Records management blogging

Via Digital Landfill we learn that AIIM has launched a Records Management Community.

Electronic records that self-destruct and other records management news

'Vanish' Encryption Raises Serious E-Discovery Concerns

Last week I spoke to Adam Landa, a Greenberg Traurig shareholder who co-chairs the law firm's e-retention and e-discovery practice group about the Vanish encryption technology that, in essence, allows electronic documents to "self destruct" after a period of time.

e-Discovery Policy Could Have Stopped Steroid Leaks

Facebook Trifecta: "Serious Privacy Gaps"

Will the PACER paywall come (slowly) tumbling down?

Is There an E-Discovery Bubble?

Obama's electronic health record iniative

John Mancini informs us that there's gold in them thar health records.

FOSE will be holding a workshop on it:
A CONNECTed Healthcare System: The Federal Government’s Role in Promoting the Nationwide Health Information Network

This is good news for the American health care system and IT industry. We could use some good news.

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Online Health Data in Remission

Nascent Industry Ready With Systems If Money and Standards Are Resolved

Presidential Records Act in the digital age

National Archives begins transfering presidential data

A monumental data transfer mission now faces The National Archives and Records Administration.

Coptering away from Washington, D.C. today, President Bush left behind 100 terabytes of electronic data in a variety of proprietary formats. To put that in perspective, all the books, manuscripts, publications and recordings of various kinds stored in the Library of Congress over the past 208 years adds up to 82.6 terabytes.

Clearly all the records management laws and practices will have to be revisited to acommodate online communications in all of its forms.

Presidential Records Act in the digital age

Ezra Klein

If the Presidential Records Act makes IM and Blackberries impossible because it means even the most casual and speculative conversations will be included in future records, then the thing to do is not rip instant messaging -- and all its rapid efficiencies -- out of the White House, but to try and modernize the Presidential Records Act. The PRA, after all, was passed in 1978. There was no IM. No e-mail. No blackberries or text messaging.

I think this is correct, the law will have to be modified. Ezra is just talking about Text and email, but the rules regarding social media will also have to be revisited. Civil servants, not just White House personnel, need to be on Twitter and similar platforms, but the records management implications of social media need to be taken into account. There is a way of dealing with all this, but it needs to be reviewed.

Great moments in records management policies

FOX 5 Reporter Snags McCain Campaign Blackberry Loaded with Info

Thompson reports that one Blackberry she purchased from the campaign for $20 "contained more than 50 phone numbers for people connected with the McCain-Palin campaign, as well as hundreds of emails from early September until a few days after election night."

Just another little reminder that email is not private.

Department of Understatement

Bush's exit to put new e-records system to the test

Surely by now we are all aware that we are dealing with something a lot more, shall we say complicated, then records management? This is not simply an IT task.

I don't envy the technical workers at National Archives. They will have to cope with competing requests from some very nasty disputes in the near future. I have complete confidence in their ability to play it completely by-the-book and totally professional.

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From the Sunlight Foundation: Shredding Party?

e-Discovery; not just for email anymore!

The Big Picture has been following the House Committee on Government Oversight and unearths this little Instant Messaging gem from S&P analysts:

Rahul Dilip Shah: btw: that deal is ridiculous

Shannon Mooney: I know right ... model def does not capture half of the risk

Rahul Dilip Shah: we should not be rating it

Shannon Mooney: we rate every deal

Shannon Mooney: it could be structured by cows and we would rate it

Instant Messaging and social media are going to add a whole new element to records management and e-discovery.

The coming boom in criminal justice IT

Cash crunch could result in more corruption cases

“We’ve seen the high-water mark for [Foreign Corrupt Practices Act] cases,” said Steven Tyrrell, chief of the Justice Department’s fraud section, speaking at a Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association conference today. “[But] I believe we have yet to reach the crest of the wave.”

While the current credit crisis, and the lawsuits and prosecutions related to it, may produce a crop of additional FCPA cases, Mr. Tyrrell noted the recent boom of sovereign wealth funds is an area of particular interest to the Justice Department, though it has not yet garnered any definitive cases.

Desperate men will do desperate things.

Email, it always comes back to email

MORTGAGE MELTDOWN

And, to be sure, fraud is everywhere. It's in the loan application documents, and it's in the appraisals. There are e-mails and memos floating around showing that many people in banks, investment banks and appraisal companies - all the way up to senior management - knew about it.

It's a great time to be in e-discovery and litigation support.

SEC begins to investigate hedge funds

SEC demands records from hedge funds

The Securities and Exchange Commission has ordered more than two dozen hedge funds to turn over trading records and e-mail communications made between Sept. 1-19, The Wall Street Journal reported today

The object is to determine whether traders spread rumors to manipulate shares.

Sock puppets are not just immoral, in the case of hedge funds they are illegal.

Cloud computing and chain of custody

Cloud Computing Reality Check

There are a range of IT governance issues, not the least of which is e-discovery. Some questions that came up: How do you run e-discovery against hosted e-mail? And what privacy protections are in place so that your company's legal experts can access what's needed, but not the cloud service provider? Another way of looking at this is the "chain of custody" of your corporate data in the cloud.

The era of e-Discovery and evidence recovery has begun

F.B.I. Looks Into 4 Firms at Center of the Economic Turmoil

F.B.I. officials said Tuesday that the total number of corporate fraud investigations at the bureau was 26, an increase from the 24 open cases cited just a week ago by Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I. That number stood at 21 as recently as July, but the bureau has not named most of the targets.

Mr. Mueller told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that the major corporate investigations are aimed at companies that “may have engaged in misstatements in the course of what transpired during this financial crisis.”

He added that “the F.B.I. will pursue these cases as far up the corporate chain as is necessary to ensure that those responsible receive the justice they deserve.”

In addition to the major corporate cases, the bureau said it had about 1,400 open investigations into smaller companies and individuals suspected of mortgage fraud.

e-Discovery and litigation support software companies are going to do very well indeed.

Tweetake and records management

The Buzz Bin has a nice write up of Tweetake, a service that backs up your tweets. Marinel Mones gives some good reasons for backing up your social media, but fails to include possible litigation. It is just a question of time before social media is included in legal discovery. This is something PR practitioners are going to have to discuss with clients.

Great moments in records management policies

Using a File Erasure Tool Considered Suspicious

By a California court:

The designer, Carter Bryant, has been accused by Mattel of using Evidence Eliminator on his laptop computer just two days before investigators were due to copy its hard drive.

Carter hasn't denied that the program was run on his computer, but he said it wasn't to destroy evidence. He said he had legitimate reasons to use the software.

Schneier goes on to say:

I have often recommended that people use file erasure tools regularly, especially when crossing international borders with their computers. Now we have one more reason to use them regularly: plausible deniability if you're accused of erasing data to keep it from the police.

Not sure about that, might want to check with the revised rules for civil procedure.

The coming boom market in crisis commiunications and corporate reputation repair

Auction rate probe hits Wachovia

Securities regulators from several U.S. states on Thursday raided the St. Louis headquarters of Wachovia Securities, seeking documents and records on the company's sales practices. ...

... In April, the Securities Division launched a full-scale investigation, requesting documents, e-mails, transcripts and other records from Wachovia Securities and other banks.

Wachovia Securities has not fully complied with these requests, prompting Thursday's onsite inspection, Missouri officials said.

It's a great time to be in e-discovery.

Great moments in rank hypocrisy

Bush Looks to His (Secret) Legacy

George W. Bush, who has expanded his power to access the e-mails and other electronic communications of Americans, is resisting congressional demands that White House e-mails be saved for later research by historians.

The coming boom market in crisis communications, reputation repair, e-discovery, litigation support, and criminal defense

IMF finally knocks on Uncle Sam's door

Der Spiegel wrote that the IMF had "informed" Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke of plans that would have been unheard of in the past: a general examination of the US financial system. The IMF's board of directors has ruled that a so-called Financial Sector Assessment Program is to be carried out in the US.

This, Der Spiegel wrote, "is nothing less than an X-ray of the entire US financial system", adding that "no Fed chief in US history has been forced to submit to the kind of humiliation that Ben Bernanke is facing".

Obviously it is not just Bernanke and the Federal Reserve that is on the line, the entire American financial sector will be sucked into the coming investigations.

Introduction to e-discovery

What every IT manager should know about e-discovery

The key to surviving e-discovery requests is preparation based on knowledge of what is expected, what is considered reasonable, when asked to locate and provide electronically stored information.

This article is a good choice for those just learning about e-discovery. We are headed into litigious times, so now is a good time to learn about litigation support issues.

Software to manage legal "holds"

Is Preservation in E-Discovery Overrated?

One thing is statistically certain with that number of custodians: the legal hold will not be followed to perfection. If I were more mathematically inclined I’d say it could be reduced to a formula along these lines:

Legal hold compliance *decreases* exponentially as you multiply:

* The number of custodians
* The length of time the legal hold is in effect
* The types and volumes of potential ESI that may be relevant
* The presence of individuals who don’t want data to be preserved due to their own perceived errors/foibles/omissions

The answer, in my mind, doesn’t lie in a better mouse trap to manage the vagaries of the legal hold process. No, the best way to take the risk out of the legal hold process is to move very rapidly from preservation to collection.

This is going to be closely litigated as more and more security contractors are dragged into court, one way or another.