The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s secret method for unlocking the iPhone 5c used by one of the San Bernardino shooters will not work on newer models, FBI Director James Comey said. “We have a tool that works on a narrow slice of phones,” Comey said at a conference on encryption and surveillance at Kenyon University in Ohio.
Amazon’s India Plans Limited by Rules on Foreign Ownership
For Amazon, no country is more important to its global growth ambitions than India, the second-most-populous nation in the world behind China, where online shopping is in its infancy and growing explosively. But Amazon’s India plans just ran into a hitch. Late last month, the Indian government issued additional rules governing foreign ownership of e-commerce companies operating in the country.
‘Malicious Comments’ on WhatsApp Blamed for Kenyan Bank Woes
#KOT, or Kenyans on Twitter, are being blamed for a run on deposits that resulted in Chase Bank Kenya Ltd. being placed under creditor protection by the East African country’s regulators. Central Bank of Kenya Governor Patrick Njoroge said “malicious comments” on social networks including WhatsApp Inc. were part of the reason the lender was placed under receivership.
The White House is declining to offer public support for long-awaited legislation that would give federal judges clearer authority to order technology companies like Apple to help law enforcement crack encrypted data, according to sources familiar with the discussions. The Obama administration’s refusal to either endorse or oppose legislation from Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, the Republican chair and top Democrat respectively of the Senate Intelligence Committee, stems in part from ongoing divisions among various federal agencies over encryption, the sources said.
Online bazaars selling military weapons coveted by terrorists and militants, which violate Facebook’s recent ban on the private sales of weapons, have been appearing in regions where the Islamic State has its strongest presence. This week, after The New York Times provided Facebook with seven examples of suspicious groups, the company shut down six of them.
Average Chinese who usually avoid confrontation with the government are taking advantage of a public comment period of a draft Internet regulation to express their frustration with intensified blocking of foreign websites. A government website posted the draft regulation, which would tighten oversight of Internet domain names, on March 25.
Data on 50 Million Turks Posted Online After Data Breach
Turkey is investigating how hackers have posted online the identity data of some 50 million Turks, including what they said were details about the president and prime minister, after what is believed to be the biggest data breach seen in the country. While no group has taken credit for uploading the data to a website called the Turkish Citizenship Database, the comments posted suggest Turkey may be a target of political hackers.
Reddit — long the Internet’s playground for pseudonymous, no-rules forum discussion — said it would give people a blocking feature to shield themselves against harassment on the site, in a move to prohibit abusive users from sending messages to others. The new tool is the latest attempt by Reddit to minimize the sometimes toxic atmosphere of the site.
Italy Revokes License for Government Spyware Creator
Less than a year after it was hacked, its emails leaked all over the Web, Milan-based government spyware creator Hacking Team is facing fresh trouble. Not from another hacktivist, however, but an official authority, which has revoked the company’s license to sell outside of Europe.
This article is part two of a three-part series examining the emergence of electronic courtrooms internationally. The first installment focused on the UK. Now, we set our sights on Asia.
Legal professionals in the West interested in the evolution of digital litigation may already be aware of recent initiatives in the UK to manage courtroom evidence electronically. Or perhaps they may be following new developments with the Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) program—which began to roll out in US federal courts nationally in 2002 and is currently transitioning to a “Next Generation” version with new functionality. Maybe they are tracking the rather uneven adoption in the US of electronic filing in state courts. But how many judges and attorneys in the US or the UK are aware that Singapore has modernized its court system with a mandate for “the world’s first nationwide paperless litigation”?
Singapore Establishes the Template for Change
This innovation started with an Electronic Filing System (EFS) as a pilot in 1997 and was solidified when EFS became mandatory for all parties in 2000. Since then, Singapore has replaced EFS with a more ambitious industry and nationwide system for electronic courtrooms called eLitigation—which requires no installation of software on local computers, replaces many PDFs with dynamic electronic court forms and provides parties with full electronic access to case documents as long as the case remains active.
Admittedly, implementing an electronic and virtually paperless court system on a national scale is probably more practical in a relatively small city-state like Singapore. But the achievements of EFS and eLitigation are nevertheless impressive. This is real progress, and more innovation is in the works (see below).
Building on the success of EFS, the Singapore Academy of Law, the promotion and development agency for the country’s legal industry, subsequently issued a “Roadmap” for the implementation of legal technology. The Academy envisioned digital “war rooms” for each side in a dispute to “facilitate communication and correspondence between the litigant and his lawyer,” where “all documents and relevant material” related to a case would be available in real time at various stages of preparation. Discoverable documents would be accessible to both sides, and the war room concept would also extend to cases where groups of individuals are involved, including all members of a legal team, directors of a company, and third parties and co-defendants and their respective lawyers. The Academy envisioned a transitional period in which “files, bundles, computers and electronic presentation tools co-exist symbiotically; until such time as technology reaches the stage where the process can truly be paperless, and users are comfortable doing so.” But the ultimate objective extends well beyond the reduction or elimination of paper. The Academy envisioned a much more efficient, end-to-end litigation process with electronic communication and automation at every step, and the opportunity to perform substantive legal work and collaborate with colleagues and clients in real time, even during proceedings. “The courtroom is not merely a place where a lawyer presents his prepared case, but is also a place where he is constantly refining his case as the hearing proceeds.”
In the years since the Academy’s “Roadmap” was issued, Singapore’s legal community has come together to embrace a shared commitment to ongoing technological transformation in the delivery of legal services, a commitment exemplified by a formal partnership between the government and the private sector. Both President Thio Shen Yi of the Law Society of Singapore—the country’s representative body of lawyers—and the Senior Minister of State for Law, Indranee Rajah, have delivered speeches in recent months affirming the importance of technology as a means of increasing “productivity and innovative delivery of legal services” in the country, and citing a government-funded, two-year collaboration between the Ministry of Law and the Law Society to help small and medium-sized firms “overcome barriers [and] adopt value adding technology and best business practices.”
As it happens, at least two significant international arbitrations at Singapore’s Maxwell Chambers, Asia’s premier venue for alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and the world’s first integrated dispute resolution complex, have recently made use of sophisticated case management/legal collaboration technology that fully embodies the Academy’s “war room” concept, enabling electronic document services and presentation of evidence (with live hyperlinking), as well as real-time court reporting. The cloud-based technology is currently used in the US to enhance case analysis and to facilitate 24/7 collaboration between members of geographically dispersed legal teams as they prepare for trial—but it has turned out to also be eminently adaptable for use in hearings and trials. Basically, the technology establishes an online workspace where key discovery documents, testimony (including audio, video and transcripts), exhibits, research, collective insight, attorney work product and just about any other litigation-related materials can all be securely accessed, annotated, linked and shared electronically by a group of authorized users.
This same technology was also used in a 2014 Supreme Court case, an intellectual property dispute between Global Yellow Pages (GYP) and its rival Promedia Directories. Wang Yingyu, the director of the Via Law Corporation, which represented GYP, said that her team was “impressed” by the technology, and found it could reduce printing from a projected 252,000 sheets of paper at a cost of $40,000 down to a mere 2,500 to 3,000 pages. She noted the technology could be “useful” for pre-trial preparation as well. The technology will also be deployed in another Supreme Court case that is currently scheduled for March 2016.
One of the most striking aspects of the Singapore system is its emergence in a country in which 80 percent of the approximately 800 firms nationwide have fewer than five lawyers, which suggests that it’s not always the most expensive, high-volume legal matters and the largest firms that are motivating the push for transformative technology.
In Singapore’s case, the adoption of EFS, eLitigation and new tools meant to modernize trial and court practice—as well the apparent consensus shared by legal professionals and government ministers with respect to the benefits of ongoing evaluation and implementation of technology in the courtroom and beyond—reflects a forward-looking mentality that is part of a larger ambition within the country’s legal community to solidify its position as “a regional dispute resolution center—whether for litigation or arbitration.” They appear to be well on their way.
Brunei Aims to Follow Suit
Another bright spot in Asia is Brunei, whose new Judiciary Case Management System (JCMS) launched in March 2015. Brunei has taken a cue from Singapore and made strides to modernize its courts system with JCMS, an electronic network that connects courtrooms nationwide. While JCMS is younger and currently less evolved than Singapore’s eLitigation system, it is a significant initiative that reflects a determination on the part of Brunei’s judiciary to establish a uniform, nationwide system to modernize the courts, reduce or eliminate the use of paper documents and streamline court-related processes. Proponents are confident that the system is “set to transform what is a predominantly paper-based process into an electronic court environment, making access to cases and court data more effective and efficient.”
Lessons Learned
What these two Asian nations are proving is that the technology required for paperless courtrooms and online legal collaboration is already with us. Having taken note of the significant advances in online tools for managing depositions and the full range of activities associated with trial preparation, Singapore and Brunei are now paving the way for more comprehensive deployment of the same tools in the courtroom.
But How Have These Tiny Jurisdictions Managed to Accomplish What Legal Systems in Much Larger Countries Only Dream About?
First, they had the vision and the collective will to create a more sophisticated, efficient and cost-effective legal system that would span law firms, legal departments and courtrooms nationwide. They also had the courage to pursue this vision, even as they understood it would necessitate sweeping changes in how law firms and legal practitioners approach the practice of law. They also adopted and implemented technology that would incrementally modernize the entire legal process—from e-filing to case management and analysis to legal collaboration, and now to the management of the entire litigation process in the courtroom.
Finally, the initiatives have benefited from the buy-in of professionals across the industry in the private and public sectors, making it possible to impose changes in a deliberate and stepwise manner, and setting the stage for faster implementation, more uniform deployment and minimal fragmentation across different components of the legal system.
Underwriters Laboratories launched a Cybersecurity Assurance Program aimed at providing guidance to vendors in creating safe products, and confidence in technology users.
The digital devices, programs and processes law firms and legal departments use in their daily operations are ones upon which they have bestowed — many times passively — a level of trust and confidence. The security of a connected device, after all, is the first and sometimes only line of defense against breaches and cyberattacks anywhere in the network.
But how does one know that their technology is in fact the secure firewall it claims to be?
Seeking to allay this concern, the global safety organization Underwriters Laboratories announced its Cybersecurity Assurance Program (UL CAP), which according to a company statement, is for vendors “looking for trusted support in assessing security risks while they continue to focus on product innovation.”
The program looks at vulnerabilities in a vendor’s software, reviews their security controls and aims to minimize exploitation, as well as identify and mitigate any known malware infiltration.
“UL worked with agencies, including IEEE, DHS, NIST and Idaho National Labs, in the development of the Cybersecurity Assurance Program. UL also incorporated industry representation in a pilot program before launch,” Anura Fernando, UL’s Primary Designated Engineer, told Legatech News. The company “has participated in numerous major security conferences including RSA and ICS West.”
UL CAP program involves the cooperation of vendors and certifiers in examining the resilience of products and processes to modern day cyberthreats.
“The process will involve close collaboration between UL test engineers and the customers, and UL plans to exercise its usual flexibilities in performing tests both in the lab and at development or installation sites as needed,” Fernando said.
The program is based off of recent the UL 2900 cybersecurity standards for network-connectable products and systems. The standards, which the company defines as the “testable cybersecurity criteria,” were made to adapt to new technologies and security needs as the cyber landscape evolves, and accounts for interconnectedness and complexity of today’s devices.
“Having a consistent set of requirements that span across the many layers of the IoT ecosystem, provides a means by which different participants across the supply chain can coordinate their security strategies,’ Fernando said.
Asked how the standards differentiate from other similar cybersecurity benchmarks in the industry, Fernando noted, “The UL 2900 series of standards provides a set of testable requirements with established conformance criteria to establish a baseline of cybersecurity hygiene.”
By meeting the UL 2900 criteria, vendors who participate in the UL CAP program will have their system or product certified "UL 2900 compliant." But the certification can also extend to a process or design, or the development and maintenance of products or systems.
Given fast-changing cybersecurity needs, the company will also periodically update the standards. “UL’s certification lasts 12 months, and companies are urged to seek regular recertification. UL will be consistently updating and adjusting the testing requirements to incorporate the latest threats. Every two to three years, the specifications will be completely revamped,” Fernando said.
Senate votes in favor of bill critics including Edward Snowden say will allow the government to collect sensitive personal data unchecked
Senate intelligence committee chairman Richard Burr confers with committee vice-chair Dianne Feinstein and committee member Ron Wyden. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
The US Senate overwhelmingly passed a controversial cybersecurity bill critics say will allow the government to collect sensitive personal data unchecked, over the objections of civil liberties groups and many of the biggest names in the tech sector.
The vote on Tuesday was 74 to 21 in support of the legislation. Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders voted against the bill. None of the Republican presidential candidates (except Lindsey Graham, who voted in favor) were present to cast a vote, including Rand Paul, who has made privacy from surveillance a major plank of his campaign platform.
Ahead of the vote a group of university professors specializing in tech law, many from the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy, sent an open letter to the Senate, urging them not to pass the bill. The bill, they wrote, would fatally undermine the Freedom of Information Act (Foia).
Led by Princeton’s David S Levine, the group joined a chorus of critics including many of the largest technology companies, notably Apple, and National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden in calling for Cisa to be scrapped.
