Social Media Litigation Is on the Rise
August 6, 2015
When you think about social media and litigation, it might seem it would only come up during a civil, domestic, criminal mischief, or even a thievery suit. Businesses, however, rely on social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to advertise their services, connect with their clients, and increase their Web presence. It turns out that social media is also playing a bigger role not only for social cases, but for business ones as well. The X1 eDiscovery Law and Tech Blog posted about the “Gibson Dunn Report: Number of Cases Involving Social Media Evidence ‘Skyrocket’” and how social media litigation has increased in the first half of 2015.
The biggest issue the post discusses is the authenticity of the social media evidence. A person printing out a social media page or summarizing the content for court does not qualify as sufficient evidence. The big question right now is how to guarantee that social media passes an authenticity test and can withstand the court proceedings.
This is where eDiscovery software comes into play:
“These cases cited by Gibson Dunn illustrate why best practices software is needed to properly collect and preserve social media evidence. Ideally, a proponent of the evidence can rely on uncontroverted direct testimony from the creator of the web page in question. In many cases, such as in the Vayner case where incriminating social media evidence is at issue, that option is not available. In such situations, the testimony of the examiner who preserved the social media or other Internet evidence “in combination with circumstantial indicia of authenticity (such as the dates and web addresses), would support a finding” that the website documents are what the proponent asserts.”
The post then goes into a spiel about how the X1 Social Discovery software can make social media display all the “circumstantial indicia” or “additional confirming circumstances,” for solid evidence in court. What authenticates social media is the metadata and a MD5 checksum aka “hash value.” What really makes the information sink in is that Facebook apparently has every twenty unique metadata fields, which require eDiscovery software to determine authorship and the like. It is key to know that everything leaves a data trail on the Internet, but the average Google search is not going to dig it up.
Whitney Grace, August 6, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Who Wrote What? Will an Algorithm Catch Name Surfers?
August 17, 2014
I read “New Algorithm Gives Credit Where Credit Is Due.” The write up sparked a number of thoughts. Let me highlight a couple of passages that made it into my research file.
The focus of the paper, in my opinion, are documents intended for peer reviewed publications and conferences. The write up did not include a sample of the type of “authorship” labeling that takes place. I dug through my files and located a representative example:
This is a paper about stuffing electronics on a contact lens. Microsoft was in this game. Google hired Babak Parviz (aka Babak Amir Parviz, Babak Amirparviz, and Babak Parvis). The paper has four authors:
- H. Yao
- A. Afanasiev
- I. Lahdesmaki
- B. A. Parviz
The idea is that the numerical recipe devised at the Center for Complex Network Research will figure out who did most of the work. I think this is a good idea because my research suggests that the guys doing the heavy lifting in the lab, with Excel, and writing were Yao, Afanasiev, and Lahdesmaki. The guru for the work was Parviz. I could be wrong, so an algorithm to help me out is of interest.
One of the points I highlighted in the write up was:
Using the algorithm, which Shen [math whiz] developed, the team revealed a new credit allocation system based on how often the paper is co-??cited with the other papers published by the paper’s co-??authors, capturing the authors’ additional contributions to the field.
Okay, my take on this is that this is a variation of Eugene Garfield’s citation analysis work. That is useful, but it does not dig very deeply into the context for the paper, the patent applications afoot, or the controls placed on the writers by their employers or their conscience. In short, I need some concrete examples or better yet access to the software so I can run some tests. Yep, just like those that mid tier consulting firms (what I call azure chip consultants) do not do. For reference see the Netscout legal document or my saucisson write up.)
The second point is that the sample strikes me as small. I know the rule of thumb that one well regarded researcher used was 50 in the sample, but there are hundreds of thousands of technical papers. Many are available as open source from services like PLOS One. Here’s the point I noted:
the team looked at 63 prize-??winning papers using the algorithm. In another finding, the algorithm showed physicist Tom Kibble, who in 1964 wrote a research paper on the Higgs boson theory, should receive the same amount of credit as Nobel prize winners Peter Higgs and François Englert.
I think the work is interesting, but it is in my opinion not ready for prime time.
I know that one content processing firm almost totally dependent on the US Army for funding has been working to identify misinformation, disinformation, and reformation. So far, the effort has yielded no commercial product. Other companies purport to have the ability to “understand” content. Presumably this includes the entities identified in the content object. Progress has stalled. Smart software is easier to write about in a marketing slide deck or a proposal than actually deliver.
That’s why authorship remains something a human has to chase down. Let me give you an example. I provided research to IDC, a mid tier consulting firm in 2012. From august 2012 to July 17, 2014, IDC marketed reports that carried my name, two of my research assistants’ names, and an IDC “expert’s” name. Dave Schubmehl, the IDC “expert” in search is listed as the “author.”
Now is he?
I am confident that in his mind and in IDC’s corporate wisdom he is the man. The person who justifies surfing on another’s name illustrates a core problem in authorship. You can see examples of Dave Schubmehl’s name surfing at this link. The sale of one of these documents on Amazon was an interesting attempt to gain traction for Dave Schubmehl in the high traffic eBook store. See “Amazon May Be Disintermediating Publishers: Maybe Good News for Authors.” I include a screen shot of the Amazon “hit.” My legal eagle successfully got the document removed from Amazon. I am not an Amazon author and don’t want to be.
Hopefully the algorithm to identify the “real” author of a series of $3,500 reports will become a commercial reality. I am interested to learn if there are any other mid tier consulting firms that have used others’ content without getting appropriate permissions. How many “experts” follow the IDC path of expediency?
For now, name surfers have to tracked one by one. Shubmehl and Arnold are now linked. Arnold is the surfboard; Schubmehl is the surfer. Catch a wave is the motto of many surfers.
Stephen E Arnold, August 17, 2014
HP, Autonomy, and a Context Free Expert Output about Search: The Bet on a Horse Approach to Market Analysis
May 4, 2013
I don’t think too much about:
- Azure chip consultants. You know, these are the firms which make a living from rah rahs, buzzwording, and pontification to sell reports. (I know. I labored at a non-azure chip outfit for what seems like decades. Experience is a good instructor. Oh, if you are a consultant, please, complain about my opinion using the comments section of this free blog.)
- Hewlett Packard. I recall that the company used to make lab equipment which was cool. Now I think the firm is in some other businesses but as quickly as I latch on to one like the Treo and mobile, HP exits the business. The venerable firm confuses my 69 year old mind.
- Autonomy. I think I did some work for the outfit but I cannot recall. Age and the lifestyle in rural Kentucky takes a toll on the memory I admit.
Nevertheless, I read “HP’s Autonomy Could Face Uphill Battle In Data Market.” There were some gems in the write up which I found amusing and illustrative of the problems which azure chip consulting firms and their experts have when tackling certain business issues.
The main idea of the write up for “investors” is that HP faces “challenges.” Okay. That’s a blinding insight. As you may recall, HP bought Autonomy for $11 billion and then a few months later roiled the “investors” by writing off billions on the deal. That was the mobile phone model, wasn’t it?
The write up then pointed out:
HP wanted Autonomy to jump-start its move into software and cloud-based computing. Autonomy is the No. 1 provider of search and retrieval software that companies use to find and share files and other information on their websites and document management systems.
Okay. But that too seems obvious.
Now here comes the kicker. The expert outfit providing inputs to the reporter doing the bull dog grip on this worn out bone is quoted as saying:
“Software license revenue (in this market) isn’t growing at the same rate as before, and we are beginning to see the rise of some new technologies, specifically content analytics and unified information access,” Schubmehl said. These new types of software can be used with types of business analytics software, business intelligence software and other software to help enterprises do a better job of locating specific information, he says, which is the job of search retrieval software.
I don’t know much about IDC but what strikes me from this passage is that there are some assertions in this snippet which may warrant a tiny bit of evaluation.
Will context free analyses deliver a winner? Will there be a Gamblers Anonymous for those who bet on what journalists and mid tier (second string) consultancies promulgate? For more about Gamblers Anonymous navigate to http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/
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