FOIA Facts: The Detainee Photo Issue – Is it What it Seems?
Scott A. Hodes comments on the Obama administrations’ decision to continue to fight the release of detainee photos.
Bridging the DiGital Divide: Custom Search Engines Put You in Control
Law librarian, legal research expert and blogger John J. DiGilio’s new column focuses on technology trends that leverage the web to achieve more efficient and effective results. Here John recommends using customized search engines to manage the sites you search.
Navigating the Enterprise 2.0 Highway
Heather Colman provides an overview of Hicks Morley’s implementation of ThoughtFarmer, an Enterprise 2.0/wiki style intranet platform, one year ago. Despite a few growing pains, she describes how the application was successful at meeting the primary objectives to decentralize content updates and increase knowledge sharing and collaboration within the firm.
Criminal Justice Reform Resources 2008-2009
Ken Strutin’s guide focuses on select current reports, surveys, legislative proposals and scholarship regarding criminal justice reform. It is only a small sampling of the increasing volume of publications on vital matters of interest to criminal practitioners and the public. Therefore, only a few themes are covered: criminal justice, discovery, forensics, juvenile justice, prosecutorial misconduct, public defense, sentencing and wrongful conviction.
Can Collaboration Solve Copyright Status Questions? The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry
As Roger V. Skalbeck documents, one of the underlying obstacles to reproducing older books is a central place to look for information about what is protected by copyright and what may have passed into the public domain is lacking. Responding to this need, OCLC recently introduced a beta service, the WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry (CER). It could be a very valuable resource for recording and sharing copyright status information.
Burney’s Legal Tech Reviews: A Review of the CradlePoint PHS300 mobile broadband router and the Canary Wireless Digital Hotspotter
Mobile traveler Brett Burney describes how he uses his laptop and iPhone, both of which connect beautifully to Wi-Fi networks, to create his own little hotspot by plugging his Verizon Wireless USB760 modem into the PHS300 and turning it on. Within 5-10 seconds, the PHS300 is broadcasting a private, secure Wi-Fi hotspot that his laptop and iPhone connect to immediately.
LLRX Book Review by Heather A. Phillips – Just and Unjust Warriors: the moral and legal status of soldiers
Heather A. Phillips describes how though a series of eleven well-written and closely reasoned original essays this book question the treatments of many of the foundations of classical just war theory, such as a non-volunteer army, the use of private contractors as soldiers, the harmlessness of those not actively engaged in combat, the symmetry of combatants, proportionality and extreme emergency.
E-Discovery Update: E-Discovery in the $50,000 Case
Conrad J. Jacoby’s focus for this column is smaller legal disputes that may involve electronic evidence, including divorce proceedings and child custody matters, as well as criminal cases, all of which may require review of cell phone call records, SMS and e-mail exchanges.
FOIA Facts: DOJ AG Issues New Guidelines Establishing a System for Improving Transparency
Scott A. Hodes highlights the areas of this new DOJ guidance that are of the most interest to the FOIA community.
FIT for Purpose The New FLARE Index to Treaties
Dr. Peter Clinch and Steven Whittle describe the background development, various ways in which the service can be used, and technical issues of this fully searchable database. Launched in March 2009, it indexes and lists over 1,500 of the most significant multilateral treaties concluded from 1856 onwards. It was conceived to fill a gap in the range of information finding tools available on the internet for the international lawyer.