How commonly is PGP used by lawyers? Lawyers have to constantly keep, send and receive confidential documents. What is be the most common encryption method used by lawyers today? PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) sounds to me to be the conventional way to encrypt documents but there may be other prevalent methods. I cannot figure out how common PGP is in the legal community due to a lack of experience.
Lawyers use the same kinds of encryption found in any other corporate environment: TLS for secure web browsing, private messaging and virtual private networking, and FileVault or BitLocker for full-disk encryption. While lawyers often deal with confidential documents, most lawyers (and clients) lack the technical skills to manually encrypt documents using tools like PGP. Moreover, securing individual documents with PGP provides little benefit, since documents are not stored in a location that is accessible to untrusted users anyway. The exception is email. It would be nice if lawyers encrypted their emails, but even though security experts have been calling for this for years, it rarely happens. Some lawyers might use the encryption feature in Microsoft Outlook, or attach confidential documents as password-protected PDFs or archives. More commonly, if a document is particularly sensitive it might be distributed only in paper format, with a legal obligation on the recipients not to make copies.
34 CFR Subpart D covers this topic ("Under what conditions is prior consent not required to disclose information?"). This includes The disclosure is to other school officials, including teachers, within the agency or institution whom the agency or institution has determined to have legitimate educational interests so that raises the question of whether there is a legitimate educational interest. Additionally, the question is raised as to the status of an SRO (they are not teachers). Disclosure is allowed to A contractor, consultant, volunteer, or other party to whom an agency or institution has outsourced institutional services or functions may be considered a school official under this paragraph provided... the conditions being that the person Performs an institutional service or function for which the agency or institution would otherwise use employees; Is under the direct control of the agency or institution with respect to the use and maintenance of education records; and Is subject to the requirements of §99.33(a) governing the use and redisclosure of personally identifiable information from education records I would take this model memorandum as the most likely agreement, though your district may have a totally different memo where SROs are purely security guards. An SRO is to advance the program objective which include "Education of children regarding the role of laws, courts, and Police in society", which is the hook into "legitimate educational interest". This nothwitstanding the part that says that they "are police officers and not school teachers, school administrators, nor school counselors. The officers will assist teachers with classroom presentations on relative topics when requested and able" (there is no principle that only teachers, administrators, or counselors can have a legitimate educational interest). This model memo does not say anything that indicates that the conditions "Is under the direct control" and "Is subject to the requirements of §99.33(a)" are true, but those conditions could be satisfied external to the MOU. There are some additional exceptions of the "if required by law" type, such as a state law "adopted before November 19, 1974, if the allowed reporting or disclosure concerns the juvenile justice system and the system's ability to effectively serve the student whose records are released"; or, after that date, is "subject to the requirements of §99.38" which refers you to §99.31(a)(5)(i)(B). If that is confusing, here are the two self-referring sections: §99.38(a) If reporting or disclosure allowed by State statute concerns the juvenile justice system and the system's ability to effectively serve, prior to adjudication, the student whose records are released, an educational agency or institution may disclose education records under §99.31(a)(5)(i)(B). §99.31(a)(5)(i)(B). The disclosure is to State and local officials or authorities to whom this information is specifically...Allowed to be reported or disclosed pursuant to State statute adopted after November 19, 1974, subject to the requirements of §99.38. So state law is one possibility; "legitimate educational interest" is a remote possiblity. Massachussetts law does include governmental third party disclosures: 603 CMR 23.07(4)(c) A school may release information regarding a student upon receipt of a request from the Department of Social Services, a probation officer, a justice of any court, or the Department of Youth Services under the provisions of M.G.L. c. 119, sections 51B, 57, 69 and 69A respectively. That does not directly apply to local police, but it is possible that a police officer is operating as a probation officer or an agent of the Department of Youth Services. Under paragraph (e), A school may disclose information regarding a student to appropriate parties in connection with a health or safety emergency if knowledge of the information is necessary to protect the health or safety of the student or other individuals. This includes, but is not limited to, disclosures to the local police department Mass. law allows the possibility of treating a police officer as "authorized school personnel" if they are "providing services to the student under an agreement between the school committee and a service provider, and who are working directly with the student in an administrative, teaching counseling, and/or diagnostic capacity" – which is not completely out of the question but is a bit of a stretch (especially in the context of a blanket statement "we share records", not "we may share yours, if you get special counseling"). Tne law also says "Any such personnel who are not employed directly by the school committee shall have access only to the student record information that is required for them to perform their duties", so sharing of all records would not be allowed.
Every state requires at least two witnesses to a will unless it is entirely written in your own handwriting. A lawyer as a witness is fine. A spouse as a witness is not ideal as she would be an interested party if there was a dispute over whether it was executed. It may not be prohibited, but I would never do that in my practice ever. I discontinued a will signing just last week because we only had a lawyer and a spouse and not other witnesses. I would be somewhat concerned.
The question says that the OP &quot;asked&quot; company A for confidentially. It does not say that the agreed to it. If they did not, the asker has no case, and they could publicly admit having used his idea and s/he still would have no case. If Company A agreed to confidentiality, and did so in writing (or if the agreement can be otherwise proved) then there might be a case. Proving communication of the idea to Company B would indeed be a hard part of bringing the case. Company B could also defend by showing independent invention of the concept. History has many examples of the same idea being independently arrived at by multiple people at about the same time. Ideas are more common, and therefore of less value standing alone, than many inventors think. To seriously pursue such a case, it would be a very good idea to consult a lawyer experienced in IP law in your jurisdiction. NDAs (and this agreement, if it existed, would be a form of NDA, even if it wasn't called that) are often governed by state law, but trade secret law is partly Federal (see 18 U.S.C. § 1832). A lawyer could advise more specifically and accurately on the chances of success, the probable costs, and the possible amount of recovery, based on the specific facts. But as described, the case is far from a sure thing. More specifically, most US states have enacted some version of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. The USTA sec 1.2 prohibits using or sharing a trade secret gained through &quot;improper means&quot;. Section 1.1 defines this: &quot;Improper means&quot; includes theft, bribery, misrepresentation, breach or inducement of a breach of a duty to maintain secrecy, or espionage through electronic or other means. Promising to observe confidentiality and then breaking that promise would seem to fit. Section 1.4 defines a &quot;trade secret&quot; as: &quot;Trade secret&quot; means information, including a formula, pattern, compilation, program, device, method, technique, or process, that: (i) derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable by proper means by, other persons who can obtain economic value from its disclosure or use, and (ii) is the subject of efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy The idea described in the question might fit this definition. The UTSA provides successful plaintiffs with several possible forms of relief, including injunctive relief, damages, and attorney's fees. The details will be decided by the court in each case.
In the USA communication between an attorney and their client is "privileged". This makes it illegal for, amongst other things, the police to listen in to conferences between a suspect and their attorney. However in practice there is often little to prevent the police actually doing so.
In the question, you write: The GDPR requires consent of the subject for collection or storage of personal data (in this case, IP addresses in a log file). No, it does not. To quote Miss Infogeek: GDPR DOES NOT MAKE CONSENT A MANDATORY REQUIREMENT FOR ALL PROCESSING OF PERSONAL DATA. Consent (Article 6 (1)a) is indeed one of conditions that can be used to comply with the GDPR requirement that processing must be lawful, but it is not the only condition available to the controller to ensure lawful processing &ndash; there are alternatives (before the list of conditions it says that "at least one of the following" must be satisfied). All the conditions for lawfulness of processing are spelled out in Article 6 of the GDPR. One of alternatives are Article 6 (1)f. It says says it is legal to process personal data if processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child. (my emphasis) As noted in the question, logging IP addresses for the purpose of security is an extremely widespread practice. It is a legitimate interest to comply with standard security practices. It is the default, and most (all?) web-sites do this. I.e. it is legal to do this without consent (if this is not the case, I am pretty sure the outcry had been heard all over the Internet by now).
If you aren’t the intended recipient of the password-protected file: StGB § 202a makes it illegal to access this file StGB § 202c makes it illegal to obtain (e.g., by brute forcing) the password for this file, if you intend to access the file that way (in the sense of § 202a) (this is the so-called hacker paragraph) If you are the intended recipient, this law doesn’t seem to apply, and it shouldn’t be illegal to brute-force the password.
In most jurisdictions, the lawyer would have two options: Resign from counsel and never talk about the confession. Take the counsel and defend the client as best they can without mentioning that they know the client is guilty. In most jurisdictions, there is something called "attorney client privilege". It means that whatever a client says to their attorney is confidential (there are usually exceptions to this, but usually none which are relevant for this question). The court can not force the attorney to testify against their client. The job of the defense counsel is to achieve the best possible outcome for their client. If the client pleads not guilty, then the attorney's duty is to do their best to convince the court that their client is not guilty, even when they know it to be false. There are a few limits, for example attorneys are usually not allowed to use underhanded strategies like falsify evidence or compel witnesses. But breaking attorney-client privilege by telling the court about a private confession without the consent of the client would be a major case of misconduct and would in many cases cost the attorney their legal license (at least!). And besides: A defense attorney who knows their non-guilty-pleading client is guilty can actually go through the process without ever explicitly claiming that the client is innocent. In order to convict someone for a crime, the prosecuter must prove the clients guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The defendant doesn't necessarily need to prove they are innocent, they just need to create doubt. The defense attorney can fulfill that duty by raising questions like "If my client had committed the crime, then how do you explain [...]", "What reason would my client have had to commit this crime?", "Does this piece of evidence really prove anything?" or "How can we be sure that the witness is telling the truth when she says [...]?". All very good questions which need to be answered by the prosecution, even if the defense already knows the answers. At no point does the defender have to claim "my client is innocent". The defender just needs to claim "You have not yet proven beyond reasonable doubt that my client is guilty".