E-Discovery no longer dominantly involves emails and shared drive documents. With the increasing prevalence of mobile devices in the workplace and new apps being developed daily, mobile data and other non-email communications are moving to the forefront of discovery. Times have changed, and attorneys have professional and ethical obligations to keep up. To effectively and competently represent clients, attorneys must stay apprised of how to work with these ever-changing forms of data – or get help from someone knowledgeable. To do so, we have set out some suggestions below organized around common stages of the discovery lifecycle of digital evidence.

Identification. In conducting custodian interviews, ask questions to target the data types the custodian works with. Start broadly by determining if the company has a BYOD policy and asking if they allow the use of personal devices for work purposes. Confirm which messaging tools they use for business purposes, with the understanding that people tend to play down such use. For each messaging application, ask how they are used and with whom they communicate. Discuss these same topics with your client’s IT team to better understand  the company’s policies and capabilities for controlling the use of personal devices, as well as employees’ actual practices.Continue Reading Best Practices for Navigating Discovery of Mobile Data and Alternative Communication Tools in Today’s Digital World

On 29 July 2019, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a decision in the Fashion ID case, a case referred to it by a German court. In this blog post we will focus on what this case means with regard to joint controllership when you have social media plug-ins on your

As the country’s new Congress settles into its term, several technology issues are coming to the forefront. A number of Senators recently questioned the Department of Justice over how it is collecting cellphone-location data in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark Carpenter decision. Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206 (2018). The House of Representatives is considering a renewed version of legislation that would strengthen the security of “Internet of Things” technologies used by the federal government. And politicians and pundits throughout Capitol Hill are asking whether this will be the year that comprehensive federal privacy legislation becomes law. As it turns out though, some of the nation’s top courts are already tackling these tough issues. In fact, the Seventh Circuit’s opinion last year in Naperville Smart Meter Awareness v. City of Naperville, 900 F.3d 521 (7th Cir. 2018), has received relatively little reporting, but its impact will be broad when it comes to how courts interpret the Fourth Amendment in the era of big data.

In Naperville, the Seventh Circuit heard an appeal concerning the city’s “smart meter” program. Without residents’ permission, Naperville had been replacing traditional energy meters on its grid with “smart meters” for homes. Each smart meter collected thousands of readings a month, as opposed to just the previous single monthly readings. According to the plaintiffs, the repeated readings of the smart meters collected data at such a granular level that they revealed what appliances were present in homes and when they were used. Considering the potential privacy impact, the Seventh Circuit found that Naperville’s collection of smart meter data from residents’ homes constituted a “search” under the Fourth Amendment.
Continue Reading Seventh Circuit Wades into Big Data Case Law

The U.S. Department of Justice released revisions to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act corporate enforcement policy on March 8, 2019. While intended to clarify the DOJ’s position on a number of hot-button issues, including its controversial stance on certain instant-messaging software, a closer look reveals that these changes fall short of answering several key questions