Austin Technology Law Blog : Texas Technology Lawyers & Attorneys for Copyright, Trademarks & Software Licensing in Houston, Dallas & Austin TX

UPDATE:  In an effort to calm the waters, McAfee has offered to be responsible for "reimbursing reasonable expenses" for the cost of repairing the problems caused by the release of their glitch.  They are also proposing free extensions to existing, affected subscriptions.  This comes from a posting on their website and they promise to post details soon.  Whether this will calm the hordes with the torches and pitchforks at Mcafee's doors, only time will tell.

Original Post:

"Primum non nocere" [First do no harm] is attributed loosely to the Hippocratic Oath that doctors are taught.  Antivirus creators should have it embroidered on their pocket protectors.

Yesterday I was heavily into the creative process of preparing another post for this blog, which, ironically (or coincidentally, I can never determine), was to be about an antivirus protection method called "whitelisting".  Theoretically, if I had been using whitelisting, this post would not be pertinent. But that is the subject of the post that I never completed but which will appear at a later time.

Suddenly, upon having to reboot, my task bar disappeared, my computer couldn't recognize my wireless card and all sorts of other mischief ensued.  Constant rebooting and repetitive cursing did not help. OK, I surmised, my trusty old Dell Latitude, circa 2004, had finally given up the ghost after many years of hard use and diligent service.

However, news soon surfaced that this was an inside job.

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Although not strictly a technology related matter, all business and organizations that provide products and services to their customers and then bill them later should be aware that the Federal Trade Commission has a “Red Flag” rule that goes into effect (after several delays) on June 1, 2010.
You should first determine if your business is covered by this rule. If your business is covered, this rule provides that you must implement a written Identity Theft Prevention Program that is designed to detect the warning signs (hence “Red Flags”) of identity theft.
A copy of the rule may be found here. However, a shorter, more user friendly version may be found here.  Businesses that are at low risk for identity theft (e.g. you know your client individually, such as a neighborhood medical practice; you provide services around the home, such as a cleaning or lawn service; or your business has a low incident of identity theft) may implement a do-it-yourself program by following a FTC approved template that can be found here.
There is no private right of action under the rule (i.e. your customers may not sue you under the rule), however, they could complain to the FTC and the FTC can seek civil penalties (up to $3,500 per violation) and injunctive relief.
 

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An extremely important fight over fundamental privacy rights is heating up as the Department of Justice is pressuring Yahoo to release certain email records under seal.  Yahoo, who has been supported in this fight by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other major corporations such as Google, has so far resisted by claiming the government must first obtain a warrant.  The case involves emails from multiple Yahoo user accounts that the government is trying to access.  The DOJ is claiming that under the Stored Communications Act once an email has been read it is no longer protected under the law from warrantless searches, and as such, Yahoo should release them.

The Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2703, reads:

A governmental entity may require the disclosure by a provider of electronic communication service of the contents of a wire or electronic communication, that is in electronic storage in an electronic communications system for one hundred and eighty days or less, only pursuant to a warrant issued using the procedures described in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure by a court with jurisdiction over the offense under investigation or equivalent State warrant.

The government's argument, which has already been rejected by the 9th Circuit in an earlier case, is that once an email is opened and read, it is no longer in "electronic storage" and thus, not protected by the warrant requirement.  The DOJ is in effect saying that your emails are protected under the SCA as long as you never open them or read them.  Once the emails are read, the government can force email clients to release them if they are relevant to an investigation.

This case, of course, raises important Fourth Amendment issues as well.  After the seminal Fourth Amendment case in 1967,Katz v. US, the government must obtain a warrant to access communications to which the individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy.  There are exceptions to this rule as the DOJ will no doubt argue.  One exception is that an individual loses that expectation of privacy once the communications are turned over to a third party.  It is true that many of our emails are technically turned over to third parties because they are sitting on Yahoo or Google servers.  But the same technicality applies to communications over phone lines or by mail, and courts have consistently held these communications to be private.  Should the government prevail in this case, it would signal a monumental change in privacy rights for one of our most common forms of communication.

UPDATE:  Apparently the DOJ has abruptly halted its pursuit of accessing the Yahoo emails.  However, since there was no ruling from the courts the issue remains open for future cases.

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Apple has recently changed their license agreement to exclude Flash language programs and Flash to iPhone Compilers. This has created a great deal of buzz in the app development world. The i-Phone Developer Program License Agreement set out by Apple was modified to exclude such Flash related programs when the agreement was edited to include:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

This added language has caused an uproar in the app development community. As John Gruber, at Daring Fireball explains,“… cross compilers, such as the Flash to iPhone Compiler in Adobe’s upcoming Flash Professional CS5 release, are prohibited."

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Almost everyone has a Michael Scott or a Dwight Schrute in their office, and if you’re not sure you do, just be glad there aren’t cameras following you around all day because you’re likely that guy. Everyone at one time or another has had a frustrating time with their boss or coworker. However, we’re not all clever enough to make that situation funny enough to watch on a Thursday night. Most of the time, if we want to relieve some of that job-related stress we go to a trusted friend or colleague to vent, but what if we could tell our boss what we think … and do it anonymously?

The folks at Unvarnished are working on giving you just such a venue. Unvarnished has been described as a Yelp for individuals, in that, you can leave comments and rate someone’s work performance. However, when a commenter leaves a remark on your page not only is the commenter anonymous, but good luck trying to get that comment taken down. The review by Mr. Anonymous will stay up on Unvarnished until he or she decides to take it down and because of web archives will be on the internet basically forever.

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The first part of this entry was published on March 11 here.  The saga continues. 

In the 1980s, in the arena of big data processing users the cord ran from a workstation to a large mainframe or AS400 computer, which was often in the same room or in close proximity. The cord was whole, undivided and dedicated. Nothing would interfere with the communication between the workstation and the processor unless the cord was cut or the commands from the station caused the processor to work harder. Most of the computing assets were owned and maintained by the users and programming and maintenance staffs were huge.
The next step was removing the processor from the general vicinity of the workstation. The processor could be in the next building or the next county or state but was still connected by a dedicated cord (e.g. a dedicated T1 phone line or equivalent).
At some point in this process, it became advantageous for some users to not own the computing resources and “outsourcing” or “facilities management” came into vogue. With these delivery models, a party other than the user owned and controlled some part of the computing environment. However, both parties together owned and/or controlled the entirety of the environment with the exception of the lines leased from the phone company. Some companies even used the satellite transmission of data so the connecting “cord” traveled from the user to a satellite, down to the processing site and then in reverse.
Along with these changes, the processing environment became more diverse. Instead of connecting with one machine or one logical partition within the machine, data may be processed on numerous machines and stored on others and may be moved from one machine to another as needed by the processor and to optimize computing efficiency. At this point, the user could not directly identify the specific machine upon which its data resided or was processed, although the user generally knew the location of the data center or centers and could, if necessary, walk in the door and see and touch the machines where the data was processed and stored.
Cue the Internet.

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