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Dirty secrets are no match for porn stick | The Salt Lake Tribune

December 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The regrettably-named Porn Detection Stick could be the greatest enemy of a husband who secretly likes to peek at pictures of naked girls under the glow of his monitor.

Or maybe it could become his greatest friend. I’ll explain that later.

First, let’s back up for this explanation: The $99 Porn Detection Stick is a USB flash drive sold by Orem computer forensics company Paraben Corp. Its sophisticated software seeks out pornographic pictures on your computer.

The porn detection stick uses “advanced image-analyzing algorithms that categorize images as potentially harmful by identifying facial features, flesh tone colors, image backgrounds, body part shapes, and more,” according to officials of the company, whose main focus is providing products and services to help users recover lost computer data.

via Dirty secrets are no match for porn stick | The Salt Lake Tribune.

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AT&T to Add New Wi-Fi Hotspots in New York and San Francisco

December 28, 2010 By 1 Comment

AT&T will expand its Wi-Fi coverage for subscribers in New York and introduce its first hotspots in the public areas of San Francisco, the Associated Press reports.

These hotspots, which AT&T calls “hot zones,” are a bit different from the regular Wi-Fi hotspots you see in places such as hotels and Starbucks coffee shops. AT&T has clustered many access points to blanket a larger, outdoor public area with Wi-Fi coverage.

Specifically, AT&T will expand Wi-Fi coverage in the New York Times Square, and add hot spots in the Embarcadero waterfront district in San Francisco.

via AT&T to Add New Wi-Fi Hotspots in New York and San Francisco.

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Is Email Snooping a Crime? – Law Blog – WSJ

December 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Michigan resident Leon Walker faces a peculiar predicament: he’s been charged with a felony for secretly checking out his wife’s email account.

Using his wife’s password, Walker accessed her Gmail account and learned she allegedly was having an affair, according to this article in the Detroit Free Press.

State prosecutors in Michigan have charged Walker under a statute used typically to prosecute identity theft or theft of trade secrets, the Free Press Reports. (Hat tip: JonathanTurley.org)

Walker, who divorced his wife this month, faces a criminal trial in February and up to 5 years in prison.

A few weeks back, we noted that the Sixth Circuit had ruled that people have a reasonable expectation that their emails will remain private and further that the government needs a search warrant to snoop through emails stored by Internet Service Providers.

But criminal charges for surreptitiously checking out a spouse’s emails?

It’s a legal gray area, the Free Press reports, and Walker could be helped by the fact that he was still living with his wife and had routine access to her computer. “It was a family computer,” Walker told the Free Press.

Oakland County, Michigan prosecutor Jessica Cooper told the Free Press that she was justified in charging Walker.  “The guy is a hacker,” she said. The email account “was password protected.”

via Is Email Snooping a Crime? – Law Blog – WSJ.

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Alcatel-Lucent Pays $137 Million To Settle FCPA Probe – Corruption Currents – WSJ

December 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

French telecommunications company Alcatel-Lucent S.A. and three of its subsidiaries agreed to pay more than $137 million in fines and penalties to settle a foreign bribery investigation into illicit payments in Costa Rica, Honduras, Malaysia and Taiwan.

Philippe Wojazer/Reuters

Alcatel-Lucent Chief Executive Ben Verwaayen speaks during the company’s shareholders meeting in Paris on June 1, 2010. The company settled a foreign bribery investigation Monday with U.S. regulators by agreeing to pay $137 million in penalties and fines.

The company admitted it earned $48.1 million in profits from the improper payments, of which $45 million will be paid to the Securities and Exchange Commission in the form of a disgorgement penalty. Alcatel-Lucent said it will pay $92 million to settle Justice Department charges. It has already set aside the money, according to filings released in mid-February.

“Alcatel and its subsidiaries failed to detect or investigate numerous red flags suggesting their employees were directing sham consultants to provide gifts and payments to foreign government officials to illegally win business,” said Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, in the statement. “Alcatel’s bribery scheme was the product of a lax corporate control environment at the company.”

The SEC alleged in its civil complaint that Alcatel’s subsidiaries used consultants who performed illegitimate work to funnel more than $8 million in bribes to government officials to obtain telecommunication contracts and other deals. The Justice Department said in a statement it filed a criminal information against Alcatel-Lucent charging one count of violating the internal controls provision of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and one count of violating the books and records provision of the FCPA.

via Alcatel-Lucent Pays $137 Million To Settle FCPA Probe – Corruption Currents – WSJ.

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FCPA verus Bribery Act versus PCA – CNBC-TV18 -

December 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I think India Inc is the cleanest place to do business in. No honestly; I can’t recall one reported case of corporate corruption in India this year. Not one. Well actually in November the CBI made several arrests in the bribes for loans case but that’s small stuff. Can you recall the last time any large well-known company in India was prosecuted for corruption? I can’t!

Now get this – the 2010 list of offenders under USA’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act includes the BAE, Daimler, Alcatel Lucent, Royal Dutch Shell, Noble Corporation. Meanwhile, this year the UK passed its Bribery Act, that is wider in scope and tougher in punishment than even the FCPA. India too has a prevention of corruption act, but it lies unused. Wouldn’t it be ironical if a corrupt Indian company escapes Indian law but gets caught by foreign anti-corruption laws? Payaswini Upadhyay tells you why that’s an imminent possibility.

Watch CNBC-TV18 live only on MYTV >>

In a country where the criminal code is over 150 years old and company and tax laws over 50, the prevention of corruption law enacted in 1988 qualifies as rather young.

The PCA is actually fairly broad and all encompassing. It primarily hits at government officials or public officials who obtain any sort of gratification for anything that they would do which would be rendering some service which is out of turn or getting something done for something which is out of turn or even not doing something that they are supposed to do or delaying a certain approval that they need to get going for somebody. So in that sense, it covers a lot. The focus has obviously been on ‘public officials’ but there is also an abettment provision whereby any ordinary person who is not a public official or public servant who abetts in public official doing something that he isn’t supposed to do, then even that person can be liable under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

And yet in the 22 years of its existence…it has rarely ever been applied!

via FCPA verus Bribery Act versus PCA – CNBC-TV18 -.

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A Look Back at SharePoint in 2010

December 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Improving Document and Records Management

Let’s talk enterprise content management capabilities for a minute. SharePoint continues to make all the analyst lists for Enterprise CMS, but in pretty much all cases, is considered a departmental solution. That being said, there have been a number of improvements in this area, including a new metadata structure and term store, the idea of document sets (a way to organize and manage a related set of documents) and in place records management.

  • How Document Management Has Evolved in SharePoint 2010
  • SharePoint 2010 Document Sets: Organize Related Documents for Project Based Work
  • Has Records Management in SharePoint 2010 Improved Enough?

There is still much that can be improved, and there are a number of Enterprise Content Management vendors ready and willing to provide that additional functionality:

  • Laserfiche, SharePoint 2010: Official DoD 5015.2 Certification
  • EMC Extends Information Governance to SharePoint 2010
  • Open Text ECM Suite Fully Supports SharePoint 2010, Office 2010

via A Look Back at SharePoint in 2010.

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E-Discovery: Why It Can Impact Your Law Suit | Vann & Sheridan, LLP

December 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

This issue of parties destroying or withholding e-discovery was most notably seen in the case, Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc. The Court found that the defendant did in fact destroy and withhold requested e-discovery, which resulted in Magistrate Judge Paul Grimm entering a default judgment in favor of the plaintiff. Additionally, Judge Grimm stated that the defendant’s actions constituted contempt of court and he ordered the defendant to be imprisoned for up to two years unless and until he paid the plaintiff’s attorney fees and costs.

The lessons to be learned from this are:

  1. businesses should prepare ahead of time to make sure all emails and electronic documents are backed up at the business/server level and not rely on individuals to do so on their computers;
  2. businesses should be prepared if they become involved in litigation and work earnestly with their attorneys to follow all the proper e-discovery protocol.

Such collaborative efforts will greatly improve your ability to furnish all the necessary electronic information.

via E-Discovery: Why It Can Impact Your Law Suit | Vann & Sheridan, LLP.

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Amazon patents bad gift exchange system – Dec. 27, 2010

December 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Amazon.com has patented a way for you to exchange Aunt Mildred’s horrible Christmas gifts before they even get to your door.

Unfortunately for all the recent recipients of monogrammed towels with the wrong initials on them, Amazon’s system is not up and running this holiday season. But the company detailed how such a plan could work in future years.

An Amazon user could click a box on their profile that says “convert all gifts from Aunt Mildred” into something else — like a gift certificate you can use for the stuff you really want.

The online retailer noted that a customer might wish to deploy this nuclear option on gifts “because the user believes that this potential sender has different tastes than the user.” With a product catalog that ranges from bestselling books to ceramic figurines of a Chihuahua cupid, Amazon certainly caters to many “different tastes.”

via Amazon patents bad gift exchange system – Dec. 27, 2010.

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Skype To Unveil iPhone Video Chat At CES — Skype — InformationWeek

December 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Skype reportedly will unveil a competitor to Apple’s FaceTime video-chatting service for the iPhone at January’s Consumer Electronics Show according to documents posted on– and quickly removed from — the Internet phone service provider’s website FAQ section on Friday.

Unlike FaceTime, which uses only Wi-Fi, Skype’s service would tap both 3G and Wi-Fi, the FAQ said. The service would require Skype for Windows version 4.2 and higher; Skype for Mac OS X version 2.8 and higher; and Skype for iPhone 3.0 and higher, according to the FAQ, which was posted at RedmondPie.com.

A different support document said Skype will release a version of its mobile client created specifically for the iPad.

via Skype To Unveil iPhone Video Chat At CES — Skype — InformationWeek.

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Computerized E-Discovery Document Review is Accurate and Defensible

December 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

In order to analyze the reasons that Lehman Brothers failed in September 2008, Jenner & Block mined the company’s electronically stored information (ESI) containing an estimated three petabytes of data—roughly of 350 billion pages of documents—for relevant issues. That’s 150 times more than all the information in the Library of Congress.

The law firm used electronic review technology to pare down the huge collection. Still, the bill for the page-by-page linear (manual) review of the remaining 40 million pages by 70 contract attorneys at rates averaging $50 per hour came to nearly $6 million, according to Robert Byman, a partner at Jenner. Sifting through all the ESI at the same rates without the initial computer-aided review would have cost a staggering $52.5 billion.

Linear review remains one of the most time-consuming and costly parts of e-discovery. A project consisting of 500 gigabytes of data reviewed by 40 reviewers making 100 document decisions per hour and working 10 hours per day at a rate of $60 per hour may take two months and cost more than $1 million, according to LexisNexis Applied Discovery.

Jack Halprin, vice president of e-discovery and compliance at systems provider Autonomy, claims that computer-aided review can save 75 to 90 percent over similar review done manually.

Nevertheless, many lawyers accustomed to linear review think of it as the “gold standard,” convinced an attorney’s eyes will identify relevant documents and sort out privileged material that a computer will miss. But a recent study reveals that the gold standard is a bit tarnished.

via Computerized E-Discovery Document Review is Accurate and Defensible.

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