IP Kidnapping

Photo titled: "Obama propone penas de cárcel obligatorias con un mínimo de tres años para los hackers" by jediadame on Flickr

On February 6th, 2012, CNET.com confirmed that the Internet security giant Symantec offered to pay a hacker or hacker group $50,000 for a promise to not release its valuable security code on the Internet. Specifically, CNET reports that beginning in early January of this year, a hacker known as “Yamatough” reached out to Symantec in an extortion attempt. Yamatough claimed to be part of the “Anoymous” hacker group that has attracted headlines in recent months, both for their attack on local, state, and federal government websites and its support of the Occupy Movement.

The object at issue is Symantec’s source code. Source code is the text written using the format and syntax of the programming language (computer language) that is specifically designed to facilitate the specific program it supports. Source code is significant because it is useful to a user, programmer, or system administrator to better understand how a program works, or more importantly, modify the program. Symantec identified the source code as that for Symantex Endpoint and Symantec Antivirus 10.2. Evidence at the time suggests that the hacker(s) may have obtained the code after breaking into servers run by Indian military intelligence.

Although Symantec publicly stated that its customers have no significant security threats due to this situation, a rational person would of course be worried. Although Symantec can and most likely has adapted its programs to this security threat, there is great reason for alarm. The source code obtained by the hackers can give them extra knowledge of Symantec projects and procedures, along with the ability to manipulate the code to best serve their interests. In addition, and perhaps most important, the threat to expose the source code to the Internet as a whole exponentially increases this risk because there will likely be no way to track the source code once it is released.

In fact, as of approximately 9:00 p.m. on February 6th, 2012, a 1.2 GB filed labeled “Symantec’s pcAnywhere Leaked Source Code” has appeared on The Pirate Bay, a large bit-torrent file sharing site. Symantec has not yet confirmed whether this is the source code at issue. What does this mean for your average attorney? Basically, its time to add another area of concern for attorneys, along with issues such as conflicts of interests, fiduciary duties, and professional responsibilities. If an Internet security giant is breached in this manner, then it may be time for attorneys, who are entrusted with confidential and sensitive personal and professional information, to be even more careful with this type of data. As technology becomes a more crucial part of an attorney’s arsenal of tools, events like this remind the profession why some times, having a simple lock and key safe may be the better bet in protecting a client’s information.

Massachusetts Lawmakers Approve Human Trafficking Bill

Photo By: iragelb 

On November 15th, Massachusetts’ House and Senate approved a Human Trafficking Bill that has been urged by human rights advocates. The bill imposes life sentences for pimps and other traffickers found guilty of coercing children into sex and forced labor. The bill also confronts the important matter of treating children as well as adults forced into prostitution as victims and not as offenders. Additionally, the bill will create a panel to study approaches to prevent trafficking. The sex trade is an increasing problem in Massachusetts, yet the state is one of three states that have yet to enact an anti-trafficking law.

While slavery is often considered obsolete, the exploitation through forced sex and labor is estimated to include trafficking of 27 million people around the world. This modern slavery has evolved through the use of the Internet, which conveniently allows traffickers to recruit and sell victims over websites, taking prostitutes off of the streets and out of the view of the public and law enforcement and placing them into hotel rooms.

Much attention has been given to advertising websites and their “adult” sections, which are intended as a means for consenting adults to find other consenting adults. Inevitably, the advertisements have been used for soliciting sex and in some instances sex with minors. When Craigslist banned sexually related advertising in the US in 2010, a majority of this activity found a new home on BackPage.com. The site has recently received demands from anti-trafficking advocates, including the fifty-one attorneys general and an interfaith social justice group, to remove the section in order to stop the online advertising for prostitution, emphasizing the exploitation of minors made possible through listings.

The letter from the attorneys general states that efforts made by BackPage.com to reduce trafficking of both adults and children have been unsuccessful, and more than 50 instances of trafficking or attempting to traffic minors through the site have been discovered. The letter provides an example of how a trafficker, in Dorchester, MA used the site to exploit a minor by “forcing a 15-year-old girl into a motel to have sex with various men for $100 to $150 an hour” and found the customers by “post[ing] a photo of the girl on BackPage.com.”

While shutting down the advertising will put an end to trafficking on those sites, with the Internet’s infinite domains, any setbacks for traffickers will be minor and clients will merely be required to use some extra effort to find other sites. Sadly, if traffickers are capable of physically abusing, controlling and exploiting children, they are also capable of looking elsewhere and creating other means to continue making a profit off of forcing others to work for it.

The recent Massachusetts bill approval is a great start to shed light on the fact that there is a problem and treating the victims as criminals is not the solution. The bill places the blame where it belongs: on the trafficker. Arguments have been made that not all adult prostitutes are trafficked, and it is a nice theory that a consenting adult has a right to make a living selling their body. However, prostitution by choice is not the rule but the exception. Children are trafficked as young as eleven and twelve years old and often remain in the sex trade into adulthood, demonstrating that even adult prostitutes are unlikely to have chosen this life for themselves. The reality is that all trafficking victims are controlled by fear, coercion, and violence, and the Internet is allowing this activity to go unseen. By shifting the current social stigma surrounding prostitution to victimization, trafficked individuals are more likely to seek help from the medical community and from law enforcement.

The bill, which will more likely than not soon become law, is important in officially recognizing there is a problem that needs to be addressed. A significant part of the bill is the establishment of a panel to study ways to prevent trafficking. Educating young people at risk of being trafficked as well as the entire public is essential. Eliminating the role of the Internet in trafficking is to be expected as a major issue in prevention to be addressed by this future panel.

Ban on French Cop-Watching Website

Photo titled "Anti-Sarkozy Demonstration & Riots (28) - 06May07, Paris (France)" by Phillipe Leroyer

Following French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s call for a more “civilized Internet,” a French court recently placed an immediate block on French website Copwatch Nord Paris, which monitored controversial actions of the French police. The website offered various images and videos of police officers while arresting suspects, including such acts as allegedly taunting protestors and committing acts of violence against members of ethnic minorities, reports the NY Times.

The French police welcomed the court’s decision, believing that the site was responsible for inciting violence against the them. Jean-Claude Delage, secretary general of the police union, Alliance Police Nationale, told Agence France Presse that the court “analyzed the situation perfectly,” stating the court had “made the right decision.”

Free speech activists, on the other hand, find the ban on the website to be an unacceptable censor, but consistent with the French government’s policy of imposing strict control over the Internet. Amnesty International issued a report in 2009 which criticized France for its police brutality, which it noted, is rarely investigated. The recently banned cop-watching website was an attempt to expose these alleged injustices.

The cop-watching movement and corresponding websites originated in the United States and have been protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately for French advocates of free speech on the Internet, there is no equivalent to the First Amendment in French law. Given that no such protections exist for the French, the court was able to help Sarkozy in his attempt to clean up the Internet while free speech went by the wayside.

For further reading see:

Eric Pfanner, Court Orders French Cop-Watching Site Blocked, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 16, 2011, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/technology/court-orders-french-cop-watching-site-blocked.html?_r=2&ref=technology.

Police Abuse Goes Unchecked, AMNESTY INT’L, Apr. 2, 2009, available at http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/police-abuse-goes-unchecked-france-20090402.

A New Litigation Tactic: Use of the Ipad

Image by Malabooboo

As one of the latest technological revolutions, the Ipad is making headway into the legal system. Initially, the Ipad demonstrated its use in the classroom, corporate presentations and even in the medical field. Recently, the Ipad has showcased its practical use during witness examination and closing argument.

Traditionally, evidence has been presented on blow-up foam boards illustrating charts, pictures, etc. As the technological boom in the mid to late nineties occurred, the practice to present evidence to jurors with the latest technology became customary. In 1996, inData introduced TrialDirector software, enabling trial teams to exhibit documents and video depositions on a projection screen. The capabilities of this technology have since expanded to aid in the trial preparation process.

Each aforementioned method has their downfalls. Foam boards can become overwhelming to jurors when a large quantity of evidence must be presented. TrialDirector may require an IT professional on-site in case complications arise. To avoid these issues, some attorneys are turning to the Ipad as their solution.

What makes the Ipad more practical than other trial presentation methods is the versatility that its applications and features offer. The Ipad offers three trial presentation applications: RLTC Evidence, Exhibit A and TrialPad. Through these applications, evidence is seamlessly presented onto a projection screen from the Ipad’s display screen. All of the Ipad’s features (such as the ability to zoom in and out with fingers scrolling on the screen) are available for use with these applications. For example, as the user zooms in on the Ipad, the same occurs on the projection screen. This enables the user to focus in on a particular point at any moment, providing an opportunity to effectively articulate argument coupled with support that is easily viewed on the projection screen by jurors. Similarly, words or phrases can be effortlessly highlighted, further drawing the jurors’ attention to necessary information as attorneys read documents aloud.

The Ipad is distinguished from its trial presentation competitors through the flexibility of the device itself. The Ipad has brought sophisticated computer technology to a portable, lightweight device. Attorneys can walk around the courtroom with the Ipad in hand, and with a 10-hour battery life the concern for the Ipad crashing is non-existent.

As Ipad technology and the presentation applications that it offers develop, its use in the courtroom will expand. Ipad has already released an updated version of the TrialPad presentation application, “TrialPad 2”, which among other features now allows for PDF’s, video files and split-screen displays. The Ipad offers an impressive, user-friendly and effective method to present evidence during witness examination and closing argument. The sky is the limit for the Ipad.

Supreme Court Paves the Way for Changes to Expert Discovery

Picture titled "Transparent Chemistry Glass Tubes Filled with Substances" by Horia Varlan

In "Supreme Court Paves the Way for Changes to Expert Discovery," guest authors, Neil J. Zoltowski & Laura C. Dorner explore the recent changes to Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Going into effect on December 1, 2010, Rule 26 now provides draft protection for testifying experts, as well as certain protections of attorney/expert communications. Throughout the article, the authors give insight into the numerous benefits that the amendments offer including decreased costs, increased efficiency and a more candid atmosphere than under the previous version of the rule. For those heavily involved in litigation, this article is a must read.

Click here to read more

Japanese Nuclear Emergency Response

An 8.9 magnitude earthquake (the 5th largest earthquake ever recorded) struck Japan last night northeast of the island of Honshu. The quake unleashed a massive tsunami into the Japanese seaboard. As the sun rose in the land of the rising sun this morning, the full extent of the damage and devastation was still being ascertained. Even by the most cautious estimates, a horrible human tragedy occurred: hundreds are believed to be dead and many more have lost their homes.

Potentially making matters worse, the quake damaged several nuclear power plants, forcing officials to declare a nuclear emergency. Officials shutdown at least four reactors along Honshu’s eastern seaboard: Onagawa, Fukushima Daiichi, Fukushima Daini, and Tokai (see the map above). Some reports indicate that as many as eleven reactors have experienced shutdowns. This has left many residents, quite literally, in the dark.

Japan is the third largest producer of nuclear energy in the world, behind the United States and France and generates 30% of its power using nuclear power from 53 reactors (despite being the only country in the world to have witnessed firsthand the damage that nuclear energy is capable of when unleashed via a nuclear bomb). Japan’s lack of natural energy reserves and reliance upon foreign imports is expected to lead to an ever increasing reliance on nuclear power in the future. Some estimates find Japan generating 50% of its power from nuclear energy by 2030.

Japan sits on an area of rampant seismic activity and the nuclear commission pays especially close attention to the possibilities of earthquakes in the siting, design and construction of nuclear power plants. Japanese regulations require plants to be built on hard rock foundations to minimize shaking. Additionally, all Japanese plants are equipped with seismic detectors that trigger an immediate reactor shutdown when a large earthquake occurs. The standards issued for seismic resistance of plants were adopted in 1978 and amended in 2001. The regulations specify requirements in terms of localized ground motion (measured in Gal.) as opposed to the more familiar Richter Scale because there is not always a correlation between amount of energy released (what the Richter Scale measures) and the amount of ground motion locally (what actually causes damage). Still, the NSC concluded that under current guidelines, Japanese plants could survive a quake with a magnitude of 7.75 on the Richter Scale. Today’s tragedy isn’t the first occasion that a nuclear plant in Japan faced a forced shutdown because of seismic activities – for example, the largest plant in the world at Kashiwazi-Kariwa was shut down in 2007 in the wake of a an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale.

Under the regulatory policies developed by the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan (similar to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the United States), the central nuclear emergency response headquarters (NERHQ) issues the nuclear emergency declaration with technical assistance from the Nuclear Safety Commission. The declaration is analogous to a declaration of federal emergency in the United States. In a nuclear emergency situation, a joint council is formed that includes the National Government’s representatives from NERHQ, senior nuclear emergency response specialists, and representatives of the Nuclear Safety Commission. The joint council devices an overall plan, provides instructions for resident evacuations, guides emergency services, and directs the armed forces. Under the current emergency order, 3,000 residents have been evacuated near the Fukishima plant.

It seems that the highly engineered plants in large part resisted the damaging effects of the quake. Current reports indicate that the plants have not leaked any radiation and remain in fairly good shape. My only hope is that these emergency response agencies do an effective job of dealing with repairing and reactivating the damaged nuclear plants and restoring power to residents. Other than that, there isn’t much to say besides: our thoughts and prayers go out to the residents of Japan.

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