discovery collection, review and production services. The firm uses a variety of e-discovery platforms but most often turns to Relativity from kCura, delivered on demand through kCura hosting partner Planet Data Discovery Management Solutions. Relativity is an e-discovery software solution for review and management of both electronic and paper-based documents. LeClairRyan recently added Relativity's text analytics to its platform.
"One of the capabilities we use regularly is document clustering," says William Belt, team leader for e-discovery practice at LeClairRyan. "In the past, we reviewed documents in a linear fashion-for example, in chronological sequence. Having the documents clustered by topic is more efficient because the reviewers do not have to shift gears as much."
Clustering can also help identify relevancy, so that groups of documents that are likely to be highly relevant are together. "This ability helps with early case assessment," Belt says. "Previously we were using key words to identify relevant documents, but text analytics gives us a much clearer picture of the data set." Another benefit of clustering is quickly identifying potential areas of risk. "We can prioritize documents according to their likely level of risk," he adds, "which puts us in a better strategic position in the review process."
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Source: kmworld.com
By: Judith Lamont Ph. D.
Text analytics is a process for extracting information from documents. It is particularly useful in tasks requiring the analysis of large quantities of information that would be impossible to do manually. Linguistic and statistical techniques are used to classify and categorize the documents, and to discover concepts and relationships within them. Linguistic techniques include identifying synonyms, determining parts of speech and disambiguation, in which context is used to determine which of several possible alternative meanings a word might have. Statistical techniques include calculations of word frequency and proximity as well as pattern analysis.
E-discovery application
Although text analytics has long been used for drawing meaning out of large quantities of data in many fields, without a doubt the most dynamic areas right now are e-discovery and analysis of customer information from social media.
LeClairRyan is a law firm that offers corporate and litigation services, including e-discovery collection, review and production services. The firm uses a variety of e-discovery platforms but most often turns to Relativity from kCura, delivered on demand through kCura hosting partner Planet Data Discovery Management Solutions. Relativity is an e-discovery software solution for review and management of both electronic and paper-based documents. LeClairRyan recently added Relativity's text analytics to its platform.
"One of the capabilities we use regularly is document clustering," says William Belt, team leader for e-discovery practice at LeClairRyan. "In the past, we reviewed documents in a linear fashion-for example, in chronological sequence. Having the documents clustered by topic is more efficient because the reviewers do not have to shift gears as much."
Clustering can also help identify relevancy, so that groups of documents that are likely to be highly relevant are together. "This ability helps with early case assessment," Belt says. "Previously we were using key words to identify relevant documents, but text analytics gives us a much clearer picture of the data set." Another benefit of clustering is quickly identifying potential areas of risk. "We can prioritize documents according to their likely level of risk," he adds, "which puts us in a better strategic position in the review process."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: kmworld.com
By: Judith Lamont Ph. D.
US Authorities Might Access EU Cloud Data without Prior Consent
Europeans who use US based cloud computing services can have their personal data accessed by US authorities without their knowledge.
According to an article on The Register, Europe based users who access cloud computing services from US based companies like Microsoft are most likely to have their personal information handed over to US authorities without them finding out.
Under US Patriot Act, US based companies are required to hand over customer data if asked for, no matter where the data is stored and without having to give any prior notification. EU law on the other hand, requires companies to inform customers before disclosing their information.
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Source: itproportal.com
By: Ravi Mandalia
According to an article on The Register, Europe based users who access cloud computing services from US based companies like Microsoft are most likely to have their personal information handed over to US authorities without them finding out.
Under US Patriot Act, US based companies are required to hand over customer data if asked for, no matter where the data is stored and without having to give any prior notification. EU law on the other hand, requires companies to inform customers before disclosing their information.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: itproportal.com
By: Ravi Mandalia
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