On the Mark

A couple of items today.

GO GIANTS!

Just had to get that out for Ray and friends. I’ll ask for forgiveness from my colleague David Downing, Pats fan that he is, later. And if he’s reading today, I’ll take the spread too! (if he’s not too scared to give it up).

 It’s that time of year. What the Paris Air Show is to the spy community, New York LegalTech is to the Litigation Support community. And it is upon us once again. Same time, same place. First week of February, New York Hilton. You know the drill. I’m looking forward to seeing all the usual suspects and all the technology-hungry visitors in pursuit of the best e-discovery suite of tools. Please come see MetaLINCS and EVault at our booth #2411. We’ll run a proper LegalTech blog entry next week.

I had the pleasure of participating in the Ferris Research Webinar yesterday on preparing for the FRCP 26(f) Meet and Confer. David Ferris offers one of the best run, best produced webinars I’ve ever been involved in. Well prepared, well run, good sound quality and good content. David and the attendees asked great insightful questions, and he allowed me and my colleague Chuck Williams to present our material in a good format.

The “value add” part is that the entire audio and slide content from the webinar is available FREE for the next week on their website. Hurry before they take it down. At that point it will only be available to his subscribers, which you may also wish to consider.

Here’s the link (click) - We have added David’s blog to our blog roles and look forward to reading more from him.

Have a great weekend everybody!

On the Mark

Being an East Coast guy, I find myself here in Monterey, California for our inaugural management retreat.

I’ve been to this beautiful place once before in an undoubtedly selfish and soletary  pursuit 10 years ago, when I spent a week playing golf all by myself in the Mecca of the game. Pebble Beach, Poppy Hills, Links at Spanish Bay and the Black Course of Bayonnet.   All for me.

So now, 10 years later, I’m  here for something just the opposite: a meeting of the ”team.” And I don’t mean some hokey “team” doublespeak, but the real thing.

This was the first meeting of Seagate Services with all my new bosses, my new coworkers and simply put, the formation of a top-flight organization by a parent that knows how to win.

Finding the synergies, seeing the SWOTs and just putting all the pieces of the puzzle together is going to be fun.

“It’s not the destination, it’s the journey,”  someone said. And after getting a glimpse of the road-map I can say many folks are excited at what the future holds for this organization.   

Tonight management broke into random teams and then engaged in a cooking contest at the local culinary school. This wasn’t about entertaining the troops who’d travelled from near and far. This was about bonding with new colleagues and forming good working relationships. This was about building “team”.

As we walked back to hotel in the cool Monterey night, I knew I’d remember this event. Remembering where you were when something special started isn’t hard to do.

A very good piece by Adam Liptak appears in The New York Times today about hard drives, people’s privacy, their rights under the law and recent and pending decisions that will shape the landscape.

The piece is titled “If Your Hard Drive Could Testify…” (click to read full story)

The cases he discusses concern federal government searches of hard drives for evidence of child pornography. As a parent, I’d just as soon go straight to the punishment phase for those involved. But the story looks at the more complicated issue of whether those searches require reasonable cause.

“Electronic storage devices function as an extension of our own memory,” wrote Judge Dean D. Pregerson of Federal District Court in Los Angeles as he granted Defendant’s motion to suppress evidence  in U.S. v Arnold (2006).

United States v Arnold Decision (2006)

In the Times story: “Searching a computer,” said Jennifer M. Chacón, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, “is fairly intrusive.” Like searches of the body, she said, such “an invasive search should require reasonable suspicion.”

An interesting supporting brief filed in the Arnold case by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives and the Electronic Frontier Foundation said there have to be some limits on the government’s ability to acquire information.

“Under the government’s reasoning,” the brief said, “border authorities could systematically collect all of the information contained on every laptop computer, BlackBerry and other electronic device carried across our national borders by every traveler, American or foreign.” That is, the brief said, “simply electronic surveillance after the fact.”

EFF & ACTE Amicus Brief

The article delves into deeper issues presented by two other interesting cases, specifically, the use of PGP (Pretty Good Protection), a password protection and encryption software used by one defendant, and the government’s right to force a citizen to provide that password to prosecutors.

This is one of the more noteworthy articles I’ve read recently — well worth your time.

- On the Mark