A year-end round-up of the biggest industry news stories, most useful publications, and most notable cases of which you should be aware from 2018
In “Because You Need to Know What You Need to Know,” we reviewed the year in our educational program and previewed the topics for this series. In “Data Privacy Developments,” we reviewed the first of our two most frequent 2018 news topics. In this Part, we review the second: challenging source developments.
As we noted in the first Part, our review of our monthly news round-ups from 2018 revealed that data privacy issues were one of the two most frequently occurring topics, and challenging source developments were the other. In this Part, we review those challenging source developments, including: mobile devices, social media, ephemeral messaging and more.
As we discussed this year in our Social Media Series and our Mobile Devices Series, both continue to grow in frequency and importance as litigation data sources:
An increasing number of smartphone owners (72% of American adults) are also adopting the use of new messaging applications as an alternative to text messages or messaging through one of the major social media services. These applications come in general purpose (e.g., WhatsApp), auto-deleting (e.g., Wickr), and anonymous (e.g., Whisper) varieties, and they are much more popular among the young, suggesting a major shift in sources may be coming in the future:
Some 56% of smartphone owners ages 18 to 29 use auto-delete apps, more than four times the share among those 30-49 (13%) and six times the share among those 50 or older (9%). Similarly, 42% of smartphone owners ages 18 to 29 use more general messaging apps like WhatsApp or Kik, compared with 19% of smartphone owners ages 50 or older.
Usage of alternative communication channels – including ephemeral (i.e., auto-deleting) messaging and instant messaging – is growing inside companies too. Uber made headlines in November 2017 when an employee testified about the company’s internal use of ephemeral messaging app Wickr, and Uber is not alone. In 2014, less than a year after its launch, instant messaging software Slack became the fastest-growing workplace software ever, and its rapid adoption has only continued. Employees are communicating with each other more rapidly and in more ways and places than ever before.
Mobile Devices, in particular, present ever-evolving collection challenges as device and software makers employ better security measures, stronger encryption, and more. This year, we went from stories in the Spring about how “The Feds Can Now (Probably) Unlock Every iPhone Model In Existence” to stories in the Summer about “Apple to Close iPhone Security Hole That Law Enforcement Uses to Crack Devices.” More recent iOS updates this Fall have affected the ability to reliably collect from iCloud backups instead of from devices, as well as rendering a popular iPhone cracking tool ineffective.
The rise of new messaging applications as sources presents more challenges in the aftermath of collection, when large sets of instant messages or other communications must be parsed in some way into discrete, reviewable records. More and more often, custom processing work is being required due to the inclusion of these new mobile or desktop messaging applications in the scope of collection.
This year also included a few new cases of note on these topics:
Upcoming in this Series
Next, in the final Part of this series, we will review a selection of the most interesting cases and most useful publications from 2018.
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