During a computer scan, which typically takes less than an hour, Passware Kit Forensic displays all encrypted files and hard disk partition images. Previously, there was no way to identify quickly an encrypted container on a file system where important data could be hidden.

via MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 20, 2013: Data Inside TrueCrypt Containers is No Longer Hidden as Passware Kit Now Detects Hard Disk Images | PRNewswire | Rock Hill Herald Online.

Amazon Web Services, known as AWS, was certified to operate as a cloud service provider for three years under the government’s new FedRAMP program. The accreditation covers all AWS data centers in the United States, the company said on Tuesday.

“This will cut the cost and time for agencies to deploy our systems,” said Teresa Carlson, vice president of Worldwide Public Sector at AWS. “It cuts costs for AWS too.”

Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, has moved aggressively into the business of renting remote computing, storage and other IT services in recent years through AWS.

via Amazon wins key cloud security clearance from U.S. government | Reuters.

Previously, the court ordered the parties to “retain a single discovery vendor to be used by both sides” and to “conduct document review with the assistance of predictive coding.”  (See summary, here.)  On May 6, the court entered a new order, stating that Defendants could retain their chosen vendor and utilize computer assisted review but that the parties would not be required to retain a single vendor to be used by both sides and that “Plaintiffs may conduct document review using traditional review methods.”

via For Good Cause Shown, Plaintiffs No Longer Required to Utilize Predictive Coding : Electronic Discovery Law.

So should consumers add security to their cloud storage repositories to keep their data even more secure from prying providers and government snoops? Absolutely, says Heiser.

That’s because many data breaches involve frustrated service provider employees who see treasure-troves of data as a way to make a quick buck. “There are repeated stories … of rogue employees who collect data to sell to credit card fraudsters,” Heiser said. “It is an issue with provider staff morale.”

Apart from downloading freeware, such as TruCrypt, and encrypting every folder or file before it’s uploaded to the cloud, new automated tools are emerging that handle the job of cloud storage security more seamlessly.

SafeNet, for example, just launched a beta of SafeMonk, which adds a secure encryption log-in to Dropbox. Essentially, the data you store in Dropbox can’t even be accessed by Dropbox itself because users get to keep the encryption keys.

Ironically, SafeNet also happens to be one of the largest suppliers of encryption technology to the U.S. government.

via How to keep the feds from snooping on your cloud data – Computerworld.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed criminal charges May 7 against DAP employees Tomas Alberto Clarke Bethancourt and Jose Alejandro Hurtado, alleging they conspired to bribe a senior official in Venezuela’s state economic development bank to direct the bank’s business to DAP

via Wall Street To FCPA Enforcers: Bring It On – Law360.

The EDRM Enron data set is an industry-standard collection of email data that the legal profession has used for many years for electronic discovery training and testing. It was sourced from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s investigation into collapsed energy firm Enron. In early 2012, the EDRM Enron PST Data Set and the EDRM Enron Data Set v2 became an Amazon Web Services Public Data Set, making them a valuable public resource for researchers across a variety of disciplines

“Recently, we have been working closely with Nuix to cleanse the data set of private information about the company’s former employees and make the cleansed data set readily available to the community,” said George Socha and Tom Gelbmann, co-founders of EDRM. “These efforts help to protect the privacy of hundreds of individuals and we encourage anyone who finds private data that we did not remove to notify us.”

via .

That was in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Then, in 2004, she became a general counsel of the electronic discovery provider Amici LLC, which was acquired by Xerox Litigation Services in 2006. These days, she finds herself in meetings with associates who can’t even imagine that’s how discovery got done on massive cases. “They’re like, ‘That’s nuts, you were in the loading bay with the boxes?’,” says Baron, who is now vice president for business development at XLS.

Indeed, a lot’s changed since what Baron calls the “dark ages” of e-discovery—and not just the shift from paper to electronic platforms. “Back then, corporations were the ones most in the dark” about how e-discovery worked, she says. Now, it’s corporate legal departments—not law firms—that evaluate and contract providers. Baron estimates she spends 90 percent of her time interfacing with corporations, and only about 10 percent with law firms.

via 6 Things In-House Counsel Must Know About E-Discovery.

What can you do to bring some of the Smithsonian’s 137 million objects to life? Put them in 3D!

Related articles

• The Smithsonian is 3D-scanning its collection for future generations (engadget.com)

“While patent pools may generate some efficiencies and benefits, they may also cause anticompetitive effects like price fixing, collusion, and thwarting innovation,” the official, David Balto, said in releasing his findings on Thursday.

Balto, policy director for the Bureau of Competition from 1998 to 2001, now operates from the Washington-based Law Offices of David A. Balto. He released ” Barriers to Competition on the Innovation Superhighway: How the Lack of Antitrust Scrutiny of Patent Pools Deters Competition.”

The document was based on his examination of FTC and the Justice Department’s antitrust division’s enforcement actions and guidelines, plus a 2011 DOJ investigation into the Moving Pictures Experts Group pool involving web video encoding technology.

via Patent Pools May Stymie Competition, Study Concludes.

A stingray, also known by the nickname triggerfish, mimics a cell tower and can be used to pinpoint the location of wireless phones and aircards. At the same time, according to civil liberties advocates, it sucks in information from all other gadgets in its radius.

In one of the first rulings to analyze the legal framework for such surveillance, U.S. District Judge David Campbell of Arizona on Wednesday upheld the FBI’s use of a stingray to track down Daniel Rigmaiden, finding no violation of his Fourth Amendment rights “given the unique circumstances of this case”.

Campbell denied a defense motion to suppress evidence, concluding agents acted in good faith and properly obtained a warrant based on probable cause prior to employing a stingray. The Phoenix-based judge, who is presiding over the prosecution brought in the District of Arizona, also determined law enforcement’s use of a stingray to investigate Rigmaiden was not a “severe intrusion” under the Fourth Amendment.

via Judge OKs ‘Stingray’ Tracking.

Last month, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the ACLU received IRS documents indicating that the agency’s criminal investigative arm doesn’t always get a warrant to read Americans’ emails. Today we are releasing these additional documents from other federal law enforcement agencies, reinforcing the urgent need for Congress to protect our privacy by updating the laws that cover electronic communications.

via FBI Documents Suggest That Feds Read Your Emails Without a Warrant.

In this case, the Fourth Circuit clarified “what expenses related to electronically stored information (“ESI”) are taxable under the federal taxation-of-costs statute as ‘[f]ees for exemplification and the costs of making copies of any materials where the copies are necessarily obtained for use in the case’” and affirmed the district court’s order “taxing only the costs of converting electronic files to non-editable formats, and transferring files onto CDs.”

The parties in this case “clashed over the discovery of ESI.”  Ultimately, Gallo moved for a protective order and Country Vintner filed a motion to compel.  The district court denied Gallo’s motion for a protective order, granted Country Vintner’s motion to compel, and adopted Country Vintner’s proposal for handling ESI.  As a result, Gallo took the necessary steps to meet its discovery obligations, including collecting more than 62 GB of data which were then sent to counsel for processing and review.

via Fourth Circuit Addresses Taxable Costs Related to ESI : Electronic Discovery Law.

The official document title for the standard is ISO/IEC 27050, Information Technology — Security techniques — Electronic discovery. U.S. participation in this project will be managed by the International Committee for Information Technology Standards Technical Committee, CS1 Cyber Security, specifically the CS1 Storage and Evidence Ad Hoc Committee. Project Editor Eric Hibbard, CTO Security and Privacy at Hitachi Data Systems, and Co-Editor Angus Marshall, principal scientist, n-gate ltd., and the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 Working Group 4, which develops standards for security controls and services, will manage the project.

via International Standard Project for E-Discovery Approved.

That’s a new pattern that emerges in Verizon’s just released 2013 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), which correlates forensics findings from 621 actual databreach investigations in 27 different countries.

Verizon’s DBIR has long been considered a rich trove of security intelligence in the cybersecurity community. And it’s getting richer. This year’s version includes contributions from a record 19 different investigatory organizations from around the world. Key findings:

• 38% of breaches hit larger organizations
• 37% affected financial organizations
• 24% occurred at retailers and restaurants
• 20% involved manufacturing, transportation and utilities.

via State-sponsored cyberspying hits small businesses.

Our Tips for Mobile Device Security

These little devices play a big role in our lives. They can contain personal contacts, account numbers, Social Media accounts, etc. The thief is not only after the device – which can be lucrative, but also the personal information on the devices.

Here are some tips to prepare for and keep you mobile digital life safe.

Steps to Take BeforeYour Phone Is Stolen

Preparation is key to recovering your phone quickly, but these technqiues and tips are not a 100% guarantee that your phone won’t be stolen or that you’ll get the phone back. The will however give you a fighting chance against the thief. The current technology available if installed on your phone MIGHTbe able to get your phone back.

continued @ Mobile – sems+associates.

That’s the impetus behind new wiretap guidelines being drawn up by a government panel, according to the Washington Post.

The draft guidelines, championed by the FBI, would allow courts to impose escalating fines on any business that didn’t immediately comply with a court-ordered request for real-time communications interception, regardless of whether the Web service provider said such interception was technically feasible. Any business that fails to comply with the wiretap request could face fines that start at tens of thousands of dollars, then double daily after 90 days of noncompliance. The White House reportedly hasn’t yet signed off on the proposals.

via FBI Seeks Real-Time Facebook, Google Wiretaps – Security – Privacy -.

via Twitter: A Sleeping Discovery Giant?.

According to the NPA, Ralph Lauren Corporation’s Argentine subsidiary paid “bribes,” i.e., payments in violation of the FCPA, to government and customs officials to improperly secure the importation of Ralph Lauren Corporation’s products in Argentina.  The purpose of the unlawful payments, made through a “customs broker,” was to obtain entry of Ralph Lauren Corporation’s products into the country without certain paperwork and to avoid certain inspections by customs officials.  The unlawful payments to Argentine officials totaled $593,000 during a four-year period.

via SEC Announces First Non-Prosecution Agreement Involving Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) Violations | The National Law Review.

In this product liability case, Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee objected to Biomet’s reliance on keyword searching to initially reduce the volume of information it then subjected to predictive coding and sought to require Biomet to start again and to utilize only predictive coding, with plaintiffs’ input.  The court concluded that Biomet’s efforts complied with its discovery obligations under the civil rules.

Despite being told “(occasionally in forceful terms)” by some plaintiffs’ counsel “not to begin document production until the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation decided whether to centralize,” Biomet, “neither sold on centralization nor free of judicial exhortations in other cases against it, started the process of identifying and producing documents” (in cases eventually centralized in the summer of 2012).  Biomet first utilized “keyword culling” to reduce its universe of documents and attachments from 19.5 million to 3.9 million and, after removing duplicates, was left with 2.5 million documents which were then subjected to predictive coding.  “To date, Biomet’s e-discovery costs are about $1.07 million and will total between $2 million and $3.25 million.”

via Citing Proportionality, Court Declines to Require Defendant to Redo Discovery Utilizing Only Predictive Coding : Electronic Discovery Law.

The report looks at some 47,000 incidents, of which 621 are confirmed data breaches within the past year. In general, most of these 621 attacks were focused on financial institutions (37 percent), were perpetrated by outsiders (92 percent), and exploited weak or broken credentials (read: passwords, 76 percent).

The surprise was the realization that 19 percent of the breaches were attributed to a “state-affiliated actor.” 25 percent had nothing to do with money—that motivator for most cybercrime—and 25 percent were targeted attacks. A truly terrifying 96 percent of the espionage cases were eventually linked to China.

via Chinese Cyberattacks Skyrocket in 2012, But What Does it Mean?.

But to John Davis, coordinator of the firm’s FCPA and International Anticorruption Practice Group, that particular statistic is more a matter of timing than anything. “Companies should not look at the dearth of cases in the last quarter and think, ‘Now we don’t have to worry about this,’ ” he says. Rather, he adds: “Investigations take time, and [agencies] have been focusing on any number of them during that time frame.”

via FCPA Enforcement Off to a Slow Start in 2013.

Businesses in the oil and gas industry are cautioned to pay careful attention to evolutions in anti-corruption law in the jurisdictions where they operate. The U.S. government has successfully enforced the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and related laws against several oil and gas firms, and recent developments in U.S. law point to further risk increases. Developments in foreign law are also expanding the anti-corruption traps for the industry. Furthermore, as oil and gas production expands dramatically in the United States, participating firms could face new risks under domestic state law. This paper reports on the present state of the anti-corruption landscape facing the oil and gas industry and encourages businesses to assess and mitigate the specific risks they face in their operations.

Introduction

Oil and gas businesses operate in a dynamic realm of increasing anti-corruption enforcement risk. The industry is perceived to be among the most corrupt, with a high incidence of bribery of foreign officials in resource-rich countries. 1 Prosecutions by the U.S. government have resulted in payments by oil and gas companies totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, and new developments in U.S. law have increased burdens on the industry. New prosecution risks are emerging as foreign governments enact and strengthen their anti-corruption laws and enforce them against oil and gas firms. Moreover, firms engaged in the booming but controversial renaissance in domestic oil and gas production may face additional risks under the anti-corruption laws of the states where they operate. Oil and gas businesses are accordingly advised to regularly re-assess their anti-corruption risk and implement compliance programs that are carefully tailored to their operational profiles.

via Anti-Corruption Law And The Oil And Gas Industry: Evolutions In Both Demand Vigilance – Criminal Law – United States.

Candidates for third-party funding include those who are unable or unwilling to fund the litigation on their own. Individual inventors, small companies and universities are obvious candidates, as they rarely have the money to self-finance patent litigation. But larger companies with deeper pockets might be candidates as well. Management may not want the impact of litigation expenses on the company’s financial statements and may view the investment in patent litigation as being particularly risky.

via The Pros and Cons Of Third-Party Funding of Patent Litigation – Intellectual Property – United States.

The FBI is rolling out an ambitious, billion-dollar biometric information system that will include iris scans, voice recognition, and facial-recognition software, developed with Lockheed Martin (LMT), IBM (IBM), Accenture (ACN), and BAE Systems (BA/), among others. Law enforcement authorities are uploading mugshots into an image database, which can then be searched against images from crime scenes, like the instantly notorious surveillance camera footage of Boston’s Boylston Street. The program will have 12 million searchable images.

via Using Facial-Recognition Technology to Track Down the Boston Bombers (and Why Humans Are Still Better at It) – Businessweek.

via Ex-Siemens Board Member To Pay 2nd Highest FCPA Penalty – Law360.

The most significant — and controversial — of the proposals would narrow the scope of discovery under Rule 26; impose or reduce numerical limits on written discovery and depositions under Rules 30, 31, 33 and 36; and, in Rule 37, adopt a uniform set of guidelines concerning the imposition of sanctions when a party fails to preserve discoverable information. Proposed amendments to Rule 34 would tighten the rules governing responses to requests for production of documents.

via Are We on the Cusp of Major Changes to E-Discovery Rules?.

Superior Court Judge Karen Cassidy on April 12 quashed a prosecutor’s subpoena of Tina Renna, president of the Union County Watchdog Association, who posts frequently on a website called “The County Watchers.”

“Under the governing case law, the fact that Ms. Renna’s organization has an official stated purpose of being a citizen watchdog and an advocate for transparency in government, does not preclude this Court from finding that the County Watchers blog does not also have the alternate purpose of disseminating news,” Cassidy wrote.

via Blogger Need Not Reveal Sources, Judge Says in Extending Shield Law.

via WhatsApp bigger than Twitter and sends more messages than Facebook – Mind Of The Geek.

via How To Sidestep The WordPress Botnet Hack | SiliconANGLE.

Try an upcoming capability for Self-Service BI with the project codename “GeoFlow” Preview for Excel. This preview gives you an early look into the new features that provide 3D data visualization. Now you can plot geographic and temporal data visually, analyze that data in 3D, and create visual tours to share with others.

I have been focusing on the impact of the Jackson reforms in England and Wales, but the big eDiscovery story of the month has involved a rather different application of a discovery tools and techniques.  The focus on court rules and on technology and processes can easily blind us to the importance of data as evidence. Evidence matters (or should matter) as much to investigative journalists as it does to lawyers, and the same technology can be used by both.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) was given anonymously a hard drive containing 260 GB of data including more than 2 million e-mails, as well as Word documents, databases and spreadsheets – as broad a mix of source types as one will find anywhere.  Many eDiscovery exercises begin with the question “What have we got here?” -  an important point, often overlooked by those who ask simplistically “Why are we don’t just use Google for eDiscovery search”. You need something rather different to investigate this kind of volume of mixed data when you have no idea what it is all about.

The ICIJ turned to Nuix, who provided software licences free of charge to enable investigation of the data. That turned out to include the biggest collection of leaked data in the history of journalism, all relating to financial arrangements of the kind which the rich and powerful use to keep their assets and transactions hidden from view. Government officials, wealthy corporations and individuals, banks and offshore tax advisers all featured, and much more prominently than they would hope.

via Nuix and the Global Offshore Money Maze – tools and skills go beyond conventional eDiscovery | e-Disclosure Information Project.

The extension was created by 21-year-old Oxford University computer science student (and former Google intern) Owen Campbell-Moore as part of a school project. Campbell-Moore said the goal of the two-month long project was to demonstrate that JPEG steganography can be performed on social media – a platform where it has previously been impossible.

via Use Secretbook to encode hidden messages in Facebook photos – TechSpot.

I don’t understand why we as a society spend so much time thinking about suing people.  I’m much more interested in figuring out how we can stop suing each other.  If we could create “lawsuit-free zones,” we’d avoid the individual and social costs of adjudicating disputes, including the’ settlements payments to get rid of nuisance and otherwise meritless lawsuits.  Plus, lawsuit-free zones stimulate business investments by providing more legal certainty to entrepreneurs, which should translate into more jobs. So finding ways to dial down litigation might be the best “jobs stimulus” effort our legislators could undertake.

via Want To End The Litigation Epidemic? Create Lawsuit-Free Zones – Forbes.

Messrs. DuBois and Uhal pleaded guilty to criminal informations on January 5, 2012, about two months before the company settled. Each entered a guilty plea to one count of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Mr. DuBois also entered a guilty plea to one count of violating the FCPA. Each man’s sentence was reduced to probation and eight months of home confinement. Under the sentencing guidelines Mr. DuBois would have received a sentence of 108 to 120 months in prison while Mr. Uhl would have been sentenced to serve 60 months in prison.

Messrs. Kowaleski and Jensen have not been arrested. Both fled in January 2012. Each man is named in an indictment charging conspiracy to violate the FCPA, substantive violations of the Act and money laundering.

via DOJ charges four Bizjet executives with FCPA violations – Lexology.

A litigation hold is a comprehensive undertaking by a party to identify and preserve documents and data, both in paper and electronic form, in that party’s possession, custody, or control. A typical litigation hold begins with a memorandum or other communication from the company’s management or attorneys instructing employees to preserve certain documents and information. Before implementing a litigation hold, a party must first consider the threshold question of whether its duty to preserve documents and information has been triggered.

Courts hold that the duty to preserve arises whenever litigation is “reasonably anticipated.” Thus, “[t]he obligation to preserve evidence arises when the party has notice that the evidence is relevant to litigation or when a party should have known that the evidence may be relevant to future litigation.”1 When such a duty exists, a party is obligated to preserve what it knows (or reasonably should know), is relevant or may reasonably lead to the discovery of admissible evidence, or is reasonably likely to be requested during discovery or is the subject of a pending discovery request. This applies with respect to any party’s claims or defenses in the lawsuit or potential litigation.

via Litigation holds and the consequences of failing to preserve evidence – Lexology.

Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers says that Americans enjoy “generally no privacy” in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications — meaning that they can be perused without obtaining a search warrant signed by a judge.

That places the IRS at odds with a growing sentiment among many judges and legislators who believe that Americans’ e-mail messages should be protected from warrantless search and seizure. They say e-mail should be protected by the same Fourth Amendment privacy standards that require search warrants for hard drives in someone’s home, or a physical letter in a filing cabinet.

An IRS 2009 Search Warrant Handbook obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union argues that “emails and other transmissions generally lose their reasonable expectation of privacy and thus their Fourth Amendment protection once they have been sent from an individual’s computer.” The handbook was prepared by the Office of Chief Counsel for the Criminal Tax Division and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

via IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant | Politics and Law – CNET News.

Will there be any surprises on your invoices? We hope so! You may be surprised that you do not see many line items on your ongoing monthly invoices as we’ve enabled you and your team with the on-demand power to be self sufficient. Bates Numbering, Bates Stamping, PDF Conversion, Native File Exporting, Legacy Database Exporting (Concordance or Summation), Production Creation/Exporting and yes, even TIFF Conversion, is included in the flat rate at no extra charge. We will, of course, be happy to provide direct support, advice and assistance upon request, but otherwise we believe in empowering you as no one knows your case better than you do.

Flat Rate Pricing Options

3 Months:  $600/GB total

6 Months:  $800/GB total

12 Months: $900/GB total

Big Data:  starting at $50,000/Month

* Fees calculated by volume hosted

How are we able to offer so many services at such a competitive price? Quite simply, we have designed our Zetta Discovery Services with a structure that leverages the amazing efficiency of Amazon Web Services and the innovative platforms of our technology partners. This model allow us the flexibility to provide our flat rate pricing while maintaining high levels of quality, performance and security.

Is this a proven technology platform? Fortune 100 corporations and AmLaw100 law firms are actively using the review platform as a preservation, discovery and trial presentation solution and provide glowing reviews about their satisfaction. It was expressly designed and built with progressive law firms and corporations in mind, with a goal to process and organize massive amounts of complex data quickly, efficiently and at low cost. The technology may not be a “one-size-fits-all” solution for everyone organization in every case. But rather, the cloud platform poses a smarter, faster and easier path to accomplish data management tasks surrounding litigation.

Sample Project Cost Comparison

Please  email us or give us a call at 888.690.DATA (3282) to learn more about Zetta Discovery Services.

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• 50% eDiscovery Savings with Zetta Discovery Services | Global EDD Group Blog (legaltechtoday.com)
• A Complete Suite of eDiscovery Services (globaleddgroup.com)
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• eDiscovery Review on your iPad (globaleddgroup.com)
• A Complete Suite of eDiscovery Services – Bits & Bytes from Global EDD Group (legaltechtoday.com)

Global EDD Group specializes in providing data collection and digital forensic services to vendors and service providers from a variety of vertical markets.  As part of the Industry Partner Program, this unique solution enable service providers to focus on their core competencies while seamlessly expanding their suite of services and geographic footprint by integrating Global EDD Group services.

The technology, knowledge and skill set required to provide data collection, digital forensic and data preservation services is very precise, often very costly and requires continual refinement to retain expertise.    While these parameters can present a challenge to many service providers given the transactional nature of the litigation industry, having a specialist such as Global EDD Group as a partner provides a strategic and competive advantage that directly impacts profitability and improves client satisfaction.

Types of Partnerships:

• Project to Project
• Reseller
• Staffing

Types of Data Collection Services

• Remote Data
• Remote Assisted Collection
• Cell Phone & Mobile Devices
• Networked & Live Data
• Forensic Imaging
• Social Media & Web Site Preservation (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress, YouTube, Blogger, etc)

Related Services

• Digital Investigations
• FCPA & Fraud Investigations
• Flat Rate E-Discovery
• Early Case / Data Assessment

Advantages of Partnering with Global EDD Group:

• Detailed Experience in Cross Border Matters & Complex Investigations
• Technology Facilities in Asia, Europe & North America
• Portable E-Discovery Processing Units
• Partner Retains Client Relationship

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• Extremely Competitive Pricing Models
• Strict No Competition / No Solicitation Policy
• Increased Profit Margins
• Leverage International Resource Network

Vendors and Service Providers should click to www.GlobalEDDGroup.com, call  +1.216.220.5848 or email Brad Mixner to learn more about Global EDD Group’s Industry Partner Program.

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The hardware and software system, the first of its kind for the iPhone, is called AOptix Stratus, which comprises both the iOS app — which will cost $199 — and a wrap around device for an iPhone 4 or 4S. The app uses the iPhone camera to snap pictures of faces and record voices, while there’s an extra camera that does iris scanning and a small sensor to scan fingerprints. AOptix will also release a software development kit to its customers so they can customize the app to their own needs.

In February, the Department of Defense paid AOptix $3 million to develop an enhanced solution using the tool that’s being launched today.

via AOptix Launches First Biometric Scanning Tool for iPhone.

Lieutenant General John Hyten, vice commander of Air Force Space Command, which oversees satellite and cyberspace operation, said the new designations would help normalize military cyber operations as the U.S. military works to keep up with rapidly changing threats in the newest theater of war.

“This means that the game-changing capability that cyber is is going to get more attention and the recognition that it deserves,” Hyten told a cyber conference held in conjunction with the National Space Syposium in Colorado Springs.

Hyten’s remarks came a month after U.S. intelligence officials warned that cyber attacks have supplanted terrorism as the top threat to the country. Spending on cyber security programs has gone up in recent years, but may face pressure given mandatory across-the-board cuts to the Pentagon’s planned spending on military equipment, programs and staff.

Hyten said the recent decision by Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh to designate certain cyber tools as weapons would help ensure funding.

via Six U.S. Air Force cyber capabilities designated weapons | Reuters.

The name, unsurprisingly, stems from the fact that over 200,000 of the records are associated with ex-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. WikiLeaks explains what’s in there:

The Kissinger Cables comprise more than 1.7 million US diplomatic records for the period 1973 to 1976, including 205,901 records relating to former US Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger. Dating from January 1, 1973 to December 31, 1976 they cover a variety of diplomatic traffic including cables, intelligence reports and congressional correspondence. They include more than 1.3 million full diplomatic cables and 320,000 originally classified records. These include more than 227,000 cables classified as “CONFIDENTIAL” and 61,000 cables classified as “SECRET”. Perhaps more importantly, there are more than 12,000 documents with the sensitive handling restriction “NODIS” or ‘no distribution’, and more than 9,000 labelled “Eyes Only”.

via WikiLeaks Spills Its Biggest Ever Stash of Secret US Records.

Nextpoint, Inc., the nation’s leading provider of cloud-based regulatory, compliance, and litigation software, has introduced Enhanced Review Metrics in the Discovery Cloud ™ review platform. Responding to client requests, Nextpoint has deployed more detailed reports and data analysis to eDiscovery reviewers, providing a data-driven, results-oriented review environment for more effective management of eDiscovery projects.

These enhancements are instantly available to all users at no cost thanks to Nextpoint’s cloud-based litigation platform, which shortens the development process and allows for instant user access. When lawyers, project managers, and reviewers log in to the Discovery Cloud document review platform, they can quickly see the progress of their review projects, allowing them to more effectively manage and control the complexity and cost of any eDiscovery effort.

Given the challenges facing litigators trying to manage the discovery of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) in litigation, it is vital that litigators have the most detailed and useful information available about their data. The new analytical tools available in Discovery Cloud offer measurable, results-oriented information regarding the review process, so that Nextpoint customers can control costs and head off complications in eDiscovery.

Introducing Discovery Cloud™ Enhanced Review Metrics from Nextpoint on Vimeo.

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An organization is sued by a former employee who alleges that she was sexually harassed in the workplace through a series of allegedly offensive and degrading text messages sent by a supervisor. The organization receives a discovery request for text messages sent by the supervisor; however, the supervisor left the company before the lawsuit was filed, and pursuant to company policy, the data on his company device was deleted. The plaintiff’s lawyer has taken the position that the employer should have preserved the device, and now must attempt to recover the deleted text messages from the device or obtain the data from its third-party communications provider. The organization is considering how to respond, and whether it should take steps to rein in future text message communications.

Text Messages: Uncharted Territory in E-Discovery

According to recent studies from the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of US cell phone owners send and receive text messages, and 31 percent of text message users actually prefer texting to phone calls. Given that young adults are by far the most avid users of text messaging, sending or receiving an average of 88 text messages per day, we can expect that personal and business communications more and more will be found in text message form. Yet despite its near-ubiquity, text messaging generally receives little attention during the discovery process. Few courts have explicitly defined the standards for searching for and producing text messages.

As a source of discovery, text messages can be unpredictable. The conventions or “netiquette” that have developed for business email (such as proper use of the subject line, refraining from using all caps, and appropriate signatures) are all but nonexistent with respect to text messaging. And the casual, real-time feel of text messaging, together with the belief that deletion of text messages is irreversible, means that people may be willing to state via text what they would never set down in email. In fact, the proliferation of smart phones and improvements in handheld device forensics means that it is increasingly possible to recover deleted text messages.

via Managing The Risks And Costs Of Text Messaging (Electronic Discovery & Records Management – Tip Of The Month) – Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration – United States.

Roanoke, Va., lawyer Robert Dean’s favorite trial tool is TrialPad, a document presentation app for theiPad that allows him to enhance, zoom and annotate exhibits in court with only a projector, a screen and his iPad.

Montrose, Colo., lawyer David L. Masters doesn’t have a favorite tool, but says PDF writer Adobe Acrobat is the application that has allowed his office to go paperless for more than 10 years and can also be used to present evidence in court.

Those were some of the results of a survey of technology gurus in the legal field on the technology tools they use most in their law practice.

The survey was conducted in conjunction with an ABA Techshow presentation Thursday called “All the Tools in the Toolbox: Technology in the Courtroom.” The session explored some of the pros’ “must have” technology as well as some cutting-edge tools that are or will soon become available for trial presentation purposes.

via Trial lawyers share their favorite tech tools in their litigation toolboxes – ABA Journal.

Speaking at a meeting with Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) on Tuesday, Faust expressed concern over the university’s “highly inadequate” institutional policies and processes for protecting email privacy.

“We have multiple policies across the university that vary across schools, with some faculties lacking any explicit policies at all,” Faust said in remarks posted verbatim by Harvard Magazine.

Calling the lack of email policies an “institutional failure,” Faust said she would create a task force to develop recommendations on university-wide policies and guidelines for email. Those recommendations will be made available for community discussion and university consideration by the end of the fall term

via Harvard to review privacy policies in wake of email search scandal – Computerworld.

Pivotal, a company spun out of assets of EMC and VMware, two tech companies each with billions in revenue, became an independent firm, ahead of a formal introduction on April 29.

Paul Maritz, Pivitol’s chief executive, who long held senior positions at Microsoft, left a position as chief executive VMware to organize and run Pivotal. EMC, a big maker of data storage technology, owns a majority stake in VMware, which makes software for the efficient construction of data centers.

Pivotal has drawn talent from both companies, in particular a division of EMC specialized in data analysis and prediction, and another group that works on writing software applications within cloud computing.

In a letter to employees, Mr. Marit talked about Pivotal’s goal “to enable customers to build a new class of applications, leveraging big and fast data, and do all of this with the power of cloud independence.” Those applications would be running on privately run clouds rich in EMC and VMware products.

That potentially profitable aim is joined by a very real fear of the growing power of Amazon Web Services. By running the world’s largest public cloud, Amazon has lowered the demand for products at both EMC and VMware. People can rent the computing they need at the time on Amazon Web Services, or A.W.S., rather than buying and maintaining large amounts of equipment.

via EMC’s Amazon Challenger Comes Out – NYTimes.com.

So I prefer to consider costs at both the project and the portfolio level: what does it cost to do e-discovery in this litigation, and what does it cost in general? It becomes easier that way to make several general observations about why e-discovery costs trend upwards.

There are more available ‘facts on the ground’

Modern technologies make it easy for people to communicate and do business — everywhere and with anyone. As a result, there has been an explosion in the volume of documents, which can now be found in duplicate, multiple formats, and in multiple locations. Today, an individual can receive hundreds of e-mails a day and write just as many. People simply did not write 500 letters a day when typewriters were common. People have more devices, so their work is distributed across several locations and computers make it easier to communicate with more people, faster, and doing more transactions. As a result, there has been a corresponding increase in the number of “custodians” — people lawyers must consider in developing a witness list and strategy for the collection of documents.

The result of these developments is there is more stuff and places to sort through in order to locate potentially relevant records. Costs go up when there are more documents, custodians, locations, data formats, devices, and systems from which information needs to be retrieved.

via Why does e-discovery cost so much? | Canadian Lawyer Magazine.

The company, which today announced its Open Patent Non-Assertion Pledge, said to start with, it has identified 10 patents related to MapReduce, a model for processing large data sets. It has pledged not to sue any user, distributor, or developer of open-source software based on patents related to MapReduce.

Duane Valz, Google senior patent counsel, said in a blog post that Google wants to ensure open source software remains open:

“At Google we believe that open systems win. Open-source software has been at the root of many innovations in cloud computing, the mobile web, and the Internet generally. And while open platforms have faced growing patent attacks, requiring companies to defensively acquire ever more patents, we remain committed to an open Internet — one that protects real innovation and continues to deliver great products and services.”

via Google vows not to sue over certain patents for open source | Internet & Media – CNET News.

Video @ Robert Owen on E-Discovery Rules Changes.

Do you believe in coincidences?

The genesis of Microsoft’s patent tracker is the company’s desire to improve the patent system without completely destroying it, a Microsoft lawyer that I spoke to today told me. Three problems the company sees in the current system are knowing who actually owns or controls a patent, litigation abuse by non-practicing entities (lawyerese for patent trolls who don’t actually make anything with the patents they control), and poor patent quality.

The new tracker is designed to fix the first problem, while making patent abuse more difficult. And it’s built around Microsoft’s goal of working within the patent system, while seeking to improve it. As Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith said, roughly translated: “Fix what’s broken, not break what’s working.”

The two initiatives show a different approach to patents, at least on the surface, from the two software giants.

Google’s initiative today showcases a kind of patents-are-a-necessary-evil mentality. Google doesn’t want to be left defenseless in a patent nuclear war, so it has loaded up on patents by acquiring Motorola, by buying them from IBM, and by joining a consortium to purchase them from a bankrupt Kodak. But it also wants to be seen as a friend of open systems and open software — after all, Android is built on an open-source foundation — so donating patents to open source is kind of motherhood and apple pie.

via Microsoft’s new ‘Patent Tracker’ shows us every one of the 40,786 patents it owns or controls | VentureBeat.

Spamhaus, a not-for-profit anti-spam organisation, came to CloudFlare last week for assistance against a large DDoS attack it was experiencing. Switching over to CloudFlare’s network on March 19, the attack began with a 10Gbps flood of traffic, ramping up in excess of 100Gbps later that night. It initially took Spamhaus’ website down, with the outage independently observed by the Internet Storm Center at the time.

According to CloudFlare, the majority of the attack was traffic sent using a technique called DNS (domain name system) reflection. Under normal circumstances, DNS resolvers wait for a user request, such as a lookup for the IP address for a domain name, then respond accordingly.

The issue with this system is that the source address of such requests can easily be forged, and in the absence of any checking or authentication, the DNS resolver simply replies to the source IP address. While this is a simple way of “bouncing” a request off a different server, it also has the added benefit of amplifying the damage that an attacker can do, as the response sent from the DNS resolver is often many times larger than the request.

via The largest DDoS attack didn’t break the internet, but it did try | ZDNet.

“They called my parents and told my dad I was hacking their computers,” Mr. Jaska, 17 years old, recalled. He was grounded and got detention. And he is just the type the Department of Homeland Security is looking for.

The secretary of that agency, Janet Napolitano, knows she has a problem that will only worsen. Foreign hackers have been attacking her agency’s computer systems. They have also been busy trying to siphon the nation’s wealth and steal valuable trade secrets. And they have begun probing the nation’s infrastructure — the power grid, and water and transportation systems.

So she needs her own hackers — 600, the agency estimates. But potential recruits with the right skills have too often been heading for business, and those who do choose government work often go to the National Security Agency, where they work on offensive digital strategies. At Homeland Security, the emphasis is on keeping hackers out, or playing defense.

via United States Wants to Attract Hackers to Public Sector – NYTimes.com.

We selected these top performers based on five qualities: political clout, legal results, media penetration, business credibility and thought leadership. All winners have a little bit of each quality and are exceptional in some. You’ll see symbols by the attorneys’ names indicating the qualities at which they excel the most.

Included in our 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America are dealmakers, trial attorneys, legal scholars, lobbyists, general counsel, firm managers and appellate advocates. We’ve focused mainly on their accomplishments during the past five years. Relevant, too, was whether their earlier accomplishments continue to affect the legal sector.

You’ve surely heard of many of these lawyers, but you’re also likely to find some surprises inside this report.

via The 100 Most Influential Lawyers.

CIA’s Gus Hunt On Big Data: We ‘Try To Collect Everything And Hang On To It Forever’

Speaking before a crowd of tech geeks at GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference in New York City, CTO Ira “Gus” Hunt said that the world is increasingly awash in information from text messages, tweets, and videos — and that the agency wants all of it.

Related articles

• The CIA Wants Big Data — All Of It (huffingtonpost.com)
• CIA Chief Tech Officer: Big Data Is The Future And We Own It (businessinsider.com)

In general terms, predictive coding is a way of using technology to extrapolate to a large set of data the results of human relevance decisions on a subset of that data. The process starts with lawyers who are most familiar with the issues in a case or with a set of document requests reviewing the subset of data. These reviewers generally generate a “seed set” of documents, each document of which is coded for relevance, privilege or other criteria. The seed set will include documents that are deemed both relevant and irrelevant. Those selections are then used by the computer to generate relevance rankings for the larger group of documents. The relevance rankings are then tested by the reviewing lawyers to refine the computer analysis. The process is analogous to a spam filter whereby the lawyers and the computer interact to achieve a level of certainty as to what is relevant. Some published studies maintain that the results of this approach are more accurate than an entirely human review of the results of keyword or Boolean searches. With a computer program doing the sorting work of junior lawyers, the savings in large cases can be substantial.

via Technology-Assisted Review Is a Promising Tool for Document Production.

WHAT IS PREDICTIVE CODING?

Similar to the technologies employed by Netflix and Pandora, predictive coding relies on a human to code a sample of documents, called a “seed set,” that in turn allows a sophisticated computer algorithm to identify properties of those documents and then evaluate the remaining documents, looking for similar characteristics and making predictions about how they should be coded.  A human reviewer then examines those predictions and confirms or refines them through a series of iterative rounds of further coding.  Ideally, this “training” will ultimately lead the software to a point where its predictions are accurate enough to produce a set of documents with high recall and precision – meaning, respectively, that all and only the responsive documents are included.

via Predictive coding: What it is and what you need to know about it.

FCW reports that its sources have told it Amazon will build a private cloud infrastructure for the CIA, to help it “keep up with emerging technologies like big data in a cost-effective manner not possible under the CIA’s previous cloud efforts”.

Both Amazon and the CIA have declined to comment ion the matter, according to FCW. However, the CIA’s Central Intelligence Agency Chief Information Officer, Jeanne Tisinger, recently told an audience at the Northern Virginia Technology Council that the agency was hoping to leverage the commercial sector’s innovation cycle.

via Report: Amazon Is Building the CIA’s New Cloud Computing System.

Stanton: Technology is changing investigations on many fronts. Not only are there now numerous investigative tools at the government’s disposal but, on the corporate side, the variety of information – and sources of information – being generated is growing exponentially. There are innovative processes and technologies that companies are developing for their own business missions and purposes. As a result, data and documents that may become relevant to an investigation come in many shapes and forms – from data stored on tablets to information stored in the cloud. Methods of corporate communication, internally and externally, are also moving away from email and taking on other forms like instant messaging and using social media. While these technologies are helpful for business purposes, I have also seen them present great challenges for companies when an investigation arises. Companies have to have good information management, including knowing who has access to information, and where and in what form the information is being generated and stored. Otherwise, it gets complicated when dealing with investigations or lawsuits, which require the data to be extracted and used in a different context.

So, technology is changing the substance and nature of evidence pertinent to an investigation, and it affects a company’s ability to respond, for example, to an investigation. Effective information management enables all parties to move quickly and successfully to a close. Technology that is not proactively structured to facilitate a company‘s collection or preservation of information may actually become a hindrance and cost for that company.

Technology is also changing the investigation and analysis process itself. On the civil side, we are focusing on how companies transmit information to the DOJ, including the format of productions, so we can use a broad range of advanced search and analysis tools to speed the process along. It is quite an exciting time when you consider how technological innovation is really changing what we do.

via DOJ Director Talks About Investigations And E-Discovery Technology | The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel.

In general terms, predictive coding is a way of using technology to extrapolate to a large set of data the results of human relevance decisions on a subset of that data. The process starts with lawyers who are most familiar with the issues in a case or with a set of document requests reviewing the subset of data. These reviewers generally generate a “seed set” of documents, each document of which is coded for relevance, privilege or other criteria. The seed set will include documents that are deemed both relevant and irrelevant. Those selections are then used by the computer to generate relevance rankings for the larger group of documents. The relevance rankings are then tested by the reviewing lawyers to refine the computer analysis. The process is analogous to a spam filter whereby the lawyers and the computer interact to achieve a level of certainty as to what is relevant. Some published studies maintain that the results of this approach are more accurate than an entirely human review of the results of keyword or Boolean searches. With a computer program doing the sorting work of junior lawyers, the savings in large cases can be substantial.

via Technology-Assisted Review Is a Promising Tool for Document Production.

Background

As most FCPA observers are aware, the SEC shares overall FCPA enforcement responsibility with the U.S. Department of Justice. Generally speaking, the SEC has civil jurisdiction in cases involving “issuers” (companies with SEC-registered securities or SEC filing obligations) and their personnel, whereas the DOJ has co-extensive jurisdiction in issuer cases and sole jurisdiction both in non-issuer civil cases and in all criminal cases. While it is widely assumed that corporate issuers – whether physically based in the U.S. or not – voluntarily subject themselves to civil FCPA jurisdiction in U.S. courts by virtue of accessing the U.S. capital markets and filing reports with the SEC, substantial doubt exists concerning whether and to what extent foreign employees of such issuers similarly subject themselves to personal jurisdiction in the U.S. courts simply by accepting employment with an issuer. The two recent cases from New York provide rare and useful judicial guidance on that issue.

via Courts diverge on the reach of personal jurisdiction in FCPA cases against foreign defendants – Lexology.

In this case, the court denied Defendant’s motion for a protective order “regarding the sixty-seven (67) electronic word searches” demanded by the plaintiff.  It also denied Defendant’s request that the cost of running those searches be shifted to the plaintiff.

Plaintiff’s first Request for Production included a list of 67 proposed search terms to be run against Defendant’s ESI.  In response, Defendant sought a protective order or, alternatively, an order shifting the costs associated with the search, arguing it was “entitled” to a protective order because it had already produced 8000 pages of responsive documents (in hard copy) and because, in its view, the requested search terms were “quite broad and vague.”

The court quickly denied the motion for a protective order, however, finding the defendant had “failed to provide any law or analysis in support of its request . . . .”  Among the court’s reasons for denying the motion were Defendant’s failure to show “how it would be unreasonably cumulative or duplicative to perform the requested discovery search” and Defendant’s failure to provide certification that it had conferred or attempted to confer with the plaintiff to resolve the dispute.

via Court Denies Motion for Protective Order or Cost-Shifting Related to Request to Utilize Sixty-Seven Search Terms : Electronic Discovery Law.

Infringement suits brought by patent trolls — or “nonpracticing entities,” as they’re more formally called — are a nebulous threat, but a handful of entities have become notorious for suing over patents that cover seemingly pervasive technology. Take Helferich Patent Licensing, which has reportedly extracted $750,000 licensing fees from the likes of Apple and Disney to cover those companies’ usage of URLs in text messages. (Others, including The New York Times, are headed to court instead of paying the fee.)

via Threat of Patent-Troll Litigation Looms Large for Agencies | Digital – Advertising Age.

The software, called Work Space, will allow Apple and Android users to keep both personal data and company information separately on the same device.

Work Space for iOS and Android will be managed through BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10. The package creates a secure space on the iOS or Android device for elements including secure client applications for email, calendar, contacts, tasks, memos, secure browsing and document editing for each device that is provisioned via BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10.

Additional applications can also be secured and added to the workspace, BlackBerry said.

via BlackBerry adds security offering for iOS, Android | ZDNet.

Launched today, the site’s ISP Speed Index page displays the performance of certain ISPs in the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. As such, it doesn’t cover the entire world but simply those countries where Netflix is available.

In the U.S., Google Fiber took the top spot with an average speed of 3.35 megabits per second. Cablevision’s Optimum service was No. 2 with a speed of 2.35Mbps, followed by Suddenlink, Cox, and Verizon Fios. Rounding out the bottom of the U.S. list were AT&T’s DSL, Verizon’s DSL, and Clearwire.

Google Fiber also proved the fastest around the world, followed by Sweden’s Ownit with an average speed of 2.99Mbps. Finland offers Netflix subscribers the highest speed on average, while Mexico ranked the lowest.

via Netflix reveals the speeds of top ISPs around the world | Internet & Media – CNET News.

In agreeing to settle a case brought by 38 states involving the project, the search company for the first time is required to aggressively police its own employees on privacy issues and to explicitly tell the public how to fend off privacy violations like this one.

While the settlement also included a tiny — for Google — fine of $7 million, privacy advocates and Google critics characterized the overall agreement as a breakthrough for a company they say has become a serial violator of privacy.

Complaints have led to multiple enforcement actions in recent years and a spate of worldwide investigations into the way the mapping project also collected the personal data of private computer users.

via Google Admits Street View Project Violated Privacy – NYTimes.com.

In a statement issued on Monday, Harvard Deans Michael Smith and Evelynn Hammonds acknowledged that the search described in the Globe report had happened. However, they maintained the search was done in an extremely limited and thoughtful manner to identify an individual who shared a confidential email with an unauthorized person.

Though the specific email was inconsequential, the fact that it was forwarded word-for-word to someone else was concerning, the deans said in their statement. The disclosure prompted concerns that other information, especially sensitive student information, was at risk of similar disclosure.

via Harvard scrambles to explain why it secretly searched deans’ emails – Computerworld.

In what is seen as a significant ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last week held that border agents do need to have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct forensic searches of electronic devices belonging to travelers at the border.

“The uniquely sensitive nature of data on electronic devices, which often retain information far beyond the perceived point of erasure, carries with it a significant expectation of privacy,” the court noted.

via U.S. court says feds need reasonable suspicion to search laptops at borders – Computerworld.

The court will be located inside a new HK$2.7bn (£234m) development known as the West Kowloon Law Courts Building (WKLCB), which is due for completion in 2015 after construction began last year.

The WKLCB, a twin-tower development located at the junction of Tung Chau Street and Tonkin Street West in Sham Shui Po in West Kowloon, will provide an additional 32 courtrooms and 16,500 sq m of operational floor space, as well as extra facilities such as witness protection rooms, consultation rooms, waiting areas, jury assembly points and registration and interview rooms.

The building will be able to accommodate around 100 members of the public as well as large groups of defendants and lawyers.

via Hong Kong ramps up litigation focus with construction of new ‘mega court’ – Legalweek.

Companies that have been sued for patent infringement by NPEs appreciate the special problems such litigation presents. The NPE has substantial leverage over the company: Responding to discovery can be very burdensome and disruptive for the company, but not for the NPE, which generally has few documents to produce and perhaps no witnesses; the stakes for the company can be substantial, while the NPE has nothing to lose but its patent; and the company faces potentially large legal bills for defending the patent lawsuit and challenging the validity of even overbroad patents, while the NPE likely has small or no legal bills, because it likely has a contingency fee agreement with its lawyers. To make matters worse, NPEs typically sue an end user of a technology, such as a bank or retailer, which has less incentive and less ability to defend the lawsuit than the company that actually makes the equipment or technology at issue. And finally, the company is likely to be sued in a location like the Eastern District of Texas that is favorable to plaintiffs, convenient to the NPE, but quite inconvenient to the company.

With these leverage imbalances in mind, the NPE typically offers to settle for low six-figure sums, a much smaller figure than the average cost of litigating a patent lawsuit to conclusion. Not surprisingly, companies that are sued by NPEs generally choose to pay rather than litigate. A recent Boston University study estimates that NPEs collected $29 billion in 2011. Further, the number of patent cases brought before the International Trade Commission by NPEs swelled from 22 in 2010 to 232 in 2011.

The SHIELD Act is directed toward entities that buy patents, ostensibly to use them for litigation rather than to make products. Here’s how it works: The SHIELD Act increases the risks for an NPE by requiring an NPE that loses a patent lawsuit (or ITC action) to pay the accused company’s costs, including legal fees, unless the court finds exceptional circumstances that would make such an award unjust. It also makes it more difficult for an NPE to bring a lawsuit by requiring the NPE to post a bond sufficient to cover those costs and fees.

via Patent Troll Litigation – Is Legislative Help on the Way? | News & Events | Dorsey & Whitney.

It will be user-friendly and accessible via bright and fresh retail shops with the ambiance of Apple stores. It will be data-driven, with litigators turning to enormous databases capable of predicting results and guiding strategy. It will have the charm of an assembly line that parcels work out across time zones and specialties in structured processes certain to warm the hearts of project managers. And it will be beautiful. Imagine strings of case citations rendered as computer-generated graphics as appealing to the eye as they are to the analytical mind.

These were among the compelling visions that emerged last week from a remarkable conference in Silicon Valley. Called ReinventLaw, the daylong meeting featured 40 speakers who described a series of digital, regulatory, and engineering changes that are redefining law as lawyers and their clients now know it.

Two young Michigan State University law professors, Daniel Martin Katz and Renee Newman Knake, organized the session, versions of which are scheduled for London in June and New York in November. At MSU Katz and Knake run the Reinvent Law program, which they call “A Law Laboratory,” a set of classes and experiments devoted to harnessing digital-age technology to the practice of law. This Kauffman Foundation-funded effort rests on a simple concept: “We believe lawyers can change the world but to change the world we must first change ourselves.”

via The Future of Law as Seen From Silicon Valley.

Big Data is the next big thing in computing. This video explains Big Data characteristics, technologies and opportunities.

2012 saw revenue rise by 270%, with profits also rising by 300% against 2011 results.  Altlaw has enjoyed 8 successive quarters of growth and has solidified its position as a major competitor in the litigation support and eDisclosure market.  2013 is a year in which Altlaw continues to invest in the areas of greatest opportunity, and is building a platform for growth which should enable us to exceed the achievements of 2012.

Managing Director Matthew Altass said that “I am extremely pleased with our performance in 2012, and confident that our clearly defined plans, priorities and continued investment will provide great opportunities for our company, staff, and clients in the year ahead.”

With record number of clients in 2012 and; crucially, the fact that many of those placed repeat business, this is a fantastic validation of the quality of the service and expertise that Altlaw provides.  Key to our success is the fact that we are able to offer the full spectrum of services under the EDRM, from forensic data collection and processing, through to ECA and Hosted Review and to hardcopy disclosure and photocopying from our premises in City Road.

ALTLAW LITIGATION SUPPORT LIMITED

2012 RESULTS HIGHLIGHTS

• 2012 was the strongest trading year in the company’s history.
• Record number of clients, including instructions on two major high profile cases by large FTSE corporate clients.
• High percentage of clients placing repeat business.
• Highest processing year in terms of data volumes.
• Highest hosting revenue and relativity users
• Turnover up by over 270%
• Profit up by over 300%
• 8 successive quarters of growth
• Substantial investment in hardware and software including Kcura Relativity and Nuix
• Continued successful execution of our corporate growth strategy
• Continued development of systems and processes
• On-going investment and expansion in staff

Related articles

• Mitigate Data Privacy Concerns with Altlaw’s European Litigation Document Review Center (legaltechtoday.com)
• London Calling! Altlaw Litigation Support – Europe’s Premier eDiscovery Specialists – To Attend LegalTech New York 2013 (altlaw.info)
• Altlaw Litigation Support – Europe’s Premier eDiscovery Specialists – To Attend LegalTech New York 2013 (legaltechtoday.com)

Most of the resistance to incorporating digital evidence into a case revolves around cost, and there is no avoiding the fact that e-discovery comes at a price.  One need not look any further than the recent decision by United States Magistrate Judge Michael Hammer in Juster Acquisition Co. v. North Hudson Sewerage Authority, 12-cv-3427, to realize both that e-discovery is a critical component of litigation, and that it comes at a price.  In Juster, Magistrate Hammer rejected the plaintiff’s contention that a request for e-mail discovery was too broad, unduly burdensome, unreasonably cumulative or duplicative, reasoning that all that all the plaintiff needed to do was run key word searches of its database.  Moreover, Magistrate Hammer ruled that the plaintiff would have to bear the expense of the necessary searches on its own, and that the costs would not be shifted to the requesting party. It is not as steep a cost as many think if done correctly, especially when the costs of not undertaking the e-discovery process are considered, but I’m not here to plug the vendors performing the valuable work in this space.  The real issues that I am here to tackle are some major misconceptions about a simple hyphenated word that has thrust its way into the legal lexicon as a product of the ongoing digitalization of our world.

One of the biggest misconceptions associated with e-discovery is confusion about what e-discovery really means.  As much as many clients (and, sadly, even some lawyers and judges) view e-discovery as just some exclusive, automated way of reviewing documents that only so-called “white shoe” law firms can afford, that is just not accurate.  E-discovery is actually a general term used to describe two separate, yet related, activities involving electronically stored information (“ESI”): (A) the collection of ESI through digital forensics to preserve the integrity and admissibility of the evidence; and (B) the production and review of ESI during the course of a case, including all of its constituent sub-parts, using specialized tools (i.e. software).  The former is necessary, in short, to ensure that the ESI is collected in a way that it remains admissible and credible for use at trial.  The latter is a way that the “techies” have devised for making the ESI usable by lawyers, their clients, and the courts (in other words, the “non-techies” among us) to garner the facts needed for a particular case.

via E-Discovery Doesn’t Have To Be A Dirty Word – Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration – United States.

That’s the view of several experts at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher who took part Thursday in a webcast on e-discovery hot topics. The session was based on the law firm’s lengthy “2012 Year-End Electronic Discovery Update: Moving Beyond Sanctions and Toward Solutions to Difficult Problems.”

“The e-discovery playing field continues to shift rapidly, and general counsel need to be aware of the developments and how [the changes] impact their companies’ strategies,” Gareth Evans told CorpCounsel.com before the webcast. Evans, who is based in Los Angeles, co-chairs the firm’s e-discovery law practice group.

The continuing changes can impact a company’s obligations in discovery, added the other co-chair, New York-based Jennifer Rearden. “And the courts’ receptivity to new approaches to document review may significantly reduce the general counsel’s legal spend,” Rearden noted.

Kicking off the webcast, litigation associate Heather Richardson said two key topics of change were the courts’ imposing fewer major sanctions, such as terminating a case in the other party’s favor as a measure against companies for faulty e-discovery efforts; and the courts’ growing acceptance of parties using predictive coding.

via Solving the Biggest Problems of E-Discovery.

Microsoft’s €561m ($731m) fine for failing to offer 15 million Europeans a “browser ballot” screen with new Windows 7 Service Pack 1 machines may have been prompted by its browser rivals, Google and Opera.

Google and Opera informally notified the European Commission and helped investigators, according to a Financial Times report, which notes that Europe’s antitrust chief Joaquín Almunia has said that Microsoft’s rivals alerted him to the oversight.

via Google, Opera ‘reported Microsoft’s browser breach to EU’ | ZDNet.

Companies that have been sued for patent infringement by NPEs appreciate the special problems such litigation presents. The NPE has substantial leverage over the company: Responding to discovery can be very burdensome and disruptive for the company, but not for the NPE, which generally has few documents to produce and perhaps no witnesses; the stakes for the company can be substantial, while the NPE has nothing to lose but its patent; and the company faces potentially large legal bills for defending the patent lawsuit and challenging the validity of even overbroad patents, while the NPE likely has small or no legal bills, because it likely has a contingency fee agreement with its lawyers. To make matters worse, NPEs typically sue an end user of a technology, such as a bank or retailer, which has less incentive and less ability to defend the lawsuit than the company that actually makes the equipment or technology at issue. And finally, the company is likely to be sued in a location like the Eastern District of Texas that is favorable to plaintiffs, convenient to the NPE, but quite inconvenient to the company.

With these leverage imbalances in mind, the NPE typically offers to settle for low six-figure sums, a much smaller figure than the average cost of litigating a patent lawsuit to conclusion. Not surprisingly, companies that are sued by NPEs generally choose to pay rather than litigate. A recent Boston University study estimates that NPEs collected $29 billion in 2011. Further, the number of patent cases brought before the International Trade Commission by NPEs swelled from 22 in 2010 to 232 in 2011.

via Patent troll litigation – is legislative help on the way? – Lexology.

Other cops start restraining Marks, who screams, “I did not do anything!” The opening scene of the film Minority Report depicts a society in which predictions seem so accurate that the police arrest individuals for crimes before they are committed. People are imprisoned not for what they did, but for what they are foreseen to do, even though they never actually commit the crime. The movie attributes this prescient and preemptive law enforcement to the visions of three clairvoyants, not to data analysis. But the unsettling future Minority Report portrays is one that unchecked big-data analysis threatens to bring about, in which judgments of culpability are based on individualized predictions of future behavior.

Of course, big data is on track to bring countless benefits to society. It will be a cornerstone for improving everything from healthcare to education. We will count on it to address global challenges, be it climate change or poverty. And that is to say nothing about how business can tap big data, and the gains for our economies. The benefits are just as outsized as the datasets. Yet we need to be conscious of the dark side of big data too.

via Should We Use Big Data To Punish Crimes Before They’re Committed? | Popular Science.

“Litigation is often the largest area of the in-house legal budget and it’s important to budget for these costs and give them close oversight … Leading departments continue to pick apart the law firm service bundle, taking administrative…[hardcopies and document services]…or information-intensive activities…[e-Disclosure and forensics]…away from law firms. Legal departments are most likely to use non-law firms for litigation work, and the proportion of legal departments using these providers nearly doubles to over 50 percent once litigation grows past 15 percent of the total legal budget”

So what are the benefits of working directly with a litigation support company?

1. Cost Saving
The first and most obvious benefit is in the potential for cost saving at each stage of the pre-litigation process. At the outset, a litigation support company like Altlaw can ensure that costs to your company are kept to a minimum by identifying only that information which is relevant to your litigation needs. This reduces the need to engage fee earners in time consuming but unnecessary work.

2. Early Case Assessment
Industry figures have shown that up to 70% of the data can be filtered out as irrelevant at the Early Case Assessment phase. This avoids the traditional need to send the entire contents of your company servers to your chosen law firm and greatly reduces the cost of the action. This process also importantly allows you to determine the relative strength of your case before you make a decision on whether to engage outside counsel at all.

3. Cost Certainty
For in-house legal departments, cost certainty is almost as important as cost saving. Another clear benefit of engaging a litigation support firm directly is that in-house counsel can keep tabs on the specific costs of each stage of the eDisclosure work through detailed information direct from the service provider, safe in the knowledge that there is no unexpected premium mark up applied by the intermediary law firm who, in many cases would outsource the work to a litigation support company anyway.

4. Safe Use of Data
Considering the importance of the data you are entrusting to the law firm, knowing exactly who subsequently has access to this data is of the highest importance. Maintaining full control over which specialist litigation support firm is engaged in the process, also gives you peace of mind when it comes to knowing who exactly will be dealing with your vital data. With fewer third parties involved, in-house counsel can rest easy in the knowledge that the potential for misuse of their data is minimal.

5. Technical Expertise
The process of eDisclosure is necessarily a technical one. With this in mind and in order to minimise errors, in-house legal departments will naturally want those whom they consider most qualified and reputable and who have the most up to date equipment for the job at hand. Why then, should they rely on a law firm, whose core competency is ultimately the practise of law, to make a decision on which litigation support provider is used in the process of building a case? By using a litigation support company to focus on the technical side and while using your own lawyers or outside counsel on the legal side, you can be confident that you have the best chance with your litigation.

6. Employ the Latest Industry and Legal Standards
In recent times, there have been a number of significant changes to the Disclosure and eDisclosure process. These include the introduction of a new eDisclosure Practice Direction and the soon to be implemented Jackson Review reforms, which will put eDisclosure at the centre of the litigation process. When you engage a specialist litigation support company, you can be safe in the knowledge that when you choose to conduct litigation, their experts will ensure that your eDisclosure protocols are in line with the latest industry and legal standards, saving you time and money, as well as guaranteeing that you are well prepared for any future changes.

Why Use Altlaw?
Altlaw offers technological expertise in all facets of electronic litigation support and legal document services, providing specialist products and services, coupled with proven techniques. Altlaw has capabilities across the full range of Electronic Data Services, including Forensic collection and investigation, early case assessment, Electronic data disclosure and Secure online review.

Since Altlaw has been operating, it has proven that it deserves its place as the first port of call for those requiring litigation support services. With over 100 years worth of combined experience of working in the industry alongside law firms and in-house counsel, its knowledge of the intricacies of the industry is extensive. Altlaw is well established and is well on its way to reaching a significant milestone; its 15,000th successfully completed job. Despite this success, we are careful to ensure that we continue to offer a personal service. We know that no two cases are the same, so we make sure that we are responsive and offer bespoke solutions for all your litigation support needs.

By way of example, Altlaw’s recent work includes:

• Acting on behalf of a high end US firm based in London, Altlaw overcame massive time constraints to complete a large data protection order for a complex IP theft case. With very little warning, a team of fully equipped, qualified Computer Forensic Investigators from Altlaw were dispatched to capture 11 terabytes (11,000 Gigabytes) of data at the contentious client-site location (a well known transnational industrial production company) from various production and backup servers, workstations, laptops, personal computers, mobile phones and various other media in a very short three day window. The location proved hugely challenging due to the office being operational throughout the collection.
• Specialist Computer Forensic Investigators from Altlaw were asked to appear as expert witnesses in court proceedings involving the Serious Fraud Office, which revolved around issues of insider trading.
• Altlaw completed a multi-terabyte data collection project in one afternoon by dispatching forensic data collection specialists to the Channel Islands via private aircraft. This enabled analysis and processing of the data to commence on the same evening, a distinct advantage for the legal team under a tight deadline. Announced earlier this year, this unique e-discovery service not only enables rapid deployment of experienced technicians in time sensitive matters, but also significantly improves logistical efficiency within complex, geographically dispersed matters that cover a number of locations.
• In a case brought by multinational banks against the alleged negligent advice of three contractors, Altlaw was tasked with investigating and collating various types of transactions and communications for use in the litigation process.

Telephone: +44 (0)20 7490 1646
Website: www.altlaw.co.uk

Email: info@altlaw.co.uk

Related articles

• Altlaw Litigation Support – Europe’s Premier eDiscovery Specialists – To Attend LegalTech New York 2013 (legaltechtoday.com)
• Mitigate Data Privacy Concerns with Altlaw’s European Litigation Document Review Center (legaltechtoday.com)

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleged that beginning in 2005, the defendants – former executives of Magyar Telekom PLC, a Hungarian telecommunications company – orchestrated a scheme to bribe Macedonian officials. Details of the scheme were memorialized in various documents attached to e-mails sent to and from locations outside of the United States but stored in or routed through U.S.-based servers. Throughout this period, shares of the company were publicly traded in the United States and were registered with the SEC. The SEC alleged that the defendants had made false certifications by concealing the true nature of the transactions that formed the basis of the bribery scheme.

The defendants moved to dismiss the SEC’s allegations that they had engaged in a scheme to bribe Macedonian government officials to mitigate the effects of a new law on their company. They argued in part that the SEC had failed to allege the defendants’ intent to use interstate commerce in furtherance of the alleged scheme and that the SEC’s claims were time barred.

via Southern District of New York ruling may present challenges for FCPA defendants – Lexology.

The company said it received between zero and 999 of those letters in 2012, concerning between 1000 and 1999 accounts. That’s the same as 2011, but down from 2000-2999 accounts in 2010.

The controversial demand letter is distinct from a warrant or subpoena, insofar as it doesn’t require court oversight or eventual notification to the subject of the inquiry. For that matter, recipients like Google are often “gagged” from discussing the request, which is why the company’s announcement on Tuesday was notable.

It was only after negotiations with government officials that Google could highlight the numbers in even “broad strokes.”

Going forward, this information will be part of Google’s regular Transparency Reports. The company has published these for the last three years to highlight the number of government or court requests for information that it receives, as well as takedown notices from copyright owners and governments.

Because the use of National Security Letters is cloaked in secrecy, getting an accurate sense of how they’re used and how frequently has been difficult. The Washington Post reported that the FBI issued about 50,000 per year on average, at least between 2003 and 2006.

via Google shines light on shadowy FBI practice | The Technology Chronicles | an SFGate.com blog.

Using internal data compiled from more than 35,000 average daily connectivity sessions across more than 1,800 Gogo-equipped aircraft – as well as from surveys of Gogo users – the Chicago-headquartered firm can confirm that 84% of all devices used by passengers to connect through Gogo carry Apple’s iOS operating system, while 16% carry the Android operating system.

“If you look only at the smartphones people use, the iPhone makes up 73% and Android devices make up 26% with Blackberry- and Windows-based devices each making up less than 1% of the devices being used to connect in air,” says Gogo. Drilling down further, when it comes to Apple devices, “59% of passengers connect using the iPad, 36% using the iPhone and 5% using the iPod Touch”, adds the firm.

via Gogo infographic: Apple devices still reign supreme above the clouds » APEX Editor’s Blog.

On Wednesday, at a conference in San Francisco, Esteves downplayed the importance of offering a service to compete with Google, as reported by The Verge. “We’re in the business of delivering what consumers want, and to stay a little ahead of what we think they will want…. We just don’t see the need of delivering that to consumers,” she said, referring to gigabit-speed internet connections.

Esteves thinks only business customers will need that kind of bandwidth, and she noted that Time Warner already offers gigabit connections for businesses in some markets.

Google rolled out its gigabit speed fiber optic service in Kansas City earlier this year. But big telcos like Verizon and Time Warner have been slow to match it. In fact, Verizon has frozen expansion of its much slower — and more expensive — fiber optic service, known as FiOS.

Experts believe that this reluctance has less to do with a lack of customer demand and more to do with protecting high margin broadband businesses. Companies like Time Warner Cable make around a 97 percent profit on existing services, Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffet told the MIT Technology Review this month. But Verizon is more interested in wireless broadband, on which it can make an “absolute killing,” by charging per gigabyte for usage, broadband industry watcher and DSL Reports editor Karl Bode told Wired earlier this year.

via You Don’t Want Super-High-Speed Internet, Says Time Warner Cable | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com.

Most consumers probably are not even aware that there is a process that would allow them to keep their current phone when they switch from one national carrier to another — but only after they have satisfied their initial service contract. The freedom to keep a phone regardless of the carrier has become a popular cause in technology circles, and an online petition to the White House gained more than 100,000 signatures in a month, prompting a response.

“If you have paid for a mobile device, and aren’t bound by a service agreement or other obligation, you should be able to use it on another network,” R. David Edelman, a senior White House adviser for Internet, innovation and policy, wrote in a blog post on the White House Web site.

“It’s common sense,” he said, and it raises concerns about consumer choice, competition and innovation.

via F.C.C. Urges a Right to Unlock Cellphones – NYTimes.com.

White & Case again placed second globally in the Global Arbitration Review 100, a guide to the world’s leading 100 international arbitration practices. The methodology used to determine the rankings is based principally on the number and value of pending cases and hearings over 2011 and 2012. The survey highlighted the Firm’s case load of 223 arbitration matters, valued at US$73 billion, including multiple “bet-the-company” cases.

The Global Arbitration Review “lifetime achievement award” went to former White & Case lawyer Stephen M. Schwebel, who is a former judge and president of the International Court of Justice. Judge Schwebel started his career at White & Case working on the Aramco v Saudi Arabia arbitration. In his acceptance speech, Judge Schwebel recounted his time at White & Case and described Aramco v Saudi Arabia as “one of the most important international arbitrations of the 20th century.” In addition, White & Case was nominated for “large international arbitration practice that impressed during the past year,” and the Firm’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) victory in SGS Société Générale de Surveillance S.A. v. Republic of Paraguay was nominated for “most important published decision of 2012 in jurisprudential terms.”

via White & Case LLP – News – White & Case’s International Arbitration Group Remains at the Top.

A significant portion of this challenge can be attributed to the growth of Big Data, which comes in varied forms, such as email, video and social media. The legal knowledge workers teams must be able to quickly understand:

1.     Who owns the ESI?

2.     How much ESI is involved?

3.     Where is ESI stored?

4.     Is the ESI subject to data privacy laws?

5.     Has the ESI been properly preserved?

6.     Can the ESI be accessed and collected?

7.     Which ESI is actually relevant?

Historically, e-discovery requests have implicated only a handful of key data sources, such as desktops, laptops, file shares and email servers. This is changing as Big Data infiltrates corporate work places. Identifying all the places potentially relevant ESI might reside when Big Data is involved brings into play an entirely new set of hurdles.

via Five Steps to Regaining E-Discovery Control in the Era of Big Data – KMWorld Magazine.

Following entry of judgment in their favor in this patent infringement case, Defendants filed a motion seeking attorneys’ fees, including $391,928.91 for document review conducted by an outside provider of discovery services and $2,829,349.10 “attributable to computerassisted [sic], algorithm-driven document review” utilized to reduce the number of documents requiring manual review.  The court found these amounts reasonable and granted the motion in part.  Ultimately, the court awarded Defendants a total of $12,465,331.01.

Defendants alleged that Plaintiffs “pursued objectively baseless patent and misappropriation claims in bad faith” and thus sought attorneys’ fees “with regard to Plaintiffs’ patent claims under 35 U.S.C. § 285 and with regard to Plaintiffs’ misappropriation claims under Section 3426.4 of CUTSA” (California’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act).  Sparing the details, the court concluded that an award of attorneys’ fees was appropriate under each statute and further determined that because “each one of Plaintiffs’ claims [was] covered under the ambit of one of the statutes, the Court need not apportion Defendants’ attorneys’ fees to the particular cause of action it addressed.”  Accordingly, the court indicated it would determine “the reasonable amount of the award using the lodestar determination.”

In addition to the fees attributable to lead counsel, Defendants sought recovery of fees related to the document review undertaken by an outside discovery service provider (using contract attorneys) and of fees “attributable to computerassisted [sic], algorithm-driven review.”  Specifically, after collecting almost 12 million records (mostly ESI), Defendants relied on an outside vendor to “employ its proprietary technology to sort the[ ] records into responsive and non-responsive documents” and then provided those documents identified as responsive to a separate discovery service provider whose attorneys manually reviewed them for “confidentiality, privilege and relevance issues.”

via Court Awards Millions in Attorneys’ Fees for Document Review Conducted by Contract Attorneys and Use of Computer-Assisted Review : Electronic Discovery Law.

An obvious danger in an evermore connected global business community is the failure of baseline ethical considerations to keep pace with the wider phenomenon. The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and the UK Bribery Act (UKBA) are serious pieces of legislation designed to keep businesses honest and level the playing field in favour of competition, which in turn benefits the consumer with the best products and services at the best price.

The FCPA and the UKBA are not mere aspirations; they embody an important policy and aggressive enforcement. International companies who maintain only a casual adherence to their tenants can – and have – paid a heavy price.

via Anti-corruption laws benefit all the players – The National.

 ** Does not include travel expenses

Related articles

• 50% eDiscovery Savings with Zetta Discovery Services (globaleddgroup.com)
• A Complete Suite of eDiscovery Services (globaleddgroup.com)

Here you can follow the entire life of a search query, from the web, to crawling and indexing, to algorithmic ranking and serving, to fighting webspam. The site complements existing resources, including this blog, the help center, user forums, Webmaster Tools, and in-depth research papers.

A few things you’ll find:

• An interactive, graphical explanation of Google Search
• A view into major search algorithms and features
• A 43-page document explaining how we evaluate our results
• A live slideshow of spam as we remove it
• Graphs illustrating the spam problem and how we fight it
• A list of policies that explain when we’ll remove content

We hope the site helps to illuminate the split-second journey from algorithms to answers. The animated site is available today in English and there’s also a text-only version in 43 languages.

via Billions of times a day in the blink of an eye – Inside Search.

The second largest verdict of last year was $1.049 billion, awarded to Apple Inc. on August 24 in a closely watched trial in San Jose, Calif. The jury found that Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. had willfully infringed six patents tied to smartphones and tablet devices, but it ruled against Apple on antitrust and contract claims. Since the award, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh denied Apple’s bid to ban Samsung’s infringing products in the United States. She also threw out the jury’s finding that Apple willfully infringed, which prevents Apple from seeking triple damages.

via A banner year for billion-dollar patent verdicts.

DelBene gave little insight into the possibility, bandied about for the last few years, at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media & Telecom Conference this morning. During a question-and-answer session, DelBene noted the premium tablet experience for Office is on Microsoft’s Surface RT and Surface Pro devices, which run Windows 8. As for iOS devices, DelBene said that users can view Office files, such as Excel spreadsheets, on Microsoft’s SkyDrive storage service.

“We think we have a pretty good cross-device product today,” DelBene said. “In the future, you should expect to see us bet on SkyDrive” even more.

During the session, DelBene also noted that the acquisitions of Skype and Yammer, both of which are being integrated into Office products and services, has helped Microsoft develop new skills at rapid product development. Throughout its history, Microsoft has focused largely on multiyear product development cycles. Skype and Yammer are pushing Microsoft to quickly evolve to the faster pace of developing Web services.

via Microsoft’s DelBene: Want Office on an iPad? Use SkyDrive | Microsoft – CNET News.

• On-demand secure relevance review platform
• Built-in processing engine delivers data directly into the review platform
• Reduce document collections with DeNIST and de-duplication functions
• Integrated OCR and PDF to TIF capabilities eliminate additional processing
• Support for native files and a variety of other file types
• Standard coding fields pre-loaded to get stated quickly
• Customizable label, issue and coding fields provide flexibility during the litigation process
• Powerful advanced search capabilities include full Boolean controls
• Tiered user permission structure provides sophisticated review management
• Support for multiple file types and individual files of up to 5 gigabytes
• Redact and Bates stamp multiple documents on the fly
• Easily upload new document batches and metadata from existing trial database
• Bulk edit multiple documents with document labels, issues, and codes
• Sort documents by label or issue, date, title or other criteria
• Color Coding clearly identifies documents
• Grid View customizable interface allows easy document browsing
• Mac and Android optimized, as well as any mobile hardware

Safeguard Your Privilege

Zetta Discovery’s Privilege Protect safeguards against the inadvertent waiver of attorney-client privilege by using patent-pending, computer-assisted technologies to detect potentially privileged documents before they are produced. Secure transfer of productions into a separate and secure clone database adds an additional and unprecedented layer of protection for privileged or un-redacted data.

Military Grade Security for Your Data.

Zetta Discovery meets or exceeds many federally regulated security standards, including Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA compliance standards, as well as meeting the Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70: Service Organizations, Type II (SAS70 Type II).

Those interested in learning more about these services should call +1.216.220.5848, +1.888.690.DATA (3282), email info@globaledd.com, or visit www.GlobalEDDGroup.com for additional information.

via A Complete Suite of eDiscovery Services – Bits & Bytes from Global EDD Group.

The study, shared exclusively with The Verge, says that overseas hackers are stealing as much as one terabyte of data per day from governments, businesses, militaries, and academic facilities. Apparently, the hackers are using a network of 500 computer servers.

According to a lengthy article by The Verge, Team Cymru concludes that the hackers are so sophisticated and are running such massive campaigns that they must be state-sponsored. “This is Internet theft on an industrial level,” Team Cymru director Steve Santorelli told The Verge. However, it remains unclear which government, or governments, might be behind the attacks.

Various security experts have been pointing the blame at the Chinese government for the recent slew of cyberattacks on U.S. soil. A report by Mandiant released last week linked China’s People’s Liberation Army to a large number of cyberattacks against U.S. corporations, government agencies, and other organizations. However, the Chinese government has flatly denied that it is involved in cyber-espionage or hacking.

via Overseas hackers nab more than 1TB of data daily | Security & Privacy – CNET News.

“If you’ve been hearing about the FCPA but haven’t addressed it fully, there is a reason to take the concern seriously from a reputational risk perspective and because you could face serious criminal and civil consequences if there is a breach,” says Jason de Bretteville, a shareholder at Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth.

There is also reason to be familiar with foreign laws. U.S. legislation, he says, only regulates bribes to foreign officials, which can include any employee of a government-owned or controlled entity. Foreign legislation, including the U.K. Bribery Act, doesn’t maintain this distinction and prohibits potentially corrupt payments to both foreign officials and private counterparties, highlighting the need for due diligence.

Smart Business spoke to de Bretteville about ways to limit FCPA exposure.

What are the highest areas of risk U.S. companies may tend to neglect?

One area businesses often discount is the risk posed by foreign distributors. Companies tend to mistakenly assume that if their title transfers to a foreign distributor, there is no risk posed to them if the distributor engages in corrupt payments, and that’s not the case.

The lack of understanding of a counterparty’s ownership structure is another risk. For example, in China and former Soviet-bloc countries, there is government ownership of what Westerners may assume are purely commercial entities. You may think you’re engaging — having a dinner or entertaining — a private party but, in the view of U.S. regulators, you’re entertaining a foreign official.

One evolving risk area is engaging in cooperative research with academics. They may hold dual positions and privileges at foreign academic institutions that could render them a foreign official.

via How smart companies comply with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act | Smart Business.

In a statement released today, China’s Ministry of National Defense said that cyberattacks against its military sites have increased over the past few years. Based on checks of IP addresses, the Defense Ministry claimed an average of 144,000 cyberattacks per month last year, according to Reuters.

And it fingered the U.S. for almost 63 percent of them.

via China blames U.S. for most cyberattacks against military Web sites | Security & Privacy – CNET News.

Knowing how to spot Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) “red flags” is an important part of the due diligence process.  The level of FCPA due diligence that needs to be undertaken will vary depending on the level of FCPA risks involved.  For example, if the deal involves a high-risk country or industry, substantial required interaction with government officials, or reliance on third parties, more due diligence will be needed.  While by no means is the following an exhaustive list, here are just a few examples of some FCPA “red flags” that signal that further review is warranted:

• Target company has been subject of prior FCPA or corruption related investigation
• Target company has prior allegations relating to business integrity, ethics or other violations of local law
• Business performed in a high risk industry or high risk country (e.g., countries with a ranking of 3.0 or lower on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index)
• Excessive or unusually high compensation without sufficient supporting detail
• Payments to third parties not well-known in the industry
• Payments made to third parties outside of the country where the goods/services are to be provided
• Use of shell companies or cash transactions
• Lack of anti-bribery policies, trainings or code of conduct at target company
• Lack of written agreements with consultants, agents or business partners
• Close relationships to government officials or significant interaction with government regulators
• Misrepresentation or failure of the target company to cooperate in due diligence process

via FCPA Due Diligence Is Critical To Avoid Successor Liability In Cross-Border Transactions – Corporate/Commercial Law – United States.

The stack of “year-end” blog posts and summaries clogging inboxes after the holidays confirms that the proliferation of merger objection lawsuits remains a matter of great concern to courts, commentators, and companies looking to acquire or be acquired.  In the case of the latter, there has even been some talk that D&O insurance carriers have taken merger litigation into account when calculating policy terms and premiums for 2013.  Some D&O insurers now consider merger litigation a “high-frequency product,” resulting in higher premiums, higher deductibles for M&A-related activity, and even M&A exclusions.3

Accordingly, 2012 was a year that featured some pushback by courts (and court-commentators) against merger litigation activity, especially (but not exclusively) in Delaware.

via Continuing developments in merger-related litigation.

The lawsuit, which was filed by five parents two years ago, alleged that Apple did not create parental controls to keep children from buying extra features sold within a video games app. The parents who filed the lawsuit said they didn’t realize their children were charging their accounts until they were billed. Some of the games were designed for children as young as 4 years old.

“Apple failed to adequately disclose that third-party game apps, largely available for free and rated as containing content suitable for children, contained the ability to make in-app purchases,” the lawsuit alleged, according to a report by Reuters.

via Apple to hand out $100 million in iTunes credits to settle lawsuit – latimes.com.

Stuxnet, which tampered with the speed of centrifuges, was preceded by a version in development as early as 2005 that was designed to manipulate the nuclear facility’s  gas valves, according to Francis deSouza, Symantec’s president of products and services. That ability could cause an explosion, he said.

The computer attack in 2010 was one of the first known examples of a cyber weapon used to destroy physical infrastructure. The programming code, which was developed by the United States and Israel, took out nearly 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges that Iran used to purify uranium by altering the speed of the machines, the New York Times reported.

“It looks like now the weapon tried a few things before it hit on what would actually work,”‘ deSouza said in an interview. “It is clear that this has been a sophisticated effort for longer than people thought.”

via Stuxnet Had Earlier, Potentially Explosive Version, Symantec Says – Bloomberg.

Michael Rosen of Ridgewood sued Continental Airlines, now known as United, after he was unable to buy a set of headphones or alcohol using cash on a flight from Honolulu to Newark in 2010.

He sued for breach of contract, unlawful discrimination against low-income people who don’t possess credit cards and violation of New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act.

A lower court judge dismissed the case and Rosen appealed.

In today’s appeals court ruling, the three-judge panel concluded that federal airline deregulation law pre-empts claims under state law.

It also ruled Rosen didn’t have standing to bring a class action on behalf of low-income people.

via Airline allowed to ban cash from use on in-flight purchases, court rules | NJ.com.