Kudos to Marcia Oddi over at the Indiana Law Blog for bringing attention to the move by the Indiana Supreme Court’s administrative division to bring its plan to connect all county courts through a centralized computer network, and in the process, block out a private company that already links about half of Indiana county courts.

The Office of State Court Administration is rolling out its first test site in Monroe County, one of the first counties that had its scheduling data on the web via Doxpop. Marcia notes:

The entry went on to quote from a DoxPop memo that began “The Courts of Monroe County are planning changes that will affect your ability to access up-to-date Monroe County case information via the Doxpop system after December 17, 2007,” and then continued by explaining that DoxPop was attempting to work out an interface between the JTAC and DoxPop systems.

Apparently these efforts have thus far proven unsuccessful, according to a letter sent out today by Ray Ontko, President, which begins:

To all Doxpop users:

The Courts of Monroe County plan to stop sending case information to Doxpop on December 17, 2007. Doxpop plans to continue to provide access to historical case information, but new information about current cases will no longer be available via the Doxpop website.

The Monroe Courts are switching to a new case management system (CMS) provided by the State Court’s Judicial Technology and Automation Committee (JTAC). On October 25 we formally requested access to Monroe County case information via the new system. We are waiting for the Division of State Court Administration to act on our request.

It looks like JTAC’s “pilot program” may not encompass any effort to interface the new CMS system with the long-term and wide-ranging existing networks upon which the legal community relies.

First Choicepoint, Lexis/Nexis, now the Nevada DMV. Sounds like its time for a class action lawsuit.

Indiana Supreme Court IT director, IU Indy-Law grad, Kurt Snyder is featured in the March issue of Government Technology as one of its annual “Doers, Dreamers and Drivers.” He is featured for his efforts since 2000 to create a centralized system for Indiana’s court technology. He has found the going tough:

Getting elected officials to work together can be difficult at times, and judges are some of the most independent-minded elected officials you could have,” he said. “Getting those things changed [standardization, centralization] is difficult to do. So a county [court] that has never been told what do to by someone else — it’s difficult for them to change.

Link.

It seems that Mr. Snyder has accomplished much of the Supreme Court’s vision for laying out a unified technology system for state courts, but I still question whether the Court is best positioned to lead Indiana’s courts to the future of technology. It seems to me that this move gives the Supreme Court a path to much greater centralized control of the county courts than they have previously had through judicial opinions and disciplining judges.

Independent companies, like Doxpop (which has provided online access to 20 of Indiana’s 92 counties to date), have been able to move much more quickly, and have provided an effective system that is responsive to its users without costing the taxpayers a dime.

The always excellent Stark County Law Library Blog has an excellent post up today covering the ChoicePoint/identity theft issue, noting that scrutiny will likely also fall on Westlaw Accurint and LexisNexis. As someone who both fears the damage that identity theft can inflict on me, and uses ChoicePoint on a regular basis to track down people in my business, these developments have left me divided.

Link.

I did not like ChoicePoints’ reaction to the scandal, basically saying they would solve the problem by cutting off access to “small businesses,” unless a big business would vouch for them. I guess I would be considered a “small business,” whereas large firms would not.

With concerns about electronic security, privacy protection, and now terrorism, the basic framework of our civil life is being altered, bit by bit. The Bill of Rights, the document that sets out the rights we enjoy as citizens in this Country, is undergoing changes, not in the text, but in interpretation.

These changes can be seen in the court battle between the government, airlines and software millionaire John Gilmore about Gilmore’s refusal to display a government issued ID to board an airplane (a fight over the application of a rule that is so secret, Gilmore’s attorneys have been denied access to. Link via BoingBoing.

You can also note the trend in new laws, like Indiana’s House Bill 1439, which would require a voter to present a government ID to vote. Link, discussed here by Doug Masson.

I believe we are coming to a point in our society where we will have multiple levels of citizenship: A basic “I live here so I’m a citizen” level, a “certified citizen” who has been checked out and credentialed and can do things like rent a car, get on an airplane, vote, enter public buildings, etc, and maybe even a “super certified citizen” who is permitted to do things like access public information from information vendors and the government.

Marcia Oddi at the Indiana Law Blog caught a good story on FindLaw about an attorney in Indiana who was able to escape serious sanctions for missing a hearing in federal court when he was able to demonstrate that the reason he did not attend was that his firm’s email filter was set such that it treated the court’s notice of the hearing as spam.

Remember when we used the mails? I do not think I would want to go back to those days. I like the fact that we get immediate notice when a hearing is set on my calendar, but as with any type of technology, the system needs to be maintained and watched carefully to assure that it is functioning. With the mail, it almost always got where it was supposed to, and sorting junk mail from court mail is a very easy, error free process.

Link.

When Google started its gmail service, its promise of 1000 MB of free storage, neat search function, and innovative grouping of emails by conversations made it pretty attractive.  The accounts were only made available to a lucky few, who then were given limited numbers of accounts to share with others. The accounts became a status symbol, of sorts, among “webheads,” and creative methods were used to disperse them.

Recently (like last week), it had become fairly easy to pick up an account, bloggers often posted when they had some invitations to give out (that’s how I got mine, back last year).  I personally love gmail.  I do not use it as my primary account, but it provides a nice way to manage listserves and other non-vital communications.

As of today, things seemed to have changed.  I had 6 invites up earlier this week, and hadn’t thought of doing anything with them.  Now I (and others, from what I have seen) have 50 invites available. I cannot imagine sitting there sending out 50 invitations to gmail, and I would feel a bit like an unpaid worker for Google at that point if I did.  What started out as an interesting distribution model has now turned into, hey, spam your friends for Google. Anyway, if you want one, let me know.

Congress has been trying to overhaul the bankruptcy code for the last several years.  The overhaul is aimed at cracking down on perceived abuses, and generally, making the front doors to bankruptcy a little narrower to encourage people to, oh, just pay up instead. Over the years, this effort has been stymied by various local issues, and even the abortion debate, but is seems like passage is likely this year (we say that every year).  Regardless of when it happens, it will be too late.

My experience in the bankruptcy world has taught me that bankruptcy is one of the most efficient areas of the law.  The courts, the trustees, and most of all the bankruptcy lawyers tend to be a fairly quick-thinking and adaptive lot.  The result is that, more than any other area of litigation, certainly, litigation in federal courts, the bankruptcy system moves quickly to address the changing needs of debtors and creditors who are trying to do neat things like live and run businesses.

Since Congress starting its overhaul process, the reaction of the bankruptcy courts and the US trustees has been swift and fairly efficient.  Their message: Congress does not need to fix this, we can fix it ourselves.  So there has been a crackdown on debtors in bankruptcy, and from my humble perspective, I think the cleanup has worked.

Over at Automatic Stay, Debra Innocenti follows trends in bankruptcy, and took note yesterday of the continuing crackdown. Link.

Through Crime & Federalism, I found an interesting blog by California private investigator Tamara Thompson called PI News Link. Ms. Thompson has clearly done some hard work searching and thinking about finding information about people on the internet. Lawyers and others would do themselves a favor tuning in to what she has to say.

On a subject I discussed earlier today, Ms. Thompson links to a site called Regret the Error, where Canadian Craig Silverman keeps track of news stories that went wrong in North America. Like this story, were the New York Times clarified that James Forman did not seek reparations for crimes perpetrated BY generations of blacks, but rather crimes AGAINST them, or this story from the Washington Post that claimed that 25 year old musician Derek Trucks had toured with Bob Marley (who died when Trucks was 2, they meant the other Bob (Dylan)). Many of these stories are a lot of fun, but Mr. Silverman also tackles bigger issues, like plagiarism at the San Franciso Chronicle.

Surveying the blog scene, this is shaping up to be an active week in blogshere:

First and foremost, The US Supreme Court’s announcement of the Booker and Fanfan decisions has created much buzz in the legal blogs. You will hear much on the case today, but since it is a 124 page opinion, it will take a few days to really digest. Here is a sampling:

• From Sentencing Law and Policy: Questions and Omissions, The Remedy Mess, and Rule by Judges?
• SCOTUSblog: Guidelines survive - no longer mandatory
• White Collar Crime Prof Blog: Initial Booker Musings for White Collar Crime
• Volokh weighs in.

Crimlaw celebrates 2 years of high quality blogging toady. Happy to you!

On the gay rights issue, ASCblog points to a Findlaw piece from Joanna Grossman from Hofstra University on the US Supreme Court’s decision to turn down review of the Florida gay adoption appeal. More on this at the Law Dork. And Marcia Odd i notes that today is the 1 year aniversary of the oral argument before the Indiana Court of Appeals in the case challenging Indiana’s prohibition on same sex marriage, and there is still no decision yet.

Marcia also covers Mitch Daniels’ shake up of IDEM, Indiana environmental “enforcer” over here (she is having some website issues). Apparenlt seven IDEM administrators have been asked to leave. The Bigeastern notes that Daniels is reported to have told the departing staff that unnamed persons had criticized IDEM staff for inconsistent enforcement. Doug Masson believes that the IDEM shake up does not bode well for Indiana’s environment.

Howard Bashman notes that the Eighth Circuit has determined that our expectation of privacy in the restroom does not give us an absolute right to privacy there. Funny, I kind of thought it did.

True Believer finds that you really can’t drive drunk and punch the cop who stops you, and expect to get away with it, even if you are a lawyer.

The Public Defender Dude has the scoop on the latest criminal defense in response to “hard science”: If the state has DNA evidence linking your client to a crime, take the jury through the development of our “scientific theory” of DNA, from evolution, to heredity, to genes, right down to DNA. Argue that belief in DNA = belief in evolution, and hence DNA and creationism cannot coexist. Based on the level science education in this country, this might just work.

On the subject of the web fact checking better than some in the traditional “print” media, Three Sheets to the Wind points today to a site dedicated to checking the statistics used in news articles from George Mason University. Link.

Interesting snip:

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that 51 percent of children in Philadelphia are overweight and 43 percent of all children in five counties in Southeastern Pennsylvania. A New Jersey state Health Department survey found 38 percent of sixth-graders were overweight. The New York Times Magazine found that “[in] elementary school, 50 percent of the boys are overweight or obese, along with 35 percent of the girls” in Starr County, Texas.

. . . .

But according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the American Heart Association, the definition of an overweight child or teen aged 2-20 is relative. A child is considered overweight if he or she has a higher BMI than 95 percent of other children the same age. There is no official definition of obesity using the BMI alone for children.

. . . .

But if this is the real definition, then exactly 5 percent of children are overweight, no matter what their BMI actually is, since overweight then means being in the 95th percentile or above.

. . . .

What researchers are actually using to devise the percentages cited in the stories is a comparison between today’s children and those whose BMI was in the 95th percentile of for children thirty-five to forty years ago.

Thanks the Sherry at Stay of Execution, I have been spending some time reading Al Nye over at his blog. Mr. Nye is an attorney working in Maine, but I did not have time to find out too much about him, I was too busy reading his insightful book reviews. Many of his reviews are off-topic, legal wise, but still informative. What I really enjoyed were his reviews of books intended for the practicing lawyer. There is not much in the way of reviews of this type of material, and unlike “standard” books, most legal treatise will set you back $100.00 or more. That is a big amount to pay, just to find out the author has collected a bunch of trite statements about the law, that offer nothing new. If you are in the practice, I recommend you take a look.

As I have noted before, I do not use Microsoft’s products to browse the internet or review my email because of the lack of reasonable security features. URL masking is a feature brought to you by Internet Explorer, and opens up IE users to a whole new area of ripoffs:

Until now, it’s been easy to spot a paypal fraud site by the telltale URL. But here’s a Paypal fraud page that uses a Microsoft feature/bug (take your pick) to overwrite the scammer’s URL with a legitimate-looking URL. If you make the page small, you’ll be able to see the fraudster’s URL. (Since I have a Mac, I can’t try this out myself to see what actually happens.) Link (Warning: do NOT enter your paypal information here — unless you want to be swindled)

via boingboing.

One of the frequent tasks in the practice of law is finding people. Rarely, I have the occasion to dig someone up to give them good news, like some distant relative has died, leaving them money. Most often, I need to find someone who owes a client money, or they were a witness to something and I need to find them and drag them into court to testify. To accomplish this, I rely on commercial databases that provide leads on contact information. Most people expect that personal information they give to the government will not be displayed to the world at large. To some extent this is true (the IRS discloses information regarding each federal tax return an average of about thirty times). The trend in government is to limit access to personal information. However, people freely give out information about themselves all the time to private businesses without giving it a second thought. This information is then sold off so that people like me can use it. One of the most reliable sources of contact information comes from an unexpected place:

David Coplen, the state office’s budget director, said he discovered that pizza delivery lists are one of the best sources such companies use to locate people. “There are literally millions of dollars of uncollected fines, fees and court costs out there,” Coplen said. [...] Databases compiled by private companies and government agencies are a key tool for firms such as ACS, Coplen said, and “one of the databases they find to be most helpful are pizza delivery databases.” “When you call to order a pizza, you usually give them your correct name, your correct address and your correct phone number,” he said.

Link to IP via boingboing.

The moral? If you owe people money, you might consider picking up your pizza.

Ernie The Attorney notes that he is starting to get popup that have gotten around his Google popup blocker (contained in the Google Toolbar). I started my defensive battle against popups with the Google Toolbar and found it to be a must have for browsing the web. But then I figured out the real problem: IE is just a poor piece of software.

As I must use Windows at work, I have long suffered from the onslaught of attacks that hackers send Microsoft’s way. My solution in the browsing and email areas was to stop using Explorer and Outlook. I browse with Mozilla Foxfire and I use Mozilla Thunderbird. I have found both programs do their jobs well, are full featured, and do not cause the headaches I constantly ran into with Microsoft’s “solutions.”

Foxfire’s tabbed browsing experience is something not to be missed. I have 28 web sites that I check over every morning. I have these sites in a folder on my Foxfire toolbar. I hit the “Open in tabs” button in that folder, fill up my coffee cup, and all 28 sites are loaded and ready. Browsing through the sites is reduced to closing one tab at a time. What I miss out on is waiting for each page to load, making this morning task ridiculously short.

After much delay, I have finally learned just enough to redo my business website. This took me a long time, having no skills whatsoever. It has taken me forever just to get this MovableType blog going. Yes, I did try Typepad, but I do not like the idea of paying a monthly fee for the hosting of a blog when I already pay for space to host my web site. Anyhow, check out the site, and let me know what I need to work on.