And more power to them. I happened upon this New York Times article over the weekend: How Companies Learn Your Secrets. The gist (it’s about 7,000 words, but it’s a quick read) is that Target hires statisticians to increase revenue.

Target, like many other corporations, wants to get repeat business. Most of us are set in our buying ways — we usually shop at the same places until some life-changing event happens. Those life-changing events include moving, marrying, divorcing, graduating and, of course, the holy grail of life-changing events: having a baby.

As most parents will tell you, having a baby changes everything (as it should). New parents must wrestle with sleep deprivation, continuous family illnesses, financial changes (sometimes including converting to one-income family for a short time, if not longer) and figuring out how to best care for their new bundle of joy.

New parents and parents-to-be are more open to changing their retail routines, as they try to fit their new purchasing requirements (baby food, formula, pacifiers, diapers and everything else) into their old shopping habits.

For example, Target hopes that new parents will stop shopping for food at grocery stores and convert to Target, which has a grocery section and baby products section. The theory is that they can predict which of their customers are pregnant based on purchasing habits.

[SPOILER ALERT]

Read the rest of this entry »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

One of the partners at my law firm is a walking legal database. Whether I need to know a case dealing with fiduciary duties of a prior owner of a company or the last case in Maryland dealing with notices for mechanic’s liens, there is a high probability that he will know the case (or have information to quickly locate the case).

We all know of these individuals (and some of the readers of this blog may be those individuals). I’ve heard of stories about recently retired Court of Appeals judge who could not only cite cases regarding various legal topics but provide footnotes and pin cites.

Alas, I am not one of those individuals. To make up for my inability to recall the specific passage and verse of every single case I have ever read, I needed to develop a system to ensure that I was up to date with each new opinion pertinent to my practice. Fortunately, as a business attorney with a focus on construction law, I do not need to read every single opinion that is drafted and published (though I enjoy reviewing some of the criminal law opinions because they made for some good story telling).

So, I’ve developed a personal law library. In order to keep track of new opinions, I initially review the Maryland Lawyer section in Monday’s Daily Record, which provides a list of all of the previous week’s cases and a handy summary for each case. I circle cases I deem important for my practice and then have my legal assistant download them from the Judiciary’s website (a process that is free and environmentally friendly).

After I review the case and make electronic notes (I’ve only scratched the surface of PDFs’ wonderful features, though John Cord has written about this), I save the electronic version of the case in a folder in my Dropbox account (a cloud account that is free for the first 2GB).

Over the past few years, I have created an online, readily-available personal law library for myself. If a legal issue comes up, I can quickly determine if it’s something I already have researched. Obviously, I make sure the law is still good, but its the start that saves me time and our client’s money.

While this method works for me, are there any other methods that you use to help organize relevant cases you use?

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Why some people take pride in the fact their Facebook profile emulates an episode of Tosh.0 is beyond me. (I am not saying that I don’t watch the show and laugh hysterically. But, simultaneously, I do wonder why people put some of this stuff up on the Internet for the entire world to see.)

While Facebook has been in the news recently for its upcoming IPO, another story, about Facebook privacy, caught my attention on the radio as I was brushing my teeth this morning. Apparently, Facebook is still working on deleting photos from its servers in a timely manner nearly three years after the issue was brought to Facebook’s attention.

Have you ever deleted a horrific photo on Facebook that was posted by a “friend?” Well, you may not have really deleted it. Photos “deleted” from Facebook seemingly never go away if you have a direct link to the image file on Facebook’s servers. Just imagine the joy felt by those individuals who had the common sense or foresight to delete photos because they didn’t want retaliation from an employer, wanted to avoid family drama or uploaded a photo of a friend without permission, to name a few reasons, when they discovered the photo would remain accessible for an indefinite amount of time as long as someone had a direct link to the .jpg file in question.

A few months ago, I had to research the discoverability of information and data on a Facebook (or other social media) account and profile. From the limited guidance published by a few jurisdictions, it seems that a party would likely succeed in requesting Facebook information and data during the discovery process. The court’s interpretation of federal Rule 26(b)(2)(c) allows for an extremely broad scope of relevancy.

While Maryland courts have not ruled on this broad scope of relevancy as it pertains to social media discoverability pursuant to Rule 26(b)(2)(c), it has ruled on its reliability and authentication. In April 2011, the Maryland Court of Appeals reversed the conviction of Antoine Griffin, which was based on evidence gathered from a MySpace profile of Griffin’s girlfriend. The Court of Special Appeals had ruled the police officer proffered by the state as an authenticating witness was sufficient to authenticate the MySpace profile printout. (A law professor from Chicago gave a great summary of this case on his blog and I will highlight some points here.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

As Jen posted Tuesday, the Supreme Court has ruled the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a “search.” The five-justice majority notably left out its thoughts on whether that search was unreasonable and required a warrant.

U.S. v. Jones involved a drug dealer who appealed his conviction for conspiring to distribute drugs that was based on evidence the police collected via a GPS monitor physically attached to his vehicle. The police used the GPS monitor to track Antoine Jones’ movements for more than a month without a warrant. All nine justices upheld an appellate court decision reversing Jones’ conviction.

While the Supreme Court mentioned that police might need a probable cause warrant from a judge to physically attach a GPS device to a vehicle and monitor the vehicle’s movements, SCOTUS omitted a clear opinion on what specific situations required a warrant.

While the decision is better than what the government contended — that it could affix GPS devices on the vehicles of all members of the Supreme Court, if it desired, without a warrant — it is hard to tell where we stand in the increasing debate over our rights to privacy.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a concurring opinion, suggested Americans have more rights to privacy in data held by phone and Internet companies than the Supreme Court has held in the past. I did not own an iPhone at the time when everyone found out that Apple tracked its users, but I do own one now. And let me tell you — every time my device asks me whether it can “use my location,” I wonder if I should let it.

John W. Whitehead, writing at The Huffington Post, listed several sources of technology that spur the privacy debate. Drones, smart dust devices, surveillance cameras, facial recognition software, iris scanners and your very own cell phone are some of the items available to the police without engaging in a “search” pursuant to U.S. v. Jones.

This is because these technologies do not require the government to engage in a physical trespass of one’s property to gain information.

On another note, I sent in my very first set of discovery requests a few weeks ago that utilized requests for information available via social media. The latest case law (and there is still not much of it yet) leads us to believe that pokes, wall comments, status updates and the like will be discoverable if relevant to the matter being litigated. Is anything we do via our gadgets and on the Internet going to be protected in five years? What are your thoughts? Where do we draw the line?

Powered by Bookmarkify™

I understand that many people have a love/ hate relationship with their GPS. It can be a godsend for the directionally-challenged, but it can be an endless source of frustration when it loses its signal or only gets you in the general vicinity of your destination. (I’ll admit I’ve experienced mostly the latter, as recipients of my frantic emergency calls can attest.)

It looks like our legal system is going to have a similar relationship with the technology; the Supreme Court ruled Monday the use of a GPS device to track a suspect’s behavior and location qualifies as a search under the Fourth Amendment.

However, the justices left it an open question as to whether it’s an invasion of privacy to use GPS devices to track people through a device that comes installed with a GPS, such as a cell phone. The justices hinted that they might have to modify their ruling if GPS devices were used in this manner in order to protect privacy rights.

I know phone records can be subpoenaed in cases and these records can also show the location of the calls, or at least what tower the cell phone call is routed through. But it’s interesting to think that law enforcement could have the capability to monitor your every move through the GPS device on your phone.

Considering that it’s a virtual necessity, if only for safety reasons, for adults to carry a cell phone, this means just about anyone’s location could be tracked at anytime.

Read the rest of this entry »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

I’ve never understood the fax machine. It’s a hulking piece of equipment that takes up a sizable portion of whatever room it is placed in. Never having needed one until my first legal job, I wasn’t particularly familiar with the technology.

It’s not complicated, but I could never remember: do I have to dial “9″ for an outside line? Do I put a “1″ in front of the number? What the heck is the little phone attached to it really used for? Add to that the necessity of creating and printing out a fax cover page, then coming back to check the machine to make sure “Transmission OK,” and it was obvious this was a piece of technology that should be retired.

My frustrations mounted when, in the week before a trial once, opposing counsel sent out 200 pages of new pleadings and exhibits via fax. The machine runs out of toner and runs out of paper, as you are probably well aware, and I wished on a number of occasions that everyone had email and could just scan and attach instead.

So, when I opened my new office recently, I was faced with the task of determining my own technology. I didn’t want a fax machine. I didn’t want to pay for a dedicated fax line. Unfortunately, there are lawyers (you know who you are) and clients who still use it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Powered by Bookmarkify™