Profiling the behaviour of air travellers to help identify potential terrorists has been news in the United States for several years now, but there has been little public discussion of the practice in Canada. Indeed, airport authorities haven’t included profiling among their security tools here, until last year when the federal government began developing a pilot “passenger-behaviour observation program” for Canadian Air Transport Security Authority officers.

Now that the pilot program has ended, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is making her position known. Jennifer Stoddart says she’s not convinced the technique will actually help . . . [more]

Here’s a quick tip from digital inspiration (via Lifehacker). If you don’t use a password generating/saving application, you may want to turn to the computational engine Wolfram-Alpha the next time you need to come up with a “random” password. Simply enter into the search box on that site [password of n characters] where ‘n’ is the number of characters you want. Wolfram Alpha returns this (for a 7 character request):

The phonetic form may help you memorize the new password. (I’d prefer the sort of thing we do with our postal codes; thus, for this, perhaps: “Why two? Ask . . . [more]

The results of a recent survey conducted by Leger Marketing for SAS, a business analytics software and services provider, on the use of social media by companies have been published today: only 1 in 5 Canadian companies post on social media networks and monitor social media conversations on a regular basis. These two actions are considered the fundamental pillars of effectively using social media.

A lack of resources and a view that it is a waste of time and energy are cited as explanations as to why companies choose not to use social media or not to monitor mentions of . . . [more]

Who are you really. Mashable.com is reporting a bit of controversy about the Google Plus name policy.

The name policy opens with:

Google+ makes connecting with people on the web more like connecting with people in the real world. Because of this, it’s important to use your common name so that the people you want to connect with can find you. Your common name is the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, any of these would be

. . . [more]

I agree, this is not news. Our lives are getting faster and we expect to know what is happening right now in the world, not what happened five hours ago or yesterday. For those of us who work with information and live online, television and radio are often not fast enough. We expect to hear about things as they happen.

Lawyers need to stay on top of what is happening to clients so they can help respond in a timely manner. As librarians, the challenge is pulling information together so that those we serve are up to date. In the . . . [more]

The LISNews library-related site has been running a series on IT Security for Libraries.

The most recent part covers 20 Common Security Myths:

1. You have nothing important to steal
2. Having antivirus software makes you completely safe
3. Using Mac/Linux makes you safe
4. Patches and updates make things worse and break them
5. You can look at a site and know it’s safe and not serving bad stuff
6. Using a firewall makes you safe
7. Complex frequently changed passwords make you safe
8. Avoiding IE makes me safe
9. If an email comes from a familiar face it’s ok
10. If a link comes from

. . . [more]

Bloomberg announced this morning that it was acquiring the legal publisher, BNA for $990,000,000.

Bloomberg will acquire all 25,116,830 outstanding shares of BNA for $39.50 per share in cash for a total purchase price of approximately $990 million.

It is a key development in Bloomberg’s strategy to challenge Thomson West and Reed Elsevier in the lucrative legal information market.

In Bloomberg’s history, this is only the third acquisition – they bought Businessweek and New Energy Finance in 2009. Bloomberg’s growth has all been internal and organic to date.

Normally, prices aren’t given so this one is revealing – the . . . [more]

As Slaw readers will likely know, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has recently approved a change to the internet’s domain name system that will mean, in the words of the ICANN press release [PDF]:

Internet address names will be able to end with almost any word in any language, offering organizations around the world the opportunity to market their brand, products, community or cause in new and innovative ways.

This is not going to be an easy process, as regards either acquiring a new generic top level domain or coping with the extreme proliferation that’s anticipated. . . . [more]

In the coming months, the Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communications will hold public hearings in 10 cities from October 6 to November 21, 2011, to collect feedback on regulating the media in Quebec by adopting a professional journalism accreditation and consolidating the Press Council.

Simon’s post earlier today mentioned the Apple vs Samsung patent lawsuits over tablets and smartphones. The reference to 2001 as prior art is amusing – let’s not forget the Star Trek PADD as well. There is actually a Star Trek PADD app for the iPad.

Simon linked to a list of the various lawsuits between Apple and Samsung in various countries. Here is a graphic produced by Reuters that shows patent related suits between mobile manufacturers.

There is market share and a lot of money at stake here. A big reason behind the Google aquisition of Motorola was for its . . . [more]

Back in April, Apple filed suit in California against Samsung for patent violation, claiming that the latter’s Galaxy line of phones and tablets bore too much resemblance to its own iPhones and iPads. This is a tangled matter, as perhaps are most patent disputes among the biggies: for one thing, Apple is a large buyer of Samsung’s products, accounting for 4% of the the company’s revenue last year and likely more this year. At the moment, according to Foss Patents, where you’ll find a list, there are 19 ongoing lawsuits around the world between these two companies

Recently . . . [more]

It has been a long while since we mentioned the Innovaction Awards. The 2011 winners were recently announced, and a Canadian group are among the winners:

Berwin Leighton Paisner, LLP (BLP) was selected for their Lawyers On Demand (LOD) initiative which began in 2007 after BLP observed two important issues affecting the UK legal market: (1) legal services clients want to stretch their budgets further and (2) many lawyers are looking for greater flexibility and autonomy in their work. BLP created LOD to address these issues. LOD challenged the traditional models of legal service delivery and brought talented freelance

. . . [more]