One attorney is certainly going to be in hot water upon learning that one of their emails describing settlement negotiations made the front page of the New York Times. Email is so quick and is used more and more for highly sensitive and critical messages that we, oftentimes, forget about the consequences of pressing that magic "send" button. While we have had encrypted email for years, it is hardly a standard in the industry. It is only going to get worse as the Federal Courts already require e-filing and the State of Michigan, as of January 1, 2008, has permitted service on opposing counsel to be done via email.
Perhaps attorneys should require that, as part of their representation of a client, that the client be giving an email key so as to ensure a closed circuit of communication.
What are your thoughts?
2 comments:
Address group can be tricky. I have mistakenly clicked on a wrong group and sent a work matter to a political club. Fortunately, the email was totally innocuous and everyone had a good laugh. However, it was a mistake which taught me a lesson and now I am very careful with email addressees.
Using a PGP encryption pluggin like Enigmail can act like a filter for this kind of problem. You will not have an encryption key for a list or, likely most non-privileged people in your address book.
For those concerned about the other weaknesses of email security, there is much information and many recommendations to be found at www.novo-ordo.com.
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