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RAIN 11/02: e-sigs, chat rooms and more



Green Bay Press-Gazette 11/01/00
Appleton Papers to get documents
http://www.pressgazettenews.com/archive/articles/0011/1101xappledocument.html

by Joanne Zuhl
Appleton Papers Inc. expects to receive an important package today -- court
documents containing trade secrets that have been adrift for three years. On
Monday, Federal Judge Norman Mordue of the Northern District Court of New
York ordered Sharon McLaughlin to return the documents to Appleton Papers
through a third party by 2 p.m.
It could signal the end of the legal wrangling Appleton Papers has been
involved with since battling a product liability suit 10 years ago.


Globe and Mail 11/01/00
Native clinic's records disappear
Investigation into 'pattern' of irregularities finds key financial documents
now missing
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/gam/National/20001101/UNATIM.html

by David Roberts
WINNIPEG -- About 20 years' worth of administrative and financial records
pertaining to a troubled native-run alcohol treatment centre have disappeared
from Health Canada files in Winnipeg, sources said yesterday.
"The last two or three years are there, but everything else -- gone," the
source said as Health Canada investigators arrived in the Manitoba capital to
continue a probe into irregularities in the "pattern of financial
transactions" in the department's First Nations and Inuit Health Services
Branch.
Yesterday, senior Health Canada officials arrived in Winnipeg and impounded
all the shredders in the local branch office, insisting that any documents to
be destroyed should be vetted through them first, the source said.


Green Bay Press-Gazette 11/01/00
Order halts release of records by DePere School District
http://www.pressgazettenews.com/archive/articles/0011/1101bdepererecords.html

by Heather Stur
DE PERE -- A restraining order has been issued against the De Pere School
District, preventing the release of documents relating to the administrative
leave of business manager Jeff Seeley.
Brown County Circuit Judge Peter Naze on Tuesday signed the order, which
Seeley requested. A hearing has been set for 9 a.m. Monday.
Seeley was placed on paid administrative leave Sept. 21, after serving for
just more than a year as the district's business manager. After learning that
Seeley had been placed on leave, the Green Bay Press-Gazette requested the
letter stating Seeley was placed on leave as well as other documents
pertaining to his being placed on leave. The open-records request also asked
for documents relating to his salary and compensation package.



Lowell Sun 11/01/00
Pepperell board told to end secrecy on records
http://www.lowellsun.com/S-ASP-Bin/ReformatSQLIndex.ASP?puid=1691&spuid=1691&I

ndx=512946&Article=ON&id=30245314&ro=2

by Melissa Evans
PEPPERELL -- The Zoning Board of Appeals is expected to rescind a policy it
adopted in July barring the public from seeing records of its meetings until
they are approved by the board.
Under Massachusetts law, records created by a public entity -- including
draft meeting minutes, notes and audiotapes -- must be made available to
anyone who requests it, with few exceptions.
"When a group such as (the ZBA) abuse their power and reconfigure the law to
suit their own needs, it's like pulling a small brick in a wall from our
rights and freedoms," said Pepperell resident Lynda Pozerski.
Pozerski, who heard about the board's policy secondhand, requested the
minutes from the meeting at which that policy was adopted. After five months
of back-and-forth exchanges with members of the ZBA, pleas to the Board of
Selectman, and complaints before the Secretary of State's and Attorney
General's Offices, Pozerski says she will keep on it until the policy is
nullified.


Richmond Times Dispatch 11/01/00
Firm Questions VDOT cancellation
http://www.timesdispatch.com/vametro/MGBRRWXC0FC.html

by Peter Bacque
The company working for the Virginia Department of Transportation on a failed
$54 million computer records project says the system was almost ready for
testing when the agency abruptly and inexplicably canceled the project.
"To this date, VDOT has not complained about work quality or advised Woodside
of a specific reason for terminating the contract," said the Woodside Summit
Group in a written statement after months of silence on the issue. "There are
no work quality issues."
According to Woodside Summit, the work "was on target and on schedule."


China Online 11/01/00
Spam not Kosher: China bans sale of e-mail lists
http://www.chinaonline.com/topstories/001101/1/C00103104.asp


(1 November 2000) Unsolicited e-mail, also known as spam, has become the bane
of the computer age. China is doing something about it.
The Ministry of Public Security has announced that the sale of e-mail address
lists is illegal and will be punished under the law.
Although some Web sites that sell e-mail addresses have been closed
temporarily, others are still in business.
Industry insiders say that sale of e-mail addresses is brisk because the
market is huge, reports the Nov. 1 Zhongguo Qingnian Bao (China Youth Daily).
One Shenzhen-based purveyor of these lists said, "We have collected 34
million personal e-mail addresses worldwide, including 4 million domestic
ones, and 200,000 company e-mail accounts."



Foster' Online 11/01/00
Curley murder trial: NAMBLA says e-mail evidence is all faked
http://207.180.26.213/news2000/nov_00/01/gen1031b.htm

by Mark Pratt
Associated Press
BOSTON (AP) - An organization that was sued by the family of a 10-year-old
boy who was kidnapped and murdered when he resisted sexual advances by two
older men said Tuesday that e-mails and documents filed as evidence against
it are "amateurish fakes."
The North American Man/Boy Love Association was sued by the family of Jeffrey
Curley for $200 million in August. The Curleys' lawyer said the group, which
advocates sex between men and boys, incited the men convicted of Jeffrey's
murder and called it a "criminal organization."
The family's attorney, Lawrence W. Frisoli, has said that NAMBLA distributes
child pornography, advocates violence against its enemies and participates in
child slavery in other countries.
He has said the group sent "massive e-mail mailings soliciting hard-core
pornographic materials" to its members and to others at random, and
acknowledged that a benefit of membership is a list of minor boys available
for sexual acts.


Miami Herald 11/01/00
Typo leads to sensitive state e-mails
Miami man's find stuns officials
http://www.herald.com/content/today/docs/091240.htm

by Phil Long
A Miami man's spelling mistake during an Internet search led him to sensitive
e-mail messages sent to state government officials that had been
inadvertently left for public view on a state Department of Health website.
The hundreds of messages -- one from an HIV patient looking for a doctor,
another from a woman questioning her physicians's credentials -- were sent
either directly to the health department's website or forwarded from other
places like the state government's new Internet information center,
www.MyFlorida.com.
``It's a big deal when you've got someone's personal information all over the
Web where anybody could have gotten it,'' said Jerry Haygood, who discovered
the files.



Akron Beacon Journal 11/01/00
Experts agree that technology poses privacy threats
http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/011100.htm

by Larry Neumeister
Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- While new rules to protect the privacy of medical
records will be in place soon, President Clinton's adviser on privacy issues
agrees more must be done to counter privacy threats posed by new technology.
Peter Swire, chief counselor for privacy in the Clinton administration,
delivered the keynote address at a gathering of experts Tuesday. They focused
on how privacy can be protected on the Internet without diminishing the force
of the First Amendment.
Swire said self regulation by Internet users to protect privacy was the best
policy, though laws were necessary to protect sensitive information about
each individual's genetics, finances and medical records.
Swire is an Ohio State University law professor, who took a two-year leave in
March 1999 to take the government job.



Reuters 11/01/00
Chase, Bank of America and IBM partner in cheque venture
http://www.mediacentral.com/channels//allnews/11_01_2000.reutr-story-N01314371

.html

Financial powerhouses Bank of America and Chase Manhattan Bank are teaming up
with computer giant IBM to create a digital archive for cheques, in a move
the firms expect to reduce industry cheque processing costs by as much as 30
percent.
Financial terms of the partnership between the three companies were not
disclosed.
Under the agreement, Bank of America, Chase and IBM will establish a unit
called Viewpointe Archive Services, scheduled to begin operations later this
year.
Viewpointe Archive Services will facilitate the exchange of cheque images
among banks, reduce industry cheque processing costs by as much as 30 percent
when fully implemented and lay the foundation for consumers to retrieve
digitised cheque images from the Web, the companies said.



South Florida Sun-Sentinel 11/01/00
Problems plague courthouse computer, hindering access to public records
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/daily/detail/0,1136,36000000000119577,00.html

by Neil Santaniello
The Palm Beach County Circuit Court clerk staff had to shut down for two days
a device that allows quick access to legal documents, as problems continue to
plague a high-tech system whose management has become a political issue.
The staff turned off the system Monday and Tuesday despite a temporary fix
made on Oct. 20 that had allowed them to keep using the document scanner, a
tool to quickly review mortgages, deeds and marriage licenses, after the
system had run out of memory and come to a near standstill.
But the fix, a stopgap, requires checking the imaging system daily to make
sure its storage disk is not nearing capacity, said Linda Scarlett, deputy in
charge of legal records for Clerk of Court Dorothy Wilken.
When workers saw Friday afternoon that the system was reaching its limit,
they had no choice but to bring it down for maintenance on Monday so more
storage space could be created, Scarlett said.


Miami Herald 11/01/00
Smithsonian hosting Goya - the Latin foods, that is
Products showcased as part of Hispanic heritage
http://www.herald.com/content/today/docs/017581.htm

by Paul Brinkley-Rogers
Goya at the museum usually means paintings by the immortal Spaniard.
But this month at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington it means the
humble cans, bottles and packages of homespun Goya Foods -- the largest
Hispanic-owned food company in the United States.
The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History is showcasing Goya's
products as part of Hispanic Heritage Month in a show that runs until Nov.
30.
A 79-cent can of Goya beans may be an object South Florida residents toss in
their shopping cart without a second thought, but at the Smithsonian that
same can is getting equal billing in its own homespun way as a Goya
masterpiece.



Web Techniques 11/01/00
Farewell, Dotted Line
http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2000/11/legal/

by Bret A. Fausett
The new federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act
went into effect October 1, 2000, and it could revolutionize the way business
is done on the Internet (see
"javascript:openStatusWindow('online.shtml',600,400);Online"). The act not
only solves prosaic problems with paper, but it also creates entirely new
modes of transacting business electronically.


The Advocate 11/1/00
Livingston clerk trying to recover missing notary seals
http://www.theadvocate.com/news/story.asp?StoryID=17257

by Bob Anderson
LIVINGSTON -- An unknown number of Livingston Parish clerk of court notary
seals remain in the hands of people who don't work for the office, haven't
been trained as notaries and aren't bonded, Clerk of Court Tom Sullivan said
Tuesday.
The clerk said he's concerned the seals distributed during the previous
administration could be used improperly.
Notary seals are devices that make embossed imprints on legal documents
ranging from affidavits to vehicle titles.
Notaries use them to attest to the authenticity of signatures as well as to
perform official acts in commercial and legal matters.



Deseret News 10/27/00
Alpine online poses risks
Attorney says city chat room could break laws
http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,215007496,00.html?

by Sharon Haddock
ALPINE - A Utah media attorney says a chat room that can be accessed through
Alpine's snazzy new Web site could open the door for potential abuse of state
laws that govern public meetings.
"There's definitely the potential for problems," said Jeff Hunt, a former
reporter and currently legal counsel for the Utah chapter of the Society of
Professional Journalists.
"I've never heard of (cities using chat rooms) before. It raises an
interesting issue."
As some see it, the Internet could change how city halls operate. Councils
and commissions could meet online for "virtual" meetings involving people at
far-flung locations.
Discussions between council members and residents in a chat room could be
held outside the traditional setting, making it impossible for those without
access to the Internet to hear or participate in a debate regarding the
public's business.




Peter A. Kurilecz CRM, CA
pakurilecz@aol.com
Richmond, Virginia

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