Dropbox has suffered through a number of security- and privacy-related incidents over the past year, which has left its frustrated but loyal userbase asking how they can continue using Dropbox while still properly securing their data.

SecretSync, a new startup, hopes to be the answer to that question. SecretSync encrypts sensitive data that you place in Dropbox so that, in the event Dropbox releases your files to law enforcement agencies or inadvertently makes your data public, you have nothing to worry about: your data will be completely inscrutable thanks to the client-side encryption used by SecretSync. Because your . . . [more]

The European Court of Justice issued its breathlessly awaited (at least by some) decision in SABAM v. Scarlet today, striking a serious blow to those imposing intense international pressure with the objective of securing exceptional enforcement for intellectual property rights online. These efforts aim to leverage Internet intermediaries such as ISPs, hosting sites, domain name registrars and even individual blogging sites in order to stomp out any infringing activity occurring on the platforms they operate.

As these intermediaries process and host vast amounts of online conduct, they are uniquely placed to impose unprecedented levels of monitoring and control onto users . . . [more]

If you have ten minutes to spare head on over to Google’s British Page, where you’ll find (to quote The Guardian)

A spiky-haired, bespectacled animation of the Polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem, as the search engine marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of his first book, The Astronauts.

. . . [more]

The North Carolina State Bar has revisited its proposed Formal Ethics Opinion (FEO) on cloud computing and addressed many of the concerns the legal cloud computing community had previously expressed.

The main point of concern with the previous opinion was a list of minimum mandatory requirements that an attorney had to ensure was met by their cloud computing provider. In an open letter to the NC State Bar, the Legal Cloud Computing Association outlined its concerns with the proposed FEO; prominent bloggers such as Carolyn Elefant, Stephanie Kimbro, Erik Mazzone and Niki Black also outlined their concerns about . . . [more]

I recently posted about hyperlink being legally defined and that got me ta thinkin’, in terms of Internet innovations has the hyperlink been topped? In many respects one could assert that the hyperlink is the Internet as we know it today. Yes, I know that the ‘Net is an interconnected web of computers etc. etc. but in terms of modern usage of the ‘Net, absent the hyperlink most would not recognize the Internet, and we would all know far more command prompts.

In doing a bit of research it seems that the term “hyperlink” has been around since the . . . [more]

On ReadWriteWeb there’s an interesting map of the metadata that accompanies every one of your 140 character messages on Twitter, which I’ve reproduced below. (The map is the work of Raffi Krikorian. Click on the image to enlarge it.) There’s nothing terribly shocking here, perhaps: much of this metadata can be learned from visiting the Twitter page of the person sending the message. Even so, it’s sensible for those of us who are privacy conscious to be reminded from time to time that what seems to us to be a very minimal exposure to the unblinking glare of the . . . [more]

This morning I came across a U.K.-based online quiz setting out various scenarios. Titled “Are you an accidental outlaw”, there are 9 questions relating to: twitter, facebook, uploading, music, blogging, online discussions and selling content. After you complete each answer, you click through to your score, with an explanation/advice on the current law and top tips. You may want to ask your fellow employees to take the quiz too. Take the quiz. . . . [more]

Last week I gave a talk at Victor Medina’s excellent MILOfest conference about How to Secure Your Mac Law Firm. In preparing for the talk, I developed the following set of best practices that any lawyer using Apple devices should employ to help protect their law firm’s data:

Securing Your Desktops/Laptops

• Upgrade to OS X Lion and enable FileVault 2 for full disk encryption. Read more about FileVault 2 and Lion here.
• Enable the off-by-default firewall.
• Set your screen saver / lock screen to activate after 5 or fewer minutes of activity.
• Disable automatic login.
• Enable Find my Mac

On Wednesday the Canadian Association of Law Libraries will be presenting a webinar with Michel Gamache, Director of Documentation Services, Heenan Blaikie in Montreal. Michel will be explaining how to get started with Yahoo Pipes for working with RSS feeds to customize information for practice groups. Even if you do not work in a law firm, this webinar will help you get started taking your use of RSS feeds to the next level. I myself dabble in the use of Pipes and am looking forward to learning more.

The webinar takes place this Wednesday, November 16, 1:00 – 2:30 . . . [more]

Fellow Ontario lawyer and blogger Antonin Pribetic tweeted the following earlier this evening:

An RT taxonomy: RT+ (agree), RT- (disagree) RT= (indifferent), RT? (confusing), RT± (undecided), RT☀ (interesting), RT! (check this out!)

I really liked the concept and retweeted it. In a Reply to me, Antonin asked me if a RT without comment was a tacit endorsement. In a reply to him, I agreed that this was the case, and I asked if the taxonomy he proposed was his. Antonin indicated that @Charonqc had proposed RT+ and RT- at some point in the past and that he had added to . . . [more]

Loads of lawyers and law firms are posting content in various forms all over the Web. Firm websites, LinkedIn or Facebook updates, tweets, blog posts and comments, and so on. That is great, but it only gets you partway down the path to greater visibility on the Internet.

At the most basic level, the cornerstone to making yourself more visible is good content and linking. Do you know why linking is so important? Do you understand the ranking factors Google and other search engines use to determine what content appears at the top of search results? Are your links trusted . . . [more]

Last month the respected German national newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) published an exposé in its Sunday edition Feuilleton about a German government computer surveillance program introduced into citizens’ computers some years ago and the ease with which it can be cracked and misused. The Staatstrojaner, or “state trojan,” is a key-logging program that can record everything entered into an infected computer via the keyboard, and, in this case I believe, control the computer to some degree.

The newspaper’s exposé is available in English as a PDF file via Edge.

To uncover and reverse engineer the trojan, FAZ teamed up . . . [more]