Monthly Archives: May 2010

Is Encrypted Search Part of Your Future?

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Posted in Google | Tagged , ,

When you perform legal research using online tools, you leave a trace of the information you seek.  Whether you are using a client or party name or topical keywords related to your matter, your keywords are logged by search engines.  In fee-based databases, it is just the publisher who tracks this information; on the Web, each Web site you visit will see your search terms.  More importantly, if you are using an insecure network, like a home or coffee shop wireless network, other people may be able to tap into your search stream and see what you are researching.  The reality is that online research in fee-based or free tools is relatively focused, so searches are unlikely to divulge much on their own.

There may still be some times that you want to keep your search encrypted, though.  In the past, this has meant encrypting your entire online experience, using a virtual private network (VPN) or connecting only to Web sites using the secure sockets layer.  On those sites, the Web address changes from http:// to https://, reflecting an encrypted connection.

If you add that s to Google’s address – https://www.google.com/ – you will arrive at Google’s new encrypted search service, which has just moved to beta.  It is hard to know whether this is a trend in search and how long it will be in beta.  But it means that when you search, your search terms are not available to third parties, whether the sites that you visit online or people around you who might be able to see your online activity.  There may be some research where, just for peace of mind, you will feel better trying the encrypted Google for your research.

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If You Surf Incognito, You Still Leave Tracks

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Posted in Add-on, Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer | Tagged , ,

One of the benefits of doing online research is that you can be largely anonymous.  You are not logging into a fee-based database with a username or password, so at a high level, no one can identify you.  But do not confuse the privacy mode of your Web browser with the ability for Web sites to track your access.

Say you are doing some background research about a client, opponent, or witness.  You might be looking at Facebook sites, business sites, and other online sources.  When you select to use the privacy mode of your Web browser – called InPrivate on Internet Explorer, Private Browsing on Firefox, and Incognito on Chrome – you are obscuring your local identity, on the computer on which you are working.  These privacy tools mean that information created by your Web browser (like cached files or your research history) or by the Web sites that you visit (like cookies) is not saved on your computer.

At the same time, though, each Web site you visit is logging your visit and this information, known as Web site analytics, will note where you are coming from, time, pages visited, and much more.  Your Web browser privacy mode cannot interfere with the capture of this information, since it is happening entirely on a remote server.

There is one new tool you might consider using if you do research and it is important for you to avoid leaving a trail.  Google is providing a new add-on for all browsers that will block the Google Analytics tool from tracking your access to servers running the software.  It is a common Web site analytics product and you are probably visiting sites using it.  The new opt out tool is free but still in beta.  If that is the only analytics or logging tool used on a Web server, you can eliminate that track.  But if the server logs visits outside of Google Analytics, this add-on will not impact that tracking.

When you are online, they may not know that you are a dog, but you may still be leaving more clues about research than you would like.


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Latest Google Chrome Released

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Posted in Google Chrome

Version 5 of Google Chrome is now available and anyone who has been waiting to try out Chrome couldn’t choose a better time than now to do so.  You can read more about the latest release at the official Chrome blog.  It talks about a number of new features, many behind the scenes that you may not notice immediately until you encounter a particular kind of site.  One of the most useful additions is the ability to sync more than just your bookmarks.  I mentioned this earlier in relation to Firefox’s Weave sync but it was still in beta at the time.  If you are using a Web browser in more than one location, you can now have much closer control over your experience, because you can keep your preferences in sync in multiple locations.

Chrome may still not fit your research needs, if you are looking for a specific add-on or extension.  Many research tools are now available either as a full-blown extension or as a bookmarklet.  Zotero is one notable exception, and they do not plan to develop a version for any browser except Firefox.

Mac and Linux users may be particularly pleased with Chrome 5, though, since this will be the first stable version on either platform.  I have been running Chrome 5 beta on Ubuntu and it has run pretty much the same as on Windows.  The primary differences have been in how some extensions work, so the Google Reader Plus extension, for example, does not show the number of unread RSS entries in my toolbar when in Linux, as it does in Windows.

Chrome is the up and coming browser, as this StatsCounter graph shows it about to pass Apple Safari to become the third most popular browser in North America – it is already 3d worldwide, and version 5 shows that the developers are staying true to a fast Web experience that you can extend yourself.

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Taking the New Pacer Through its Paces

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Posted in Case Law, Government, U.S. | Tagged , ,

I am an infrequent user of the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system for finding U.S. case information.  It has always been a bit clunky and it requires a login in order to execute a search, which generates a charge of US$0.08 per screen.  The PACER front-end enables access to the U.S. Federal court system, all of which now uses the Case Management/Electronic Court Filing (CM/ECF) system.  When I am looking for docket information in the US, I tend to use Justia’s docket site, which pulls PACER information out and makes it easy to use.

PACER announced a new case locator site last week, updating its old search tool.  The whole external-facing PACER site has had a face lift, so I was interested to see what has changed under the hood.  While there are some improvements, they do not go very deep.  And they hide one of the features that I think is most appealing, which is the easy access to free written opinions by the courts.

Here is what the old civil cases query looks like (you can still access it, if you like – see below):

PACER Civil Litigation Search

Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) Civil Litigation Search

The new search is much cleaner, eliminating a lot of the search options unless you click the Advanced link, which exposes additional search items.  Here is what the new Civil Litigation search (not advanced) looks like:

PACER Civil Litigation Search (May 2010)

PACER Civil Litigation Search as of May 2010

This is probably a lot easier for searching and the only real hassle that remains on this search form is that the case types (Nature of Suit) are in numerical order, not alpha order, so you may have to scroll up and down a bit to find what you are looking for.  To be fair, Justia’s docket search does not have an alpha list of case types either.

But where is the feature for running reports, which leads to the free written opinions?  It is no longer available through the case locator until you run a search.  Once you have executed a search and retrieved your list of results, you will click on a link to go to a particular case (unless you are just downloading or filtering your list of results).

The link takes you to the old PACER CM/ECF site for the court that hosts that decision.  In other words, you’re essentially back at the old system although you are viewing the list of relevant links for the case which you selected from your results list.  That’s US$0.16 so far.  If this is all the information you need (attorney, etc.), you are better off on Justia.  Otherwise, you can get access to docket information and, if you are looking for just the free written decisions, you can now click on the Report menu and select Written Decisions.  Any searches and downloads you do from that screen are free.  But because you have landed within a specific court, your decision search will be limited to that court as well.

All in all, I’m not sure the case locator is much of an improvement since it does not really provide a strong competitor to the free Justia solution for dockets, and it hides access to one of the most valuable resources, the written opinions of the courts.

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