Alison Macrina is the founder of the Library Freedom Project (LFP) an initiative she founded shortly after news that the U.S. National Security Agency was systematically combing through American’s online activities and phone records. She shares her concerns about the effect of this NSA scrutiny in the announcement of her nomination as a 2015 Library Journal Mover and Shaker: “… surveillance is not only counter to the ideals of a democratic society, it’s detrimental to the future of libraries.”

Earlier this year Macrina secured a grant from the Knight Foundation which will help fund the LFP for the next . . . [more]

It’s nice to see that the processes involved in the creation of library linked data have evolved to a point where you might say they are approaching a degree of maturity. For a while now there have been a number of technical barriers including seemingly simple things like deciding which of the many programming languages to invest your time in or which of the many applications are necessary to accomplish your linked data goals. A number of useful tools have emerged in the last couple of years and there are now enough people who have tried them with some success . . . [more]

Here’s a cute but telling article on the privacy and security threats posed by wearable technology – things like smart watches and personal health monitors.

It’s a useful reminder that interconnected devices (Internet of Things stuff) are often lacking basic security or have only basic security, and they are often not updatable either. So they may be infected by security attacks that then get walked into an otherwise protected work environment and spring loose behind the firewalls.

Thus the suggestion of a Bring Your Own Fitbit policy. It’s not just the phones any more.

Views? Do you deal with such . . . [more]

CanLII has a new friend. Its name is Lexbox.

It’s a product from Lexum — the Montreal-based company responsible for the undergirding technology of CanLII — which first emailed me and a clutch of other legal research types back in late March with an invite to help test the experimental tool when it was still in a closed beta phase.

We were told then that the aim of Lexbox (and you can read a lot more about it here) is to simplify how lawyers store, monitor and share online legal information. Having kicked the tires over the past . . . [more]

Why Googling about how to rob a bank is not recommended is just one item in the June 2015 issue of the U.S. bulletin Connected.

The bulletin, which covers news about the impact of new social media on courts, is published by the Virginia-based National Center for State Courts and the Conference of Court Public Information Officers.

It is a great place to find out about how courts are trying to adapt to the world of Facebooking judges, tweeting witnesses, Instagramming lawyers, and jury members doing their own research on the Internet. Most items are American but they have . . . [more]

I did manage to get myself out to San Diego for the 15^th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law. As mentioned in my short introductory post about the conference in early May that ICAIL 2015 was took place from June 8-12 at the University of San Diego. The view from the elevated USD campus was spectacular and made spending time in the Joan R. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice and surrounding gardens all the more pleasurable. Congratulations to the organizers for providing a well-run and fruitful conference.

When I think of artificial intelligence (AI) my thoughts . . . [more]

I probably won’t be making it to the Chicago Bar Association’s CLE on “How To… Get the Most Out of Twitter” tomorrow. But that’s not to say that I wouldn’t have been choked to miss Catherine Reach’s tweet mentioning it. Mostly that’s because there was something else she linked to which caught my attention: Kevin O’Keefe’s post from last Thursday heralding that “Twitter is teaming up with Google to bring Twitter’s real-time content to Google’s search results.”

So there it is. Google and Twitter are getting friendly (once more). And just when you thought Mobilegeddon was . . . [more]

The Regulation on Integrated Accessibility Standards under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) provides, in s. 14, that ‘large organizations’

‘shall meet the requirements of this section in accordance with the following schedule:
1. By January 1, 2014, new internet websites and web content on those sites must conform with WCAG 2.0 Level A.’

Are your clients or other large organizations you know of complying with this obligation? Have they sought your advice on how to comply?

I ask not in order to send in the forces of order (‘not my department’, as we say in government), but . . . [more]

When it comes to technology, are we not always hearing about the breakneck speed of change? The inexorable pace and ubiquity of it? How technology is revolutionizing law and practice? Our magazines, CLEs and law bloggings are replete with calls to brace for one type of Lawmageddon or another—the imminent (or at least happening really, really, probably, rather soon) confluence of events that will change lawyers’ lives forever. Anything short of fully encrypted communication between lawyer and client will spell negligence. You will become or be devoured by an alternative business structure. Cybersecurity will become the mantra by which you . . . [more]

Privacy Awareness Week runs from May 3 – 9 and is an event hosted by the Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities forum (APPA) each year to “promote awareness of privacy issues and the importance of the protection of personal information.”

Do you ever long for an excuse to zip your Android phone into a Faraday bag, paint your face with irregular lines and slip into incognito mode to evade facial recognition software? Well, now is the season!

Canadian participants this time-around included the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which is promoting a few nifty resources, as well . . . [more]

Is your website mobile friendly? As of yesterday, Google search ranks mobile friendly sites higher in search results.

This means that if someone does a google search from a mobile device, a site that is mobile friendly will appear higher in the search results than one that is not mobile friendly and would otherwise rank the same.

Given the high and trending higher percentage of time people use phones and tablets for search compared to PC’s, it is increasingly important that web sites be mobile friendly.

You can test a URL for mobile friendliness on this google page. In . . . [more]

On March 26, 2015, the new Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (nouveau Code de déontologie des avocats) for Quebec lawyers came into force. All lawyer members of the Quebec Bar are required to complete a three-hour training session by December 31, 2015. . . . [more]