Now being reported widely (5, 6, 7), Wikileaks and partners have documented an international market in computer, cellphone, and GPS surveillance software that can and has be used by governments for the use of tracking down dissidents. Muammar Qaddafi is the poster child, at the moment, but the practice is widespread, as indicated on this interactive map.

I have a friend who jokingly teased me for imagining that governments could possibly care what I say or who I call. When it is this easy, though, it would seem almost perverse for them to deny themselves . . . [more]

The Clawbies website design is now updated, and the season opening post is up. Yes, it’s time for the (6th!) Canadian Law Blog Awards!

Whether you’re a blogger or blog reader, the month of December has become the time to shine a light on your favourite Canadian law blogs and bloggers. And if you’re new to the Clawbies tradition, please make careful note of ‘the humble Canadian rule’ — don’t toot your own horn! Your blog gets automatically nominated when you nominate and link to other bloggers! Yes, it’s a wink-wink, nudge-nudge concept, but take a look around at . . . [more]

To call a smart-phone a phone is really a misnomer. We need to think of them as computers with internet connections that we carry around in our pockets. 

Why is this an important distinction? From a legal perspective, that changes the perspective tremendously. Consider Connie Crosby’s Slaw post “Digital Wallets on Their Way” , and the comment on the post musing about privacy and the warrant-less search of cellphones that is being debated in various jurisdictions.

The privacy aspects of a phone that just makes phone calls without retaining any information, and the consideration of whether law enforcement . . . [more]

I thought that Slaw readers might be interested in this observation by BLG partner, Norman Letalik, as a result of his recent exchange with Apple Canada’s regional counsel. (The following quotation is from an email thread in a group to which I belong and is reproduced with Norm Letalik’s permission.)

Note that I have now had a telephone conversation with Ms. Famulak, who is regional counsel for Apple Canada. She confirms that the information that is dictated on the Apple iPhone 4s using the Siri dictation feature is sent to servers that reside in the US and that Apple, its

There were cheers (ok, it was me) at a recent technology budget planning meeting at our office when it was announced that we are increasing WiFi throughout our space in another of our offices. In that office, up to now we have provided wifi for the area that includes anywhere a client would be. Our estimate for this is $4500. The WiFi we provide in our offices is secured with a password and uses a different internet connection than our network. Risk = reasonable.

There is an interesting article in the American Bar Associations YourABA December 2011 issue called Public . . . [more]

I’m by no means an expert in banking, but seems to me things are heating up in the world of alternative payments. Last week Benjamin Ensor from Forresters posted a nice overview of the rise of the digital wallet (also known as mobile wallet) in his article The Battle of the Digital Wallet. He says this is going to be a game-changer for the retail market:

A mobile digital wallet is more than just a mobile payment system because it combines:

• Mobile payment. Digital wallets are likely combine several different payments systems into a single service, including mobile

Dropbox has suffered through a number of security- and privacy-related incidents over the past year, which has left its frustrated but loyal userbase asking how they can continue using Dropbox while still properly securing their data.

SecretSync, a new startup, hopes to be the answer to that question. SecretSync encrypts sensitive data that you place in Dropbox so that, in the event Dropbox releases your files to law enforcement agencies or inadvertently makes your data public, you have nothing to worry about: your data will be completely inscrutable thanks to the client-side encryption used by SecretSync. Because your . . . [more]

The European Court of Justice issued its breathlessly awaited (at least by some) decision in SABAM v. Scarlet today, striking a serious blow to those imposing intense international pressure with the objective of securing exceptional enforcement for intellectual property rights online. These efforts aim to leverage Internet intermediaries such as ISPs, hosting sites, domain name registrars and even individual blogging sites in order to stomp out any infringing activity occurring on the platforms they operate.

As these intermediaries process and host vast amounts of online conduct, they are uniquely placed to impose unprecedented levels of monitoring and control onto users . . . [more]

If you have ten minutes to spare head on over to Google’s British Page, where you’ll find (to quote The Guardian)

A spiky-haired, bespectacled animation of the Polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem, as the search engine marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of his first book, The Astronauts.

. . . [more]

by Philippa Lawson*

Those following the development of Canadian privacy law have long awaited amendments to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”), some of which are proposed in Bill C-12. This rather long post addresses just one of these amendments: the proposed new definition of “lawful authority”.

Under PIPEDA, telecom service providers (“TSPs”) are permitted to disclose “personal information” (which includes name, address, and any other information about an identifiable individual) without the knowledge or consent of the individual only in certain specified circumstances. One of those circumstances is if the disclosure is “made to a . . . [more]

The North Carolina State Bar has revisited its proposed Formal Ethics Opinion (FEO) on cloud computing and addressed many of the concerns the legal cloud computing community had previously expressed.

The main point of concern with the previous opinion was a list of minimum mandatory requirements that an attorney had to ensure was met by their cloud computing provider. In an open letter to the NC State Bar, the Legal Cloud Computing Association outlined its concerns with the proposed FEO; prominent bloggers such as Carolyn Elefant, Stephanie Kimbro, Erik Mazzone and Niki Black also outlined their concerns about . . . [more]

I recently posted about hyperlink being legally defined and that got me ta thinkin’, in terms of Internet innovations has the hyperlink been topped? In many respects one could assert that the hyperlink is the Internet as we know it today. Yes, I know that the ‘Net is an interconnected web of computers etc. etc. but in terms of modern usage of the ‘Net, absent the hyperlink most would not recognize the Internet, and we would all know far more command prompts.

In doing a bit of research it seems that the term “hyperlink” has been around since the . . . [more]