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Daily Archives: March 5, 2018

ABA Journal – Cyberthreats 101: The biggest computer crime risks lawyers face

“Cyberattacks are on the rise, both in the number of incidents and the costs associated with the attacks. According to the ABA’s 2017 Legal Technology Survey Report, 22 percent of responding firms had been breached—an increase of 8 percentage points from the previous year’s survey. According to the ABA report, about 27 percent of firms with two to nine attorneys reported experiencing some sort of security breach, while 35 percent of firms with 10 to 49 lawyers and about one-quarter with 500 or more lawyers had suffered such an incident. In 2016, the FBI estimated that cybercrimes were on pace to be a $1 billion source of income to criminals for that year. Law firms of all sizes are attractive targets, given the type and the amount of data they collect. “Law firms are the crown jewels,” says John Reed Stark, a former chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Internet Enforcement. “They have valuable confidential information on things like mergers and acquisitions and intellectual property,” he says. In 2016, Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Weil Gotshal & Manges were hacked by foreign nationals who used the stolen data for insider trading schemes that netted them more than $4 million. Regardless of the size of the firm or the type of data they collect, cyber hackers use the same modus operandi for gaining access to firms…”

Tracking the Journeys of Migratory Birds

Data Innovation: “National Geographic has created a series of data visualizations illustrating how migratory birds make their thousand-mile flights to follow the “green wave”—the seasonal growth of vegetation around the planet. The maps demonstrate how the birds often take the most direct path, despite the prevalence of storms and predators, to conserve energy. The animations… Continue Reading

An AI just beat top lawyers at their own game

Mashable: “The nation’s top lawyers recently battled artificial intelligence in a competition to interpret contracts — and they lost.  A new study, conducted by legal AI platform LawGeex in consultation with law professors from Stanford University, Duke University School of Law, and University of Southern California, pitted twenty experienced lawyers against an AI trained to… Continue Reading

Did the Dodd-Frank Act End ‘Too Big to Fail’?

New York Fed – Liberty Street Economics: “One goal of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 was to end “too big to fail.” Toward that goal, the Act required systemically important financial institutions to submit detailed plans for an orderly resolution (“living wills”) and authorized the FDIC to create an alternative resolution procedure. In response, the… Continue Reading

Fighting fake news: Caught between a rock and a hard place

European Council on Foreign Relations: “Government regulation on fake news is unlikely to prevent malicious actors from meddling in our elections or polarising our societies.  With many worried about a Russian information offensive in the West, European states are in the process of developing defence mechanisms. Unfortunately, several seem to be reacting with a legalistic approach… Continue Reading

Estimates of present and future flood risk in the conterminous United States

Oliver E J Wing et al 2018 Environ. Res. Lett. 13 03402. Estimates of present and future flood risk in the conterminous United States. Open Access. “Past attempts to estimate rainfall-driven flood risk across the US either have incomplete coverage, coarse resolution or use overly simplified models of the flooding process. In this paper, we… Continue Reading

Safe Climate Caucus Members Urge Trump To Halt “Systematic Effort” To Reduce Public Access To Climate Change Resources

“[February 28, 2018] the Congressional Safe Climate Caucus sent a letter condemning the White House’s systematic effort to reduce and suppress public access to climate change resources through federal channels. The members highlighted many examples and expressed their concerns that these efforts violate the intent of the Federal Records Act.  The letter comes after a… Continue Reading

Facebook Doesn’t Know How Many People Followed Russians on Instagram

Wired: “For more than a year, Jonathan Albright has served as something of a one-man General Accounting Office for the tech industry. The researcher at Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism has dug into the details on how political Twitter trolls manipulate the media, and unearthed an intricate web of conspiracy theory videos on… Continue Reading

Librarian-turned-journalist rises; she ‘helped us be this giant scoop factory’

Once again Poynter is highlighting the critical, outstanding and timely work of librarians who have seamlessly transitioned to full time news researchers/journalists. This is not actually a new phenomenon (from the Greek to shine – and yes they do) – rather, there is after too many years wait, an epiphany of sorts recognizing the work… Continue Reading

Classified Presidential Library Records to be Moved to DC

Steve Aftergood – Secrecy News From the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, Volume 2018, Issue No. 15, March 5, 2018 “The National Archives said last week that it will gather tens of millions of pages of classified historical records from Presidential Libraries around the country and will bring them to Washington, DC for declassification review.… Continue Reading

Does Import Protection Save Jobs? The Estimated Impacts of Proposed Tariffs on Imports of U.S. Steel and Aluminum (2018)

“Does Import Protection Save Jobs? The Estimated Impacts of Proposed Tariffs on Imports of U.S. Steel and Aluminum (2018) – This policy brief examines the potential net impacts on U.S. jobs across all industries of proposed steel and aluminum tariffs applied to targeted steel and aluminum imports from all countries. We find that the tariffs… Continue Reading