Earlier this month Microsoft’s privacy policies became the focal point of a controversy about the right of cloud providers to access their customer’s data. The controversy, and Microsoft’s subsequent response, may create a precedent that will influence terms of service for cloud providers going forward.

Briefly, the controversy erupted when it was revealed that, in the process of investigating a potential leak from one of its employees, Microsoft accessed the Hotmail inbox of a blogger that it suspected was the recipient of the leaked, internal Microsoft documents. While Microsoft was within its rights to do so under its terms of . . . [more]

Many law firms manage their trust and regular bank accounts on the Internet, and some firms have the ability to initiate various banking transactions online, including account transfers and wiring funds. While the convenience and efficiency of online banking are huge benefits, the downside is that online banking exposes you to security risks. The steps outlined below will help law firms to understand, address and reduce online banking risks – for both your firm and personal accounts.

Know and understand the terms of your banking agreements: As a starting point, carefully read your bank account and electronic banking services agreements. . . . [more]

Those of us who keep our confidential information in the Cloud will be pleased with the announcement last week by Microsoft General Counsel & Executive Vice President, Legal & Corporate Affairs, Brad Smith that “effective immediately” Microsoft will no longer inspect their customers’ private content.

The change is to be included in Microsoft’s Terms of Service and will be binding on Microsoft.

The new policy is the result of criticism of Microsoft over its investigators accessing Hotmail content in connection with alleged theft of Microsoft’s intellectual property.

Although, according to Smith, Microsoft was lawfully entitled under its terms of service . . . [more]

Maybe it’s something that happens to your brain at 5,000 feet above sea level. Maybe it’s the fresh mountain air. Or maybe it’s the frontier, no-one’s-gonna-help-me-so-I-just-gotta-do-it-myself, spirit of the West. Whatever it is, some of the most entrepreneurial Canadian lawyers I’ve met to date, are from Calgary.

Over and over again I’ve heard that if you have a great idea in Calgary, you can find partners to help make it happen.

We live in an age of cloud computing, greying of the bar, and underserved populations living on mobile devices, and many of us have also been commenting on the . . . [more]

A note of congratulations to fellow Slaw contributor Jack Newton, whose company Clio has successfully secured a C Series funding round; led by Bessemer Venture Partners and valued at $20M.

Launched here on the West Coast of Canada in the Fall of 2008, Jack and his co-founder Rian Gauvreau are now working through their sixth year of Clio operations. According to Clio’s blog, the newest round of funds will be used to accelerate product development and to expand the size of their internal team. (Recruiting efforts already look to be underway.)

I write this offering my full . . . [more]

“Phishing” is one of the most common scams that cyber criminals use because it can produce spectacular results with very little effort or expense on the part of the hacker. Phishing involves the use of an email, text message or phone call that appears to come from a trusted source or institution, vendor or company, but is actually from a third-party impostor. Phishing messages are intended to trick you into giving cyber criminals your information by asking you to update or confirm personal or online account information. Personal information and identity theft and/or payment scams are the motives behind most . . . [more]

The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) held an eForum on Library Linked Data earlier this month. An eForum is a great way to participate in a topical discussion because, unlike a webinar or live chat session, it allows you to drop in and out of the discussion as you have the time.

Theodore Gerontakos, Metadata Librarian, University of Washington and Co-Chair of the ALA Linked Library Data Interest Group, provided a couple of very useful summaries of the two days:

• Summary Day 1, Library Linked Data Forum
• Summary Day 2, Library Linked Data

The New Brunswick Court of Queen’s Bench recently admitted into a criminal case screenshots of a Facebook conversation that took place the day after an alleged sexual assault between the complainant and the accused. R v Nde Soh, 2014 NBQB 20

The court held – properly, in my view – that the screenshots were electronic documents within the meaning of ss. 31.1ff of the Canada Evidence Act, which reflect the Uniform Electronic Evidence Act. It found that the documents were properly authenticated. It decided that the computer system was sufficiently reliable in the absence of any evidence from . . . [more]

In case you needed another reason to get paranoid about your growing loss of privacy, Facebook has now successfully developed facial recognition software that performs to the same standard as the human brain. [Cited FB research paper.]

The project is called “DeepFace”, and its recognition rate of 97.25 is closely comparable to human accuracy at 97.53%. Even with variances in lighting; and even when the angle of the shot is different. If you’d like to get into the detail, the link above gives a nice condensed summary.

What could this mean in the future? It’s hard to predict, of . . . [more]

The ABA Journal has a story about a law firm falling victim to a cyber attack that locked up the firm’s computer files for ransom. Here’s the text of the article:

The good news: No law firm or client data was taken.

The bad news: Attorney Paul Goodson and his staff can’t access his Charlotte, N.C., law firm’s files after they were locked up by a computer virus, WSOC reports.

Like other businesses in the city, the firm was targeted via email. Once an attachment was opened, the Crypto Locker virus took over. Thousands of documents stored on his computer

The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Linked Data Platform Working Group is working on “a specification [that] describes the use of HTTP for accessing, updating, creating and deleting resources from servers that expose their resources as Linked Data. It provides clarifications and extensions of the rules of Linked Data.” Last week they released Linked Data Platform Use Cases and Requirements. This new Working Group Note builds on the working draft they released in October 2013 and aims to “motivate a simple read-write Linked Data architecture” through a collection of stories and use cases.

We all love stories right? Unfortunately . . . [more]

This week is the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Internet a.k.a. the World Wide Web. Yesterday Google shared a message from the Internet’s Web’s inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee. In March 1989 he shared a proposal for “a ‘web’ of notes with links between them” or a non-linear system using “hypertext” which I remember (as someone who used the precursors of the Internet) as a hot topic at the time.

Berners-Lee takes the opportunity to ask some important questions in urging us to keep the Internet open and free:

So today is a day to celebrate. But it’s also