Life lags a little behind CSI and the other forensic fantasies on the tube — but not so far behind as you might imagine. We’ve all heard about government-employed facial recognition software that, in theory, can pick a putative bad guy out of the madding crowd. Now that sort of knowing eye is headed everywhere, thanks to the race to employ face recognition capacity in mobile devices.

It’s all part of the current lust to know and be known — to “befriend,” “follow” and “share with” a wide range of people in (or near) one’s life. To see what will . . . [more]

The things some lawyers get up to! Take Eben Moglen for instance. After working at IBM as a programmer, he attended Yale Law; then he clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall, after which went back to Yale to get a Ph.D. in history; then it was on to Columbia Law and a professorship there. Enough laurels there for him to rest comfortably for pretty much ever, you’d think. But no: harking back to his early days in computers, he started the Software Freedom Law Centre in 2005 and now he’s launched the FreedomBox Foundation — which is what I want to . . . [more]

Several of us here at Slaw comment from time to time on tablets, and the paperless office – but usually not together.

All Things Digital has a post entitled Use a Tablet, Save a Tree that talks about a Morgan Stanley prediction that the increasing demand for digital content will result in a 2% decline in printer supplies revenue in 2011. It suggests that this trend is one reason that Hewlett Packard is getting into the tablet market.

For the record, I’m impatiently waiting for the iPad2, then will take the tablet plunge. While one doesn’t need a tablet . . . [more]

Nominations for the Law Society of Upper Canada’s 2011 Bencher Elections closed on February 11, 2011. A complete list of candidates can be found here.

Although there was some discussion about having this election entirely paperless, the law society has opted to have both Internet and mail-based voting in place.

We’re already starting to see some heavy campaigning online. . . . [more]

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been using a new mail client for the Mac called Sparrow. It’s a beautifully-designed, simple and fast e-mail application. As most of us spend most – if not all – of our day reading, writing and responding to e-mails, an application that makes this a slightly more pleasant experience is worth mentioning.

Sparrow’s interface can perhaps be best described as “iPad meets Desktop” – its compact, minimalistic UI is reminiscent of Google’s own iPad-optimized Gmail interface, with a hint of Twitter’s new Mac app thrown in for good measure. Everything in the . . . [more]

Governments, courts, school boards, and people in general too often focus on the wrong aspects of new things. Whenever a new tool arrives – such as various forms of social media or smart phones – two seemingly opposite things happen.

First, as we experiment with new tools, people inevitably do stupid things with them. Such as making comments or posting something on social media that the person would never have posted on a physical bulletin board, or written in an open letter to a group of friends.

Second, because humans have flawed risk perceptions, we are more comfortable with the . . . [more]

After close to 10 months with a 3G-WiFi iPad, I am finally “returning” my BlackBerry (through my employer) in favour of using my own iPad as my sole communication tool.

The advantages of the iPad:

• screensize: larger screensize with the ability to “expand” text using the 2-finger swipe/stretch technique (this is a huge factor for older people like me with dwindling eyesite)

• browsing: fully functional browsing on the Internet, including the ability to do meaningful Westlaw, Lexis and CanLII searching (among other legal research databases)

• email: a great email client, allowing the ability to have both personal

The UK Press Complaints Commission, a non-governmental, self-regulatory body fielding complaints about the content of British newspapers, ruled today that material published on Twitter is not private and did not violate the editorial code of practice. The Daily Mail republished some of Sarah Baskerville’s tweets. She is employed by the Department of Transport and as a civil servant is bound not to “call into doubt the impartiality of the civil service,” which, the Daily Mail felt, some of her tweets did.

From the adjudication:

The article referred to the fact that the complainant had in her tweets: described the

Yes, there are plenty of ways you can compromise your online identity by (mis-) using a dating website. A scenario not everyone considers, however, is having your password stolen and used to hijack other aspects of your online identity.

If this sounds like a nightmare scenario, it is. And it happened to over 300 users of popular Vancouver-based dating website PlentyOfFish.com last week when a hacker compromised the site’s security and retrieved real names, passwords and e-mail addresses for a small subset of the site’s 11,000,000 users.

The breach highlights an error that PlentyOfFish and many other websites make: storing . . . [more]

On the occasion of the OBA Institute 2011 last week, another law blogger meetup was held in Toronto. Unlike the previous week’s Toronto law blogger meetup, this one was female dominated. It is great to see so much interest in blogging! One participant, a law blogger wannabe, said she wants to start blogging once she finds a focus for content. While focus on a specific topic (or range of topics) is helpful if one is highlighting a specific practice, the actual type of content does not need to be restricted.

Law blogging is particularly challenging because of the need . . . [more]

For those of you keeping track, Wikimedia Foundation (who bring us Wikipedia, the MediaWiki platform it is housed on, and numerous other projects) has just announced new general counsel: Geoff Brigham, formerly of eBay, who will be moving from Paris to San Francisco for his new position starting March 7th.

From the February 4th announcement by Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director:

As a growing U.S.-based non-profit that operates one of the world’s most popular websites in partnership with a global network of volunteers, we need a GC who can handle a broad range of legal issues including the

Here is a link to a Press Release from Los Angeles this afternoon, announcing that Richard Susskind, the controversial (in some circles anyway) author of The End of Lawyers?

Note the importance of the final question-mark.

Integreon’s Client Advisory Board will be composed of managing partners at law firms and general counsel at organizations that Integreon serves. The board will provide Integreon’s clients with an opportunity to share ideas about legal service trends, specify future requirements for Integreon’s services, and identify opportunities for collaboration.

Integreon (according to its website) “applies technology intelligently to legal solutions to automate processes and . . . [more]