The volunteer-based organization, which specializes in acquiring crime tips, has started a Facebook group to help gain information from social networkers in the Saskatoon community.

The group has attracted a few ‘friends’ - including government officials, private investigators, a weatherman and news anchor, radio personalities, teachers, and business people - but have only managed to snag two people under the age of 18 in the group of nearly 50 members.

Const. Carolyn Wensley, spokesperson for Saskatoon Crime Stoppers, said she’s hoping the site will attract a broader audience over time.

“It was only set up a few weeks ago, so we figure that these were people that already had their finger on the pulse of our organization,” she said. “We’re hoping that the site will eventually get the attention of younger people that just don’t know about our programs.”

Wensley said the organization plans on putting up information booths at the University of Saskatchewan to help raise awareness about new ways to submit tips. Traditionally, Crime Stoppers had used its phone and e-mail services for anonymous tips, but have recently plunged into the social networking community. They will also be launching a text messaging tip service at the end of this month.

Facebook and other similar web sites have gained popularity with law organizations in Canada as another outlet to help solve crimes. Most recently in Saskatchewan, a group that was damaging political lawn signs during last November’s provincial election were caught, thanks to the discovery of a Facebook group promoting the practice.

Alyson Edwards, spokesperson for the Saskatoon Police Service, said the city police aren’t ready join Crime Stoppers in ‘poking’ and ‘wall posts’ to aid in investigations just yet.

“It’s kind of a difficult issue for a police service. You’re leaving yourself open for some questionable postings or questionable access,” said Edwards. “We just aren’t there yet, but we’ll continue to consider advancements like that in order to find new ways to connect with people.”

Wroblewski is the director of open source intelligence with New York-based Tony Joseph and Sons Investigation Inc., the private investigation agency that notified the Newfoundland government last month of a data breach in which a total of 694 files containing personal information were exposed.

The incident occurred when a laptop computer owned and operated by a private company conducting contract work on behalf of the provincial government and the Workplace Healthy, Safety and Compensation Commission, was connected to file sharing program Limewire, and exposed information to the Internet.

On January 22, 2008, Tony Joseph and Sons Investigation contacted the provincial government to notify them that a data breach had been detected.

“We don’t work for the government we just have so many searches that are going out now for current clients that when we get false positives online it’s usually someone else’s information, so we just sort of bumped into it,” said Wroblewski.

As to whether data breaches such as these are a common occurrence Wroblewski said that in the U.S. about 33 out of the Fortune 100 companies are leaking multiple critical data leaks, “All the CIOs out of those 33 know who I am, some of them we work with, and some of them hate to hear from me.”

“In Canada I’d heard that people were complaining because it took a few days to be notified and it’s definitely different standards there then in the U.S., because people over here will wait nine months or a year-and-a-half to announce a breach,” he said.

“If any U.S. corporation notified someone within two days of a pretty large breach they would be considered hero’s in the IT world, but over there (Canada) it’s considered late.”

Newfoundland’s Minister of Justice, Jerome Kennedy announced at a recent press conference that a review of the data breach was conducted by government officials, and Canadian technology company Electronic Warfare Associations (EWA) was hired to conduct a forensic analysis of a laptop computer owned by the company involved in the exposure.

“The processes undertaken have been thorough and I am confident that both EWA and our officials have done a commendable job in identifying the individuals who had their information exposed,” said Kennedy.

The forensic analysis and review determined that the personal information of 153 people was accessed via Internet file sharing program Limewire. The type of information exposed includes names, addresses, and medical and work history.

Wroblewski had nothing but high praise for the way the Newfoundland government handled the data breach, “They’ve handled this better than any corporation or government institution I’ve seen in the United States…they’ve done their due diligence to find out what went wrong.”

So say George Socha and Thomas Gelbmann, two St. Paul-based law technology consultants who have studied the wildfire expansion of the EDD industry for the past five years.
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Their latest report, entitled the Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey Report, concludes that in calendar 2006, commercial EDD revenues were about $2 billion, up 51 percent from 2005.
Socha was approached in spring 2003 by a firm providing EDD, among other services, to study the status quo, potential growth, key issues and trends within the industry. That firm was looking to expand the scope of its EDD services, but wanted to be sure the market was strong.

To their surprise, no market research firm had ever examined the industry, and those it had discussed the idea with said that, because it was such a new area, they would need to spend time learning the industry first before commencing a study. That was too costly a proposition.

Socha, a former litigator who, at the time, was transitioning into a law tech consulting practice, asked Gelbmann to help him. Gelbmann, an independent law tech consultant, had worked as an IT professional in Minneapolis law firms for over 20 years, but he also had experience in market research within the legal field.

Although the two also have private consulting practices, they say the report is a massive annual undertaking. This year’s report is 334 pages in length, with hundreds of supporting tables and charts.

The two begin their work in October, inviting over 1,000 people to participate. They send them extremely detailed spreadsheet questionnaires, and conduct lengthy interviews with each. In April, they begin their analysis, inserting the data into models and doing some fact-checking or “triangulation” to verify data. Then in June, they write the report.

The findings, not surprisingly, are quite different, when comparing that first report released in 2003, versus 2007’s.

Socha says, “The market is much larger now; there are many more dollars spent; and there are many, many more players, both as active providers and active consumers of EDD services. There is a much more widespread appreciation and understanding about what goes into electronic discovery, and why you might care about it in the first place. The market has more structure than five years ago; there are more clearly identifiable stages in the process; and there are much more advanced methodologies and tools.”

Gelbmann adds that they’ve seen issues evolve among the providers of EDD over the years – namely, the need for standardization and better project management.

While growth has slowed down slightly in recent years, EDD remains a “very, very aggressive growth market,” he states.

Five years ago, with fewer players in the field, a limited number of providers was charging fees that yielded healthy profit margins, says Socha. Nowadays, with more competition, profit margins are lower. Many firms continue to enjoy healthy bottom lines, although smaller or midsized competitors are getting more of the work they might have had in the past; and some EDD providers are scrambling just to stay solvent.

“The pie has gotten bigger, but so has the number of individuals who want a slice, and therefore the slices are getting smaller,” Socha observes.

What hasn’t changed over the years is that the top concern among EDD providers and consumers alike is the need for better project management.

Gelbmann explains, “It’s all about communication. A lot of times, the consumer comes in with a whole lot of data and has no idea what’s needed, or what’s going to happen and when.
“Project management is about communicating a plan – how they’ll get from Point A to Point B – with all the interested parties. It’s also about designating whom to discuss any anomalies with, because no project goes exactly perfectly. But with good project management, there should be fewer bumps along the road.”

EDD Survey report
Other key findings by St. Paul law technology consultants George Socha and Thomas Gelbmann:

• The top 30 providers collected revenues of about $1.08 billion.
• An additional 550-plus vendors accounted for another $592 million.
• Judging from consumer and provider expectations, the market should grow at approximately 33 percent from 2006 to 2007, 28 percent from 2007 to 2008, and 23 percent from 2008 to 2009.
• Translated into dollars and cents, this means the EDD market will exceed $4 billion by 2009.

Six months after new federal e-discovery rules took effect in the U.S., some businesses are still unclear on what they have to do to comply.

Under the Federal Rules for Civil Procedure (FRCP), which took effect Dec. 1, 2006, businesses need to have policies in place on how they will produce electronic documents they hold in the event of a federal court lawsuit.

But an analyst with the research firm Gartner says it may take “many more years” for companies to come fully into compliance.

The company, which does e-discovery of e-mails and other unstructured data for compliance and litigation purposes, is rolling out its Data Migration Services.

The litigation discovery process used to mean figuring out which documents each side in the lawsuit had to provide to each other. Now, it means sifting through e-mails, PDF files and the electronic background data that tags when files were created and who has seen them.

Chances are that you’ve recently been hearing quite a lot of buzz about e-discovery. That’s because amendments to sections of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure took effect as of Dec. 1, 2006. Sections of these amendments set forth rules governing how companies prepare for litigation in regard to the collection of electronic evidence/information.

The rule changes are intended to recognize that companies manage and maintain electronically stored information (ESI) in fundamentally different ways than physical documents. The new e-discovery rules formally codify much of the preexisting case law related to e-discovery.

“When someone says they can’t find the return on investment (on a records management process), I so disagree,” said Rachael Heade, Microsoft’s records management analysis manager, at a CA World 2007 panel discussion in Las Vegas, Nevada.

And there currently exists a backlog of cases to be handled, she added.

With more than 80 percent of electronic documents never printed and 60 billion plus e-mail messages sent every day, e-discovery has been an important issue for some time.

However, the new amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure relating to electronically stored information (ESI)—which went into effect December 1, 2006—raise the bar for what will be expected of e-discovery in terms of employers’ monitoring and policies. Employers will ultimately feel the brunt of these sweeping changes, with dramatic changes to the way discovery will be conducted in federal court, where most discrimination suits are filed.

Unless a business buys software to archive and categorize messages ahead of time, executives run the risk of being ill-prepared when their firm gets hauled into court or receives a government subpoena. At that point it may be too late - firms are often forced to retrieve and turn over thousands of e-mails from disparate backup disk and tape systems, sometimes at a cost of millions of dollars.

“Right now, the majority of companies are aware of the problem and that they need [this software]. But the majority haven’t deployed it yet,” said Masha Khmartseva, an analyst at the Radicati Group in Palo Alto. She estimates that as many as one-quarter of public companies in Silicon Valley lack any kind of e-mail archiving system.