With the partial government shutdown approaching one month, Marlene and Greg attempt to make some sense of what this means for those of us who rely upon the information produced by the US Government. On this episode, we have an extended talk with Emily Feltren, Director of Government Relations at the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) to uncover what’s working and what’s shutdown. While the federal courts are still functioning, they are running on borrowed time, and are scheduled to run out of funds on January 25th. The Pew Research Center has listed a number of data sources which are not being updated during the shutdown. The OMB also has a list of agency shuddered at this time, and assume that the libraries are also closed. If you’re hoping to submit a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request… good luck. Agencies my accept them, but they may not have anyone to process them. Basically, it’s a cluster-fudge right now in D.C.

Joel Lytle, Director of Information Security at Jackson Walker, talks with Greg about the issue of .gov sites which are unable to renew their security certificates during the shutdown. It may not be all that bad… for now. However, there are already reports that the shutdown of sites like donotcall.gov and identitytheft.gov are already having some effects on consumers.

Joel’s advice… trust but verify. If you have questions about the website, call your technology security team and have them take a look at it. This is their area of expertise, so reach out to them.

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Information Inspirations:

The law library world lost a legend this month with the passing of Eileen Searls. In addition to being an influencer in the law library world, she is also the aunt of Eve Searls, who along with Jerry David DiCicca, performs the music you hear on The Geek In Review.
Continue Reading Episode 24: What Does the Federal Government Shutdown Mean for Legal Information?

Why Did Etisalat Block Flickr
Image [cc] Za3tOoOr!

Nothing really irritates a researcher more than attempting to get to a website only to find that it has been blocked by your network software. In fact, many of you may find that social media sites are closed off at work because someone decided that you’ll spend your time uploading cat videos

Image [cc] –  顔なし 


Jane:  Have you noticed that this job has become more and more about the correct usage of IT approved technology?  I mean, years ago, I practiced law.  I worked with my clients to determine the best way to work together.  Now, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying

Several months ago I was asked by a partner to review the privacy policies and terms of service for a number of consumer cloud storage providers and to rank them according to how well they met his requirements based on firm policies, ABA missives, and a handful of other relevant opinions about client confidentiality and

In light of the recent LinkedIn password debacle, I thought I would share a password secret I’ve been using for a while now, client side password hashing. 

Password hashing takes a simple password, runs it through an algorithm and spits out a more complex password.  Stanford University researchers developed an algorithm for passwords that

Oh how I long for the days when I would boot up my IBM 8086 PC off of the dual-floppy drives and not have to answer any security questions in order to get to my word processing program. Granted, it was slow… but it was simple. It wasn’t connected to a fast Internet connection… but