There has been a disturbing trend towards authorities in various countries stopping, questioning, and even arresting people who are simply taking photographs of public places. Somehow taking a photo equates in some people’s minds to gathering information for terrorist purposes. Often the police or security guards in question insist that the photographer is breaking the law – which is usually not the case at all.

A recent example is where a photographer was detained and arrested for taking photos of an Amtrak train. His reason? He was taking photos to enter an Amtrak photo contest that called for people to . . . [more]

♫ Anything you can do,
I can do better.
I can do anything
Better than you…♫

Lyrics and music written by Irving Berlin, from Annie Get Your Gun.

The New York Times reported today that IBM is building the world’s mightiest supercomputer:

“I.B.M. remains intent on producing the biggest and baddest supercomputers on the planet.

In 2012, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will fire up an I.B.M. BlueGene machine expected to reach 20 petaflops of performance. That means the system – dubbed Sequoia – will handle a quadrillion mathematical operations per second and run about 10 times faster than . . . [more]

On January 23rd Canadian Bar Association President Guy Joubert sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper (PDF) asking for Omar Khadr to be repatriated to undergo judicial process here in Canada. From the CBA letter: . . . [more]

I’m working on my segue skills (no, no that Segway):

News arrived yesterday that the WTO has a new database, The RTA-IS, which collects existing and announced Regional Trade Agreements, as well as “Pre-Defined Reports”. If you’d like to know what those, are, see the User Guide.

Or perhaps you have other legal education needs regarding the WTO? Why not try CALI’s new open access Legal Education Commons? I found these materials introducing TRIPS. . . . [more]

I’m English, and so teeth have always been a problem. Which is why, perhaps, the dentists’ mantra has stuck in my head since I first heard it many, many cavities ago:

[Product X will help you] when used in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care. ((And it’s still a byword: see the Canadian Dental Association Seal of Recognition page.))

Of course, that’s what advertising is meant to do: stick things into your head that wouldn’t otherwise find a footing there, so to speak. So I thought it might be amusing to take a look . . . [more]

It’s been almost two years since I referred to George Orwell’s 1984 in a Slaw Post, entirely too long. Apparently, the mayor of Montreal is a Slaw fan and felt it had been far too long since I made such a reference and Montreal council is considering banning….words! Montreal may ban insults to police …and here. Use of the words such as “pig” and “donut eater” could be outlawed (on a complete side note, for all you hockey fans out there, imagine if Jim Schoenfeld and Don Koharski ran into each other in Montreal, could be a bad scene). . . . [more]

A wave of spending is about to take place pretty much all round the globe, and some of that money will be directed to improving “infrastructure,” the underpinnings required for businesses and individuals to prosper. A portion of infrastructure spending will, in many places, be devoted to bettering the internet and our access to it, typically described as improving “broadband” access.

The recent federal budget made scant mention of this as a goal:

The Government will advance Canada’s knowledge advantage by:

…Providing $225 million over three years to develop and implement a strategy on extending broadband coverage to unserved communities.

Just a quick note about some of the newest additions to LawBlogs.ca. Since our update in November, we’ve added 14 new Canadian law blogs to the ever-growing list at LawBlogs.ca. In no particular order, they are:

Language Log, that wonderful blog I mention on Slaw from time to time, has a recent post and a spate of comments on the English word “fair.” The matter was prompted by some writing by experimental economist (yes, Virginia, there are such things…) Bart Wilson, who has been working with “a pie-splitting problem known as the Ultimatum Game.” Lawyers might be interested in the matter of dividing up a pot, something that happens regularly in practice, albeit not in such a pristine fashion. But the real interest in this particular post lies in the examination of the simple word . . . [more]

♬ Oh we make the standards and we make the rules
And if you don’t abide by them you must be a fool…♬

Words and music by Paul Weller, recorded by The Jam.

One of the issues in moving to a paperless law office is the inherent difficulty of accommodating older and different proprietary file formats. Even within the same product family, for example Microsoft Word, which was first released in 1983, Wikipedia reports that there have been 5 distinct file formats. This presents huge difficulties. Imagine that you have been dutifully backing up your networked . . . [more]

Fellow Slawer David Fraser points out that today is Data Privacy Day, being celebrated in the United States, Canada, and 27 European countries.

Intel’s privacy day page says:

Designed to raise awareness and generate discussion about data privacy practices and rights, Data Privacy Day activities in the United States have included privacy professionals, corporations, government officials, and representatives, academics, and students across the country.

One of the primary goals of Data Privacy Day is to promote privacy awareness and education among teens across the United States. Data Privacy Day also serves the important purpose of furthering international collaboration and . . . [more]

Kalev Leetaru and Scott Althaus, of the Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois, have written a report that I thought others here would find interesting. The report is called “Airbrushing History, American Style: The Mutability of Government Documents in the Digital Era,” and puts one in mind of the Ministry of Truth imagined by George Orwell in Nineteen eighty-four: a novel (London: Secker & Warburg, 1949). . . . [more]