Slaw has recently featured two great pieces from Simon Fodden and David Canton discussing PRISM and its privacy ramifications. Concerns over PRISM and what are sure to be other as-of-yet undisclosed government surveillance programs has left many wondering how they can “lock down” their data in the cloud.

While PRISM caused much gnashing of teeth about the security of the cloud in general, there are nine providers that provide data to the government under PRISM, as detailed by an NSA presentation released by the Washington Post:

• Microsoft
• Google
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Skype
• Twitter
• AOL
• Apple
• YouTube

The web searches we . . . [more]

Some time ago it was reported that a Spanish court had ordered Google to delete records of people’s private information on the ground that the applicable privacy laws gave them a ‘right to be forgotten’.

The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice published an opinion on this topic last month. In short, he opined that the EU Privacy Directive did not include a right to be forgotten, and that search engines did not control personal information in any event so were not subject to rules about handling personal information as ‘controllers’ under the Directive (or the national laws . . . [more]

Just in time for the summer silly season come a flurry of reports about successful new messaging systems in Asia and their “stickers.” (See, e.g., the WSJ story.) Prime among the systems is Line, which has developed a very large body of users in Japan and other Asian countries in a relatively short time, in part — if not principally — because of its use of “stickers.”

Stickers are rather more elaborate emoticons, small cartoons, in effect; Line has developed a cast of characters with “personalties,” further encoding, if you will, a kind of meaning within each graphic. . . . [more]

I’m egregiously late on this, but on the “better late than never” theory” I’m finally reporting that the Farber Financial Group has produced a smart phone app for insolvency lawyers. RESOLVE comes in Android and iOS versions, and there’s a web-based version that should run well on a BlackBerry. In fact, if you want to check it out before you download, give the web-based version a try and you’ll see most of the features it offers.

The features are described on the Farber website as including:

• Searchable, portable Canadian, US and Global Bankruptcy Statutes and Regulations (e.g. Bankruptcy & Insolvency

Around for more than thirty years and often mistakenly* called “listservs,” email lists were for a long time the most productive way for groups of people to argue and exchange ideas on the internet. We’ve touched on them on Slaw a number of times, particularly in the writings of Lyonette Louis-Jacques, the “queen” of law lists, her most recent contribution on the subject being A Few Good (Email) Lists. 

As Lyo says in that piece, we might imagine that this tired old format is “pretty much dead.” But in fact, she came up with a dozen or so email . . . [more]

Are there rules in Canada about, or practical examples of, judges or tribunal adjudicators being ‘friends’ on Facebook or otherwise connected by social media with counsel or parties to a dispute before them? What should be done?

The American Bar Association has an ethics opinion that is summed up in this high-level principle:

A judge may participate in electronic social networking, but as with all social relationships and contacts, a judge must comply with relevant provisions of the Code of Judicial Conduct and avoid any conduct that would undermine the judge’s independence, integrity, or impartiality, or create an appearance of

The Supreme Court of Canada launched a new design for its website a couple of weeks ago. According to Michel-Adrien Sheppard, this was in order to come into compliance with the Treasury Board Secretariat Web Standard on Usability. The content appears to have remained unchanged.

The new design for the home page is set out below, followed by an image of its previous design:

The new design is generally cleaner and more readable than the former, which, by contrast, was a bit cramped. But to my eye there’s not a lot of improvement when it comes to aesthetics. . . . [more]

At the end of my previous post on the application of the E-Commerce Act to land transactions, I mentioned ‘measures that might be useful to ensure that the change does not increase the risk of real estate fraud’. (None of this affects the *registration* of land transfers by electronic means.)

I have recently had drawn to my attention a set of technical specification for electronic signatures in land transactions adopted by OACIQ, the Quebec governing body for real estate brokers (the equivalent of the Real Estate Council in Ontario and some other jurisdictions). These are very detailed, though in principle . . . [more]

We’ve touched on Google Glass a few times at Slaw; and today I’d like to extend that conversation by highlighting a great article by Matt McGee over on Marketing Land: The Google Glass Privacy Debate: What’s Real & What’s Overblown Hype.

While Glass isn’t yet available in Canada (though it is nice to see our Privacy Commissioner quizzing Google early), I thought McGee did an excellent job clarifying some of the technological facts surrounding the product. Here are a few notable clips:

• “Photos and videos done with Glass aren’t uploaded publicly to the web, despite what some would

I think we are going to see over the next while some interesting technical developments with some equally interesting legal issues to ponder around big data and wearable computing.

One of the things I like about being an IT lawyer is that I get to see interesting new technology and businesses, and with any luck do their legal work.

Earlier this morning I was at a business that has some cool technology around social media and big data. It has the ability to turn into a 5 minute project what can now take months to do manually, if you can . . . [more]

Technology is often cited as the game-changing factor in the future of the legal profession. There’s an endless parade of new devices, plus software is being developed that can do some of the work lawyers used to do. Legal entrepreneurs harness the power of the cloud to power new business models.

What it’s doing to the legal profession is just one side of the equation. For clients – actual and potential – rapidly changing technology can both expand their reach to consumers, and be a legal minefield.

People who conduct any part of their business over the internet, for example, . . . [more]

Microsoft Windows 8.1 will be available later this year through the Windows store, and is available today as a preview.

8.1 addresses criticisms about Windows 8 and brings many improvements. It also brings back the start button, and allows a choice of booting to the Metro interface, or to the traditional desktop. (For some reason only Apple seems to get away with getting rid of things we are used to.)

Microsoft is giving the full details today at its Build 2013 developer conference. I watched a live stream of part of it. Some of the enhancements are . . . [more]