By IT-Lex Intern Shannon Allen (LinkedIn)

Guess where the first ever known cyberattack on a US election happened? Of course you’re correct! It was right here in Florida, the national’s capital when it comes to things going wrong on polling day. From TechNewsWorld:

“Florida has again made election-related headlines — this time for an attempted hacking of online election systems during voting last August in Miami-Dade County. It is the first certified case of an online election attack in the U.S.”

Hey, at least we’re first. That’s something, right?

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By IT-Lex Intern Karina Saranovic (LinkedIn)

Genesco, the parent company to thousands of sport apparel retailers, has hit California-based Visa with a $13 million dollar lawsuit after they (Genesco) were fined by Visa for being hacked. In an effort to battle against the credit card powerhouse’s penalties arising out of data breaches, this case marks the first of its kind to address this system of oversight. From Wired:

Described as “arbitrary” and a “near scam,” credit card companies’ self-regulated PCI [payment card industry] security standards require “businesses accepting credit and debit card payments to implement a series of technological steps to secure card data.”

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INSIDE AND OUT is a semi-regular column, where corporate counsel discuss technology law issues with outside counsel. In this installment, Adam Losey of Foley & Lardner talks with D. Casey Flaherty, corporate counsel at Kia Motors America, whose opinions expressed herein are entirely his own. 

D. Casey Flaherty: I recently wrote a blog post on Peerless and Branhaven. Both opinions made me shudder. They were not necessarily wrongly decided (candidly, I have no idea). It is just that I could easily picture myself getting sanctioned under similar circumstances.

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By IT-Lex Intern Joey Chindamo (LinkedIn)

A recent case from Pennsylvania took up the question of who “owns” a LinkedIn account, and the answer was not all that surprising. Eric Goldman’s blog has a great summary of the early facts from Eagle v. Morgan, but in short, a company terminated an employee and then took over, and controlled, her LinkedIn account for almost three weeks. The legal questions raised included claims of unauthorized use of the employee’s name, misappropriation of her identity, misappropriation of publicity, and interference with the employee’s contract with LinkedIn, among others.

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By IT-Lex Intern Joey Chindamo (LinkedIn)

In a case that could potentially make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Virginia Supreme Court recently ruled that a Virginia criminal defense attorney could continue to blog about his former clients without their permission, but he had to use a disclaimer.

Hunter v. Virginia State Bar pits attorney Horace Hunter against the Virginia State Bar. We covered this case last year when an intermediate appellate court made its ruling, but here’s a quick reminder. Hunter authors a blog that includes many posts about his favorable results for his clients, and none of those posts included a disclaimer, saying something like “These results do not mean that I’ll necessarily win YOUR case”. The Virginia State Bar ultimately disciplined Hunter on the grounds that he had violated a number of ethical rules and had disseminated information about former clients without their permission. The Bar admonished Hunter and required that he impose a disclaimer on his blog, and he appealed.

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By IT-Lex Intern Karina Saranovic (LinkedIn)

Procter & Gamble has been found guilty of attempted reverse domain name hijacking after a World Intellectual Property Organization panel reviewed the dispute over domain name swash.com. Marchex, a popular mobile advertising company, purchased the domain in 2004, and it was only a few years later that P&G launched their new brand called Swash.

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By IT-Lex Intern Shannon Allen (LinkedIn)

The New York Times first brought our attention to “the latest lightning rod in the continuing battle between proponents of Internet freedom and the Justice Department.” Boing Boing offers more details:

“Matthew Keys, 26, a social media editor for Reuters, has been indicted on charges that he helped members of Anonymous hack the Tribune Co. network in order to deface the Los Angeles Times website.”  Keys was apparently “outed by the prominent former member of Anonymous known as Sabu who became a snitch for the FBI following his own arrest last year,” reports Kim Zetter at Wired News. Here is the indictment (PDF).”

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By IT-Lex Intern Joey Chindamo (LinkedIn)

Social media use is widespread, and teenagers are major users. This study indicates that 83 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds have visited a social networking site and 75 percent have their own social media profiles. Anyone who uses social media networks like Facebook or Twitter knows that posts on either site can consist of the newsworthy to the mundane.

All of which makes a recent Illinois appellate court order all the more curious. The court took up a family law appeal earlier this month in which the father argued that the parenting plan and custody for his twins should be modified. The order, R.M. v. D.Z., explained that R.M., the mother, had custody of the twin children. The father, D.Z., sought a modification in the parenting plan and custody because he alleged that K.M., R.M.’s 17-year-old daughter, threatened the twins, consumed alcohol with her mother, and abused illicit drugs. D.Z. tried to use the daughter’s posts on Twitter to prove the allegations.

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By IT-Lex Intern Karina Saranovic (LinkedIn)

After a series of lawsuits involving cell phone use on the road, a New York judge issued two opinions earlier this month that serve to clarify state statute §1225-c (2a), which  prohibits individuals from “operat[ing] a motor vehicle upon a public highway while using a mobile telephone to engage in a call while such vehicle is in motion.”

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By Doug Austin, eDiscovery Daily

In our efforts to continue to bring our readers perspectives from various thought leaders throughout the eDiscovery community, eDiscovery Daily has published several eDiscovery industry thought leader interviews over the 2 1/2 years since our inception.  This year, for the third year in a row at LegalTech® New York (LTNY), we were able to conduct interviews with several thought leaders and recently published those interviews within our blog.  We were able to interview several eDiscovery industry experts, including Craig Ball, Ralph Losey, George Socha, Laura Zubulake, Nigel Murray and Tom Gelbmann (and, of course, my boss, Brad Jenkins).  I’m always pleased and grateful for their time at an always busy show.

As a big fan and Friend of IT-Lex, I am excited to be able to be able to share some of the key insights and thoughts from these interviews with you and thank the editors of IT-Lex for the opportunity to do so.  Here are some of the key topics we discussed and observations regarding those topics:

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