The New York Times: “Pennsylvania Republicans moved on Wednesday to seek personal information on every voter in the state as part of a brewing partisan review of the 2020 election results, rubber-stamping more than a dozen subpoenas for driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. The expansive request for personal information, directed at Pennsylvania’s… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Records
Reporting COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States
“CDC’s COVID Data Tracker provides COVID-19 vaccination data in the United States. Please visit the About COVID-19 Vaccine Delivered and Administration Data to better understand the IT systems behind the COVID-19 Data Tracker…CDC COVID Tracker publicly displays federal agency data individually by agency and incorporates federal agency vaccination data into national and jurisdictional progress metrics. Federal… Continue Reading
Data Brokers Know Where You Are and Want to Sell That Intel
Wired: “These firms could track whether you’ve visited your therapist’s office or your ex’s house. And without regulation, they’re a threat to democracy…In a new report for the Cyber Policy Program at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, I surveyed 10 major data brokers and the sensitive data they advertise. They openly and explicitly… Continue Reading
EPIC Obtains Documents About DC’s Use of Automated ‘Risk Scores’ for Public Benefit Recipients
“EPIC, through a freedom of information request, has obtained new records about the D.C. Department of Human Services’ use of automated systems to track and assign “risk score[s]” to recipients of public benefits. The documents show that DCDHS has contracted with Pondera, a Thomson Reuters subsidiary, for case management software and a tool known as… Continue Reading
Buying Legal Tech Is Becoming Like High Street Shopping
Artificial Lawyer: “First we have the ‘own-brand megastores’. These are like the flagship stores of Apple or Microsoft on Regent Street in London. They primarily sell one brand’s products and those products are designed to fit together. They may work with other companies’ systems – out of necessity – but the goal is to offer… Continue Reading
AALL 2021 Annual Meeting Program Recap – Brief Analyzers: The Next Level of Bots Doing Legal Research
FCILSIS Blog – By Jennifer Allison – Description of the program, provided by the presenters: Legal research vendors have taken new steps to integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning in their products. The latest development is brief analysis tools that read a document and formulate searches with little to no additional human input. This session… Continue Reading
What Every Legal Professional Should Know for Effective & Efficient Drafting in Microsoft Word
“Effectiveness Project Team Document Competency: What Every Legal Professional Should Know for Effective & Efficient Drafting in Microsoft Word – A Discussion of Document-Creation Workflows and Best Practices Guide – For legal professionals, the documents we create are the lasting evidence of the advice and counsel we give. Our documents represent our substantive skill and… Continue Reading
How to combine PDF files (we promise it’s simple)
Mashable: “If you ever find yourself with the need to combine several PDFs into one single file, you may be immediately frustrated: It’s not immediately obvious how to achieve what you’re trying to do. Luckily, Adobe, the creator of the PDF, offers a super-simple and free online tool that will help you combine your files… Continue Reading
Whose Streets? Our Streets! (Tech Edition)
Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center – 2020-21 “Smart City” Cautionary Trends & 10 Calls to Action to Protect and Promote Democracy – “…This report is an urgent warning of where we are headed if we maintain our current trajectory of augmenting our public space with trackers of all kinds. In this report, I outline how… Continue Reading
The long, long reigns of popular databases
InfoWorld: “Database popularity rises and falls over decades, not years. The databases that developers are interested in trying today may permeate the enterprises of the future. Database habits die hard. Just ask Oracle, which continues to rake in billions in database revenue despite being one of developers’ “most dreaded” databases, according to Stack Overflow’s 2021… Continue Reading
Challenges Faced by Employees with Disabilities amid the Return to In-Person Work
Bill of Health – by Doron Dorfman, Associate Professor of Law at Syracuse University College of Law: “…calls for getting back to the office raise particular quandaries for employees with disabilities, many of whom have disproportionally borne the brunt of pandemic layoffs. First, there are those who started a new job remotely during the pandemic and… Continue Reading
Federal Cybersecurity: America’s Data Still at Risk
United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Rob Portman, Ranking Member. Gary Peters, Chairman. Federal Cybersecurity: America’s Data Still at Risk. August 2021: “..The current state of cyber espionage. In the past two years, state-sponsored hackers have perpetrated some of the largest and most damaging cyber-attacks in our history. In December 2020, we… Continue Reading
