A video about personal information was recorded in October, 2008 and was posted on WatchIT’s website which is one of many educational programs available. Please take a look to see which programs can help your business.
A recent annual report from Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe ranks the top four most trusted companies as American Express, eBay, IBM, and Amazon. However Google did not make the top 20, yet Yahoo! and Facebook made the top 20 for the first time. This makes for interesting news, but given the search traffic and size of Google it seems strange.
Google IS The Main Search Engine
The latest rankings of search engines shows that Google accounts for 63.1%, Yahoo! 20.5%, Microsoft 8.5%, Ask 4.2%, AOL 3.7%. Since Yahoo! and AOL are in the top 20 most trusted companies and account for only 12.2% of the searches, it makes the Google’s 63.1% seem even more peculiar that it is not in the top 20. Apparently the overwhelming majority of searches are made on a site that is not as trustworthy as Amazon.
Who’s Complaining about Google Now?
A group of academics and lawyers in Japan is demanding that Google stop making pictures of streets in Japan and delete all images already captured. You may not be aware that Google maps has driven vehicles around the world with cameras taking 360 degree pictures at ground level. Which is fine of course if you are looking at someone else’s property or planning a trip, but do people really want to have their homes displayed for the world to see? Another big question is, how is Google monetizing this? Perhaps this is partially the reason that Google is not one of the top trusted companies.
An estimated 140 million folks use Facebook worldwide, but this is the first story about legal notice of a lawsuit through a social network. The law has never been fast to move, and there’s no reason to believe that any other country will adopt Facebook as a means of legal service, but this is an interesting story. Since the plaintiff had no success with direct service at the home of defendants, or by defendants’ email, apparently there was a match from the mortgage application with both defendants homeowners to their Facebook pages. The judge ordered that the notice be a private message and after posting this message the defendants have 7 days to respond.
Legal Service and Default
Most people are familiar with personal service where a party actually receives a written notice, and that’s easy to follow. Depending on state and federal laws in the US, service may be accomplished by leaving written notice on some one’s door, publishing a newspaper notice, or sending a certified letter with return receipt. So if the defendants do not respond after proper legal notice, courts will issues default orders against them for failing to participate in the lawsuit. That means the defendant loses by failure to respond. Of course most defaults orders can be set aside if the defendant can show that they were not properly served and given notice of the lawsuit.
Social Network Service?
Since so many people regularly visit Facebook and other social networks this service of legal process may be the beginning of a new phase of the law adapting to use of the Internet. Given all the trends, it seems likely that more and more individuals will participate in social networks. As well, the age of social network visitors has changed from being primarily for college age to middle age, so a broader spectrum of the population is using social networks. One can wonder if we will see service of legal process to avatars in virtual worlds such as Second Life. As the Internet evolves clearly legal process will have to keep up, and where else can we be found except sitting at our computers/laptops/PDAs attached to the Internet?
Although not much of a surprise to read this headline that the US is not ready for a cyber attack and I guess Yogi Berra was right with his famous “It's like deja-vu, all over again.” Clearly the September 11th attack was a wake-up call, but not a surprise that the US was vulnerable and has enemies foreign and domestic, but given our growing dependency on the Internet headlines of this sort do not portend well for the future. Last summer’s conflict in Georgia when Russia hijacked websites was not a surprise, and only reinforced how easily cyber attacks can occur.
How Easy it is?
A couple of years ago I attended a conference where a world renown hacker was the keynote speaker. He explained that because of known problems with Microsoft wireless software that he managed to access the hard drives of every passenger who was using their computer on his airplane flight a few days before. In spite of the fact that he had reported the flaw to Microsoft they failed to acknowledge or fix the problem. When I spoke at the next session I saw him in the back of the room using his computer, he told me that he was able to see the contents of everyone in the room who had their computer turned on except for those of us who had their wireless feature turned off.
What’s at Risk?
The economy is suffering badly enough and about the last thing the US needs is a cyber attack on our banking and/or electric energy systems. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recommends the appointment of a White House "cybersecurity czar,” but that has not happened yet and we are vulnerable. Without doubt the Obama administration will have to deal with this sooner rather than later, but hopefully not after a major melt-down following some disastrous cyber attack.
Dell charges a premium for customers to call US based support, and other companies are relocating call centers to the US so that customer service agents will speak “American.” Apparently even though the economics make a great deal of sense for call centers to be based off-shore, there appear to be a great deal of dissatisfaction. It doesn’t take rocket science to get this picture since everyone who reads this blog has spent more time than they would ever want to quantify on the phone with some support person for a computer failure or loss of Internet access.
YouTube Aplenty
There are a number of amusing videos on YouTube about what’s going on the other end of the service representative's phone, but little imagination is required. A recent Bollywood movie even made light of training Indian based call center representatives learning to speak "American."
Where’s the Disconnect?
There are two problems with off-shore support that leap to mind. The first problem is that for the most part Americans tend to speak in idioms and even though individuals from other countries learn English they generally do not learn idioms. However the training in off-shore call centers is supposed to provide skills that permit a dialogue that permits the unhappy customers to get answers they want. The second problem is that most people who call for support are unhappy, frustrated, and mad. Unfortunately the service representatives get the brunt of the unhappiness.
How Important is Internet Access to You?
Let’s say that you lost Internet access and as a result you cannot complete some critical business from home. Yelling at a service representative half way around the world will likely not solve the problem, and to make matters worse if the service representative does not understand the caller's language, how can a problem ever be resolved? So Dell and other US based companies tried to solve to the language problem by providing US call centers. The frustration that you lost Internet access is not improved, but the likelihood that the customer and the service representative will communicate increases…and hopefully a resolution is more likely.
A recent report that the Pulitzer Prizes will now be accepting submissions from Internet publication is clearly a sign of the times, but what took so long? Without question there’s no rocket science to see that dramatic decline in newspaper publication. As someone who cannot let a day go by without reading a newspaper it’s clear that newspaper readership is in a sharp decline.
What are the numbers?
Even the newspaper organizations report a decline, but it still interesting that many of the daily newspapers like USA Today, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal are printing more than 6 million copies daily. In the meantime the daily eyeball visits to their websites exceed 13 million. As a daily reader of the washingtonpost.com, newyorktimes.com, and the dallasnews.com it’s easy to get a news fix. But the trends portend badly for newspapers in the future.
Where are we headed?
With a generation of youth who rely on cell phones in lieu of wearing watches and use text messaging rather than talk to others, it seems unlikely they will ever read newspapers. At the same time news is on the decline, there is also a sharp increase on people participating in virtual worlds like Second Life. So if people live in virtual, non-real worlds….how does real news even apply? These social issues are changing dramatically by the dramatic growth of use of the Internet. It seems that we cannot really predict exactly where we are headed, but it’s sure interesting to observe these changes as they occur.
A Federal Magistrate Judge recommended the defendants be defaulted and pay attorneys fee in Gutman v. Klein sends a clear message for litigation throughout the US. Regardless of whether the Federal Judge adopts the Magistrate Judge’s Recommendation, it is clear that we will see more headlines like this in the future in state and federal courts. Spoliation of relevant evidence is a serious problem whether the evidence is electronic or otherwise.
What Did the Defendants Do?
Apparently in this 5 year lawsuit the defendants were well-aware of that there was relevant evidence on one of their laptop computers. So the while the plaintiff’s expert waited about two hours at the defendant’s residence to get the laptop, apparently the defendant destroyed the contents of the laptop hard drive. When the laptop was turned over for copying “…it was hot to the touch and a screw was missing from its hard drive enclosure.” Later it was determined that the defendant wiped off relevant evidence from the laptop hard drive by manually deleting files, and reinstalled Windows XP to try to cover his tracks.
Role of Forensic Review
My friend Erin Nealy Cox who is a Managing Director and Deputy General Counsel at Stroz Friedberg sent a story about this case since the Magistrate Judge appointed Stroz Friedberg as a Forensic Expert to analyze the laptop hard drive. Ultimately the Stroz Friedberg Expert Report demonstrated what the defendant had done. It seems clear that intentional destruction of the contents of the laptop hard drive was spoliation, and since +95% of all information is now electronic it seems likely that we will see more cases where parties intentionally destroy relevant evidence. Also it seems clear that courts will appoint Forensic Experts and Special Masters to assist them in analyzing electronic evidence. Having served as a Special Master in cases for more than 20 years it clear that a Special Master can represent the Court best in these types of cases where the parties’ experts cannot since they offer opinions generally in favor of their clients.
Facebook claims to have more than 120 million active members and it is the 4th most trafficked site in the world. Of course there are many other popular social network sites including LinkedIn and MySpace to name a few, and only to make things more interesting a recent report indicates that more than half of MySpace visitors are 35 or older. Not much of a surprise that more mature individuals are getting into social networking as the Internet evolves.
What about the Content?
The terms of use vary between Facebook and other social network sites, but one common provision in the terms of use is that the users grant these sites a worldwide license to the user content that is irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferrable, royalty free to use, copy, or just anything they want. Facebook also limits its liability to the amount of monies paid (if any) or $1000. Even users of Google Apps grant Google a license to their content.
Web Universal ID?
Facebook recently announced Facebook Connect which is an Universal ID that will allow its users to only logon once and then navigate to third party sites. Not much of a surprise that Google, Yahoo!, and MySpace are also developing similar technology. However, it seems that either few individuals don’t care or understand that they are providing Facebook, MySpace, Google, and the all the rest with licenses to their personal content. Regardless of what users understand the growth of the social networking websites will be based on increased data from their users’ content which will generate more online advertising revenues.
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