DISQUS

A voter referendum to ban red-light cameras is advancing to the ballot in College Station, Texas. http://legal-beagle.typepad.com/wrights_legal_b... --Ben

E-mail records enable investigators like Grassley to dig deeper and quicker than they could have in Travelgate. --Ben

Treasury Secretary Geithner is calling for new record-keeping requirements for what he calls "non-standard" derivatives. Part of the issue with the recordation of derivatives is that technology (e-mail, text message and so on) has made the formation of legally-binding contracts (such as derivatives) very cheap and easy. Efforts to promote better documenation on derivatives will provoke massive new campaigns to capture, archive and comprehend electronic financial records. See Details --Ben

Multnomah’s sister county to the south, Jackson, is a pioneer in the exploitation of technology. Jackson may be the first (sizable) government agency in the county to archive ALL of its employee e-mail (and other e-messages like IM) indefinitely. Although such a policy is highly unusual, it reflects the county’s progressive realization that e-mail records are an asset of both the county’s government and its citizens.

Virus infections in Twitter give employers and schools security as another reason to block Twitter. --Ben

Collaborative software environments like Zoho, Engage, Acrobat.com, Textflow & Zimbra can create oceans of records on business interactions and negotiations. Those records can be fodder for e-discovery in a lawsuit. An issue businesses will face is whether to preserve those records under their record retention policies. --Ben

Collaborative software environments like LotusLive Engage can create oceans of records on business interactions and negotiations. Those records can be fodder for e-discovery in a lawsuit. An issue businesses will face is whether to preserve those records under their record retention policies. --Ben

As robots become common in public, existing privacy laws will restrict the ability of the machines to make audio recordings of human conversations (and possibly other recordings about personally identifiable humans). The law of robots will be challenging. Robot designers may react by making the machines record lots of other (non-audio) stuff about each machine's encounter with humans. The records will no doubt include detection of chemicals and odors associated with individual humans. --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2008/03/robot...

Collaborative software environments like Live Office, Acrobat.com, Textflow, Zimbra and Zoho can create oceans of records on business interactions and negotiations. Those records can be fodder for e-discovery in a lawsuit. An issue businesses will face is whether to preserve those records under their record retention policies. --Ben

My research documents reports of the Koobface worm infecting (or attempting to infect) workplace-related computers by way of Facebook. Employers/organizations thus have security as a reason to block social network sites. http://computersafety.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/... --Ben

My research documents reports of the Koobface worm infecting (or attempting to infect) workplace-related computers by way of Facebook. Employers thus have security as a reason to block social network sites. http://computersafety.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/... --Ben

As employees are shown the door, an employer is wise to hang onto their e-mail records. --Ben http://legal-beagle.typepad.com/wrights_legal_beagle/2008/10/retain-e-mail-of-former-employees.html

If Google can assert its legal terms just by publishing them (on something less than its homepage), then maybe users can assert their own terms of privacy protection just by publishing them! A user might say in her published terms of service that search engines cannot keep records of her searches longer than 2 weeks. What do you think? --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-privacy-policy-terms-of-service.html My ideas are not legal advice for anyone, just something to discuss.