From the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries (UK), four valuable new guides, from a group of 12 to be released by February 2004, that address “how best to meet the needs of disabled people as users and staff in museums, archives and libraries.” Disability in Context Meeting Disabled People Training for Equality Audits Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: December 2003
Academic Freedom Post 9/11
The American Association of University Professors recently published a report, Academic Freedom and National Security in a Time of Crisis: “The report focuses first on the USA Patriot Act, especially on provisions of this hastily enacted law that gravely threaten academic freedom. The report addresses broad areas of concern, such as the ominous mingling of… Continue Reading
A Commentary on Whether the Patent Process is Broken
From the Washington Post’s Jonathan Krim, this article Patenting Air or Protecting Property? reviews the growing criticism of the USPTO’s patent process, and details the marked increase in lawsuits involving Internet-related technologies from companies that include high-profile Amazon, Microsoft, Blackberry, and eBay. Continue Reading
Concerns Over E-Voting Prompt Addition of Paper Receipts
Dean Heller, Nevada Secretary of State, issued a news release December 10 on his decision to purchase Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines from Sequoia Voting Systems, and to require the inclusion of “voter verifiable receipt” technology to accompany each machine. This makes Nevada the first state to adopt such a requirement, and reflects growing… Continue Reading
UK Sites Not Vigilant About User Privacy
A new survey that targeted the UK’s top 90 websites revealed a widespread lack of privacy compliance just as the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation comes into force today. Continue Reading
McCain-Feingold Upheld by Supreme Court
The text of Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision, McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, upholding the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill (S. 25), is here in pdf (298 pages). Continue Reading
More News About Tech Moving Offshore
As a follow-up to my posting yesterday, Are Paralegal Work and Legal Research Next to Go Offshore? this afternoon Reutersreported that Google will establish an R&D center in India in early 2004. Continue Reading
News Feeds for the Legal Community
Thanks to fellow blogger Dennis Kennedy for the mention of beSpacific in his article, Beating Information Overload with News Aggregators, from the November/December 2003 issue of ABA Law Practice Management. Continue Reading
Federal Agencies Receive Failing Grades for Info Security
Rep. Adam Putnam, (R-Fla.) in conjunction with the House Government Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census, issued a comparison chart, using an A through F grading scheme, to evaluate government agency information security in 2002 and 2003. It should be noted that the governmentwide average rose from an F… Continue Reading
New ID Task Force for California County
The San Diego County Californa Board of Supervisors will institute an ID Theft Task Force in cooperation with the DA and law enforcement as a means to combat the second highest rate of ID theft in the state. [Link] Continue Reading
New Microsoft Patent for Writing Windows Apps Using HTML
TechDirt posted on a patent awarded by the USPTO to Microsoft yesterday for a “Method and apparatus for writing a windows application in HTML.” See also Microsoft wins HTML application patent Continue Reading
Credit Industry and Workplace Procedures to Prevent ID Theft
From the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse: Testimony on December 9 by Beth Givens to the San Diego County Chairman’s Conference on Identity Theft–Prevent Identity Theft with Responsible Information-Handling Practices in the Workplace. “The keys to prevention are two-fold, involving the credit industry and the workplace: The credit issuing industry must drastically improve procedures for assessing the… Continue Reading
