Up until recently, and for years, I was a lawyer addicted to his BlackBerry. My BlackBerry always was on my hip, ready for immediate use. I became so proficient that I literally could type as fast with two thumbs on the device as I could with all of my fingers on my desktop keyboard at work. But other attorneys kept whispering in my ear, "Try the iPhone -- once you do, you will never go back to the BlackBerry."

So, over the New Year holiday, I tried my daughter's iPhone. I must say, I was most intrigued by Siri and the voice-recognition feature, not to mention the much larger screen.

In the case Design Tech. Grp. LLC d/b/a Bettie Page Clothing, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled that employees of a clothing company were improperly terminated based on comments they made on Facebook complaining about their supervisor and expressing their workplace concerns.

A Missouri court recently handed down a judgement in an ACH/wire fraud dispute between Choice Escrow and BancorpSouth, and in a change from rulings in similar cases, this judgment favored the bank. The judge's findings may well impact how other cases are decided in the future.

Last week, by virtue of a 63-30 procedural vote, the Senate moved forward with a bill called the Marketplace Fairness Act, with a final Senate vote set for May 6, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The bill, if it were to become law, would enable states to force online sellers nationally to collect sales tax with respect to their residents' purchases.

The meaningful use (MU) regulations provide incentive monies for hospitals and physicians that establish electronic health records systems (EHRs) and satisfy other criteria, such as providing new forms of ‘patient engagement’ like technologically-enabled patient-provider communications. The advantages of a wireless record-sharing are enormous – quicker diagnoses, better quality tracking, and seamless payment systems.  But there are lots of steps and decisions required in setting up EHRs and developing broader data exchange systems like health information organizations/exchanges (HIOs or HIEs).  Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator denied certification for two small EHRs and promised ongoing rigorous enforcement of EHRs. Those engaged in developing of EHRs and HIEs must address a range of operational and legal issues, including picking and monitoring vendors; figuring out patient consent issues, particularly with respect to sensitive psychiatric, substance abuse and other data; determining governance issues; figuring out how to finance the HIE; and assessing other potential risks, such as if the HIE fails to link a record to the right patient or the HIE is hacked or accessed by an unauthorized person.  Many are studying these challenges and seeking solutions.  The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives recently sent a comment letter to ONC suggesting the development of a single set of standards for certification.  Based on the need, common approaches and product designs will emerge out of  solutions developed in the field today by hospitals, health systems, physicians, vendors and others--sooner rather than later.  

The House has approved the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA, H.R. 624). CISPA allows private companies and the federal government to exchange information relating to cybersecurity threats.

The bill was passed in the face of some concerns that it might provide private consumer information to the government. According to Reuters, President Obama has threatened to veto the bill on the basis that it supposedly does not mandate that companies take the greatest efforts to remove personal information before providing it to the government.

Once upon a time, I was known as Inspector Gadget. Why? Because I wore on my belt three different devices — a mobile phone, an iPod, and a Palm Pilot. The phone was only good for calls, the iPod could only play music, and the non-wireless Palm Pilot was simply a calendaring assistant.

I wondered then whether there could ever be convergence, such that at some point I only would need to carry around one device. Of course, that did happen, but the convergence occurred beyond my wildest dreams.

It has been ages in Internet time since the FTC provided advertising guidance in its "Dot Com Disclosures" release in 2000. Thirteen years later, cyber eons really, the FTC now has come up with new guidance in its ".com Disclosures: How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising."

This new guidance recognizes the exponentially increasing use of mobile devices and the consequences of their limited screen size, as well as the growing prevalence of social media advertising.

Google has posted a “Transparency Report” that provides a range of how many National Security Letters (NSLs) it has received and a range of how many users/accounts were specified in these NSLs each year since 2009. Of course, your first question may be: What is an NSL?

An NSL is a special search vehicle by which the FBI has the authority to demand the disclosure of customer records maintained by banks, Internet Service Providers, telephone companies and other entities. When this happens, these entities are prohibited from revealing to others their receipt of an NSL. There have been reports that the issuance of NSLs has expanded significantly since the Patriot Act increased the FBI’s power to issue them.

Memoto’s website says: "The Memoto camera is a tiny camera and GPS that you clip on and wear. It’s an entirely new kind of digital camera with no controls. Instead, it automatically takes photos as you go. The Memoto app then seamlessly and effortlessly organizes them for you." 

Read more about the pros and cons of this new device at the New Media and Entertainment Law Blog.

Are international governments already engaging in cyberwarfare by hacking into each other’s computer systems? According to recent Reuters articles, at a minimum, a war of words is brewing suggesting that this already is the case.

It’s good to be an Internet Service Provider. While content owners worry about piracy and erosion of copyright, and thus revenue, ISP's (the companies that provide us with Internet access) do not have substantial copyright worries. They are considered, in effect, common carriers and as a result are generally no more liable for copyright infringement by its customers than the telephone company would be liable if you slander someone during a phone call. The concern is the copyright misbehavior of ISP customers, namely people like us.

Click here to read Mark Fischer's blog entry on ISP's and copyright issues. 

Following his recent State of the Union address, President Obama issued an Executive Order entitled "Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity."

The Policy section of the Executive Order notes that repeated cyber intrusions into critical infrastructure demand improved cybersecurity. This section correctly points out that the threat to critical infrastructure "continues to grow and represents one of the most serious national security challenges we must confront."

Are hackers still out there causing mischief on the Internet? You bet! Indeed, our own Federal Reserve reported that one of its internal websites had been breached by hackers last week, according to Reuters.

The Reuters article notes that this follows an assertion that hackers associated with the activist group Anonymous had gained access to personal data relating to more than 4,000 bank executives. That data was then posted on the Internet.