cdfreaks.com reports on a study by the Dutch magazine, PC-Active, involving tests on 30 separate brands of recordable CDs to ascertain whether data and audio tracks saved on the disks was still readable after a 20 month period. The very bad news was that despite marketing indicating data is stable for up to ten years,… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Records
Researcher Details Security Concerns and Hidden Data in Word Documents Online
Scalable Exploitation of, and Responses to Information Leakage Through Hidden Data in Published Documents, by Simon Byers, AT&T’s Research Labs. Mr. Beyer’s research focused on the tools and techniques used to “search for hidden data in Word documents.” The use of hidden text is routine in the process of creating documents using Word, so this… Continue Reading
Dept. of Education Proposed Rule on Student Data Privacy
From the Federal Register, July 28, 2003: Statute: The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act FERPA provides that an agency or institution may not have a policy or practice of disclosing personally identifiable information from education records without the “written consent” of the parent or eligible student, subject to specified exceptions. 20 U.S.C. 1232g(b)(1). Current… Continue Reading
EPA Held In Contempt for Destroying E-Docs
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth last week held the Environmental Protection Agency in contempt for destroying electronic documents in violation of a court order issued as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. [Link] Landmark Legal Foundation v. EPA, Civil Action No. 00-2338, Opinions issued July 24, 2003 by Judge Royce C.… Continue Reading
Preserving Digital Documents
Storing e-text for centuries describes the LOCKSS (for “lots of copies keep stuff safe”) project for permanent publishing on the Web, which is the brainchild of Stanford University librarian Vicky Reich and researcher David Rosenthal. From the LOCKSS website: “LOCKSS creates low-cost, persistent digital “caches” of authoritative versions of http-delivered content. The LOCKSS software enables… Continue Reading
Even Shredded Documents Are Not Beyond Reconstructing
Picking Up the Pieces: “People perceive it (the paper shredder) as an almost perfect device,” said Jack Brassil, a researcher for Hewlett-Packard who has worked on making shredded documents traceable. If people put a document through a shredder, “they assume that it’s fundamentally unrecoverable,” he said. “And that’s clearly not true.” For more detailed documentation,… Continue Reading
Resources on Electronic Discovery
From Ken Withers, a Research Associate at the Federal Judicial Center, links to a series of presentations and papers on electronic discovery. Selected Case Law and Further Reading Electronic Discovery: What You Need to Know, Association of the Bar of New York City, 29 May 2003 (PowerPoint slides and text) The Sedona Principles, Best Practices,… Continue Reading
Challenges of Electronic Documents Preservation
Electronic Records: Management and Preservation Pose Challenges, by Linda D. Koontz, director, information management, before the Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations, and the Census, House Committee on Government Reform. GAO-03-936T, July 8. From the same subcommittee, see also this hearing, Wiring Our National Archives, Federal Electronic Records Management Review, July 8, 2003. “The… Continue Reading
New Focus on E-Filing and the Courts
Two new articles on e-filing that address issues of technology standards, e-courts (there are currently 20 accepting such filings), security, and contracting with service providers: E-Filing – Coming to a Court Near You e-Filing and Issues Relating to Electronic Filing Service Providers Continue Reading
USPTO Announces Transition to All Electronic Filings
From the press release: “The U.S. Department of Commerces United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced today that effective June 30, 2003, all newly filed patent applications will be converted to electronic applications and processed electronically. Additionally, over the next 15 months, the USPTO will scan more than a half million pending applications into… Continue Reading
The Cost of E-Discovery
Federal Decision Deals With Who Pays the Costs: Judge Shira Scheindlin’s ruling in Zubulake v. UBS Warburg, 02 Civ. 1243, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, May 13, 2003, “lists seven factors to test in order to determine which side of a case should pay for electronic discovery.” Continue Reading
Proposed Standards for Archiving Journal Articles
According to this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, the National Library of Medicine has created and published freely available standards, called the Journal Archiving and Interchange Document Type Definition (DTD), for the uniform digital publication and distribution of journal content. Continue Reading
