Five great industry news stories from this week you may have missed.
.png?width=787&name=Friday%20Top%20Five%20(1).png)
Canadian law firms team up to file class-action suit against Google
Lawyers in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec have filed proposed class-action lawsuits in the three provinces against Google and its parent Alphabet Inc. on behalf of millions of Canadians, alleging the company unlawfully collects and profits from personal information. According to IT World Canada, the claim alleges that through Google Services, Google Ads and Google Analytics, the company uses Canadians' devices to track and build profiles of users without their consent. Read the full story here.
How COVID-19 will change legal innovation
The global pandemic has propelled the legal community to adopt technology at an unprecedented rate. A recent The Lawyer's Daily article examines notarization, e-signatures, execution of testamentary documents, transfers of title and sworn affidavits as part of the legal industry's digital transformation. Learn why they argue that pandemic legal innovation may be less about creating the next big technology breakthrough and more focused on finding the practical solutions that keep business running, here.
Canadian police using tech that tries to predict potential crimes, monitor private chat rooms, report finds
A new report out of the University of Toronto raises concerns about the Waterloo Region Police Service's use of surveillance technology to monitor people's online conversations. CBC has reported the algorithmic social media surveillance tool scrapes conversations from online chatrooms. In a statement, Waterloo regional police confirmed the service began using the system 10 years ago and now uses it "routinely."
Outbound emails grow and are causing a rising security breach risk says report
Egress released its 2020 Outbound Email Data Breach Report, which highlights the true scale of data security risks related to email use. Security Magazine has shared that 93 per cent of leaders surveyed said that their organisation had suffered data breaches through outbound email in the last 12 months. 94 per cent of respondents reported an increase in email traffic since the onset of COVID-19 and 70 per cent believe that working remotely increases the risk of sensitive data being put at risk from outbound email data breaches. Read all the key findings of the report here.
The day of reckoning for smartphone contact tracing is here
This month, millions of iPhones and Androids around the U.S. will ask their owners whether they want to enable exposure notifications. A recent Fast Company article investigates why the likely answer will be "no" and why, despite the huge potential health benefits of smartphone contact tracing, many Americans will opt out of exposure notifications because Apple, Google, and the tech industry as a whole have lost our trust.
