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Electronic Discovery

What Happened in Vegas? It’s No Secret – Read the Buzz

With many reasons to celebrate, CloudNine is still enjoying the excitement of our time Vegas last week. Visiting with valued customers and meeting new contacts are always fortunate opportunities. As an enhancement to those already fruitful conversations, we were thrilled to announce our expanded capabilities through the acquisition of ESI Analyst. Adding modern communication formats such as mobile, chat, social media and more to CloudNine’s powerful and proven applications, fills the market need to manage eDiscovery more effectively, with both modern and traditional data types, on a single platform.

The buzz of our expansion reached the news feeds across multiple social media channels.  A few highlights include:


 

Demonstrations are being scheduled now to debut CloudNine’s new technology – click to request a time to speak and a member of our team will be in touch to schedule.

 

Ready to try it out for yourself?  Request a free demo and see how CloudNine can help you.

Focusing on speed, security, simplicity, and services, CloudNine is dedicated to empowering our law firm and LSP clients with proven eDiscovery software solutions for litigation, investigations, and audits. 

Release Preview LAW 7.6

As data volumes grow, fortunately so has computer processing power.  CloudNine LAW and Explore 7.6 will take advantage of this power boost to amplify your speed to review and production.  The import technology behind both LAW’s Turbo Import and Explore uses a computer’s multiple processing cores more efficiently, making processing faster.

The application updates will include over 200 enhancements to build upon the already strong, import speeds of LAW and Explore.  The most notable improvement in LAW will be the introduction of a Turbo Imaging that can be used in parallel with existing imaging.  Turbo leverages near-native imaging technology to create static images of native files without relying on the native application.  This saves time while imaging, because the files don’t have to be opened, printed to image, and then closed.  The module can also take advantage of multiple processing cores, if available.  With imaging speeds up to eight times faster than the traditional imaging license, Turbo Imaging generates production-ready images quickly and easily.

In Explore, users will benefit from improved reporting capabilities.  This builds on Explore’s email threading, near duplicate detection, advanced filtering and integration with Relativity to provide a first-class, early case assessment experience, allowing clients to reduce the volume of data promoted for review by as much as 70%.  The import and ECA processes are all done without creating additional copies of the data until the client is ready to commit an export of potentially responsive content for further review.  This saves clients from storing copies of data that they don’t need, reducing cost and risk associated with managing multiple identical files.

To learn more about these and other enhancements coming in CloudNine LAW and Explore 7.6, please reach out to your account manager, or email us at info@cloudnine.com to schedule an overview and demonstration.  We’re excited to give you a preview of these updates and plan a wider release in the week of September 13th, 2021.

 

Focusing on speed, security, simplicity, and services, CloudNine is dedicated to empowering our law firm and LSP clients with proven eDiscovery software solutions for litigation, investigations, and audits. 

Ready to try it out for yourself?  Request a free demo and see how CloudNine can help you.

Answer the Unknown Challenges of eDiscovery Review

When it comes to document review in electronic discovery, choosing a solution can be a daunting task. To make an informed decision, you need to know what challenges await you and how to overcome them. 

The three biggest challenges to address when looking for a document review platform are:

  • Security
  • Volume 
  • Cost

By better understanding these challenges and their impact on your operations and bottom line, you’ll be in a better position to choose the best eDiscovery software solution for your business.

Is My eDiscovery Data Safe and Protected?

The benefits of storing eDiscovery data in the cloud are many but, digital security and remote access top the list of concerns among legal teams and legal service providers (LSPs) for these reasons:

  • Lack of control over their data
  • Concerns about handing data over to a third party
  • Worried about their data integrity

Utilizing a company dependent on public cloud solutions like Azure or AWS, means you can’t specifically tell your client where your data actually is as it can be stored across multiple cloud locations.

Another topic, more relevant since the COVID-19 pandemic, is security for remote document review. Creating additional access points can cause worry about your network being vulnerable to data breaches.

Can My eDiscovery Software Handle the Volume and Variety of Records?

Investigations and litigation can create a lot of digital records, often soaring into the terabytes. This is compounded by the variety of digital records being used as evidence in legal proceedings, including:

  • Emails
  • Instant messages
  • Digital images
  • Videos
  • Audio files
  • Text messages
  • Social media posts
  • Websites

This volume and variety of data can have a detrimental impact on your operation if you don’t have the digital space to process or store it all. 

The more documents you have, the more infrastructure you need to support it. This can compromise your software performance which could affect your ability to navigate, search, report, export, or produce required information, in a timely manner.

If that happens, new eDiscovery projects could be delayed or canceled outright while you complete your current project. Delays could also lead to missed deadlines which could cause your clients to be sanctioned or fined by the courts.

Are eDiscovery Tools Cost-Effective?

Simply put, some eDiscovery software can be expensive. Many include a lot of features and functionality you may not even need but, you are charged generously for it. 

When looking for an eDiscovery solution, it is important to take the following into consideration in order to get the most cost-effective solution:

  • Is the pricing flexible, allowing you to pay only for what you need?
  • How much archived data is stored on the cloud vs. on-prem? Often a hybrid solution will provide you with the most cost savings. 
  • What support is included within your contract? In order to reap the most cost-saving benefits, it’s important to have your team well-versed in the eDiscovery tool.

The eDiscovery Solution – CloudNine Review

Secure, powerful, and cost-effective, CloudNine Review simplifies eDiscovery enabling you to upload documents quickly and to begin reviewing data within minutes. 

CloudNine Review utilizes a private cloud environment so you know where your data is at all times, giving you better audit controls and the assurance your data is intact. To protect client data, CloudNine cybersecurity safeguards are always up-to-date and constantly monitored.

Another safeguard to protect your data on the CloudNine platform are access controls allowing only authorized staff to review specific documents:

  • User-based permissions
  • Project-based rights
  • Document-level rights

By utilizing our private cloud platform, you have access to all of your data anywhere, anytime, without having to log into your network VPN. 

Also, CloudNine Review carries greater bandwidth so you’re able to get your data much faster. As an example, the first day for a new project can look like this:

  • Registered online and began uploading data
  • Uploaded 27 GB of PST email files
  • Processed 300,000 documents (emails and attachments)
  • A reduced document set by 61% with deduplication and irrelevant domain filtering

Imagine being able to accomplish all of that in just the first 24 hours.

The best part is you get what you pay for. CloudNine’s transparent pricing model includes multiple pricing methodologies so you’re never caught off-guard.

Beginning with a predictable upfront cost and low storage fees, CloudNine pricing models are designed to keep your costs down while providing the essential services you need.  To learn about our flexible pricing options, click here to speak to one of our eDiscovery experts.

  • All-in Model – one ‘all-in’ price with no hourly rates for self-service
  • Flex Model – low monthly storage costs for long-running litigation

Plus, you only pay for what you use if your case ends or becomes dormant. Older, dormant case data can be archived and saved at your own location using CloudNine Concordance to help you keep costs low and your data safely archived for the future.

Focusing on speed, security, simplicity, and services, CloudNine is dedicated to empowering our law firm and LSP clients with proven eDiscovery software solutions for litigation, investigations, and audits.

Ready to try it out for yourself? Request a free demo and see how CloudNine can help you.

eDiscovery Daily Blog

Convenience and Catastrophes of Self-Collection

Navigating through discovery to find affordable and time-saving efficiencies is now more important than ever.  As the number of employees working remotely has dramatically increased during the COVID-19 Pandemic, attorneys are looking to alternative solutions for data collection amid challenges of reduced budgets and limited access to workplace assets and staff.  In this scenario, a compelling alternative might lead one to custodial self-collection.  Consider the benefits of self-collection against the risk of compromising potentially admissible data and jeopardizing a court-defined responsibility, and the answer becomes evident:  the high cost of the short-cutting discovery far outweighs any potential for convenience or cost savings. 

Experts have declared their warning on the risks of self-collection and judges have issued sanctions for abuse, or mishandling over the process, for years.  Still, attorneys continue to make the same mistakes of assigning the task to self-interested employees; failing to supervise the process; delivering corrupted metadata because of the way it was collected, and the list goes on. 

Whether the attorney asks the client’s employees to preserve, search, identify and collect their own data, or the internal IT staff performs the final step, self-collection remains a questionable practice.  The process of preservation and collection roll-up to a matter of competence, ethics, and duty of candor in their “obligation to have knowledge of, supervise, or counsel the client’s discovery search, collection and production.”1

Court Response:

These issues were demonstrated clearly in the recent case of EEOC v M1 1500 Group.  Presiding Judge Matthewman of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, reprimanded the defense attorney for his oversight of the collection process, citing their failure to exercise the requisite supervision.  According to the Court, the surmounting “concerns over self-collected discovery are validated through incomplete discovery productions and the destruction of responsive information.”  

Fortunately, Judge Matthewman extended another opportunity to collect the data but, also suggested the defendants hire a legal service provider to remedy the problems caused by self-collection and deliver a valid dataset to the plaintiffs.  Further, the Court advised its intention to “closely supervise the discovery process” to ensure counsel complies with all discovery obligations. 

All things considered, cutting corners at any phase of discovery can be a compromise of catastrophic proportions.  Without the proper actions in place to support self-collection process, one is subject to judicial sanctions, ethical violations, or the invalidation of potentially responsive records.  A prudent and more practical approach would be to leverage the right technology early in the process and streamline your workflow or, entrust service professionals with existing tools and certifications to complete collections confidently and thoroughly. 

1 Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(g)(1); ABA Model Rule 3.3; and, commentary about Rule 26(g) from the Advisory Committee Notes, case law, and the Sedona Conference Working Group on Electronic Document Production.

10 Years of eDiscovery Daily – Thank You For Your Support

Thinking today about the scores of eDiscovery professionals we’ve had the privilege of connecting with daily to share insights on industry news, analysis and educational tips.  The very first eDiscovery Daily Blog published on September 20, 2010 and in these past 10-years, we’ve seen our industry encounter and overcome many challenges.  From legislative amendments raising standards on ESI preservation to penalties for non-compliance, flexibility and responsive technology has been essential to support the ever-evolving needs of the eDiscovery industry.

As business and commerce around the world face the impact of COVID-19, the legal community is not immune to the adaptations required by local mandates to shut down physical work locations.  Without a doubt, an “on-premise”, remote work environment can produce its own challenge, especially when the “new office” is occupied with children or pets and their own unique approach to get through the workday.

However, despite temporary closures of court systems throughout the country, our clients are reporting a steady stream of business and are projecting a consistent rise to help their clients navigate the inevitable onset of new legal issues.  In parallel, the dependency on cloud-based technology to support secure, remote review is stronger than ever and essential to fill the needs of a remote-centric workforce.

As the eDiscovery Daily always concludes each blog with a question, we’d love to hear your observations.  Please share your comments in the discussion fields below.  Or, if you’d like to learn more about CloudNine, let’s talk.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Did the Plaintiff Send a Letter to Confer with Defendants? It’s Anybody’s “Guess”: eDiscovery Case Law

See what I did there?  ;o)

In Simpson v. J.L. Guess et al., No. 3:18-cv-547-J-39PDB (M.D. Fla. March 20, 2020), Florida District Judge Brian A. Davis ruled on several motions from both the plaintiff and defendants, including denying the defendants’ motion for sanctions over whether the plaintiff sent a letter to confer with defense counsel about the motion to compel.

Case Background

In this case by a prisoner proceeding pro se alleging use of excessive force by six correctional officers, the Court ruled on the plaintiff’s motion to compel, the plaintiff’s motion for an extension of time to respond to the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, the plaintiff’s request to strike a declaration of defense counsel and the defendants’ request for sanctions up to dismissal of the action.

Judge’s Ruling

With regard to the plaintiff’s motion to compel and motion for an extension of time, the defendants responded that three officers had no records of discipline, and three others had no records of discipline for use of excessive force on an inmate.  But, Judge Davis stated, in granting both motions: “Contrary to the defendants’ argument, records of discipline are relevant even if the discipline was for something other than use of excessive force on an inmate…In responding to the discovery request, the defendants made no objection about proportionality, instead focusing on relevancy, inadmissibility under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), and confidentiality and now provide no analysis about proportionality using the pertinent factors.”

However, Judge Davis denied the plaintiff’s request to strike a declaration of defense counsel, stating: “Accepting a lawyer’s representation that his client has no responsive documents is commonplace in civil litigation absent evidence of misrepresentation beyond conjecture. Matters about discovery collection and review will not be part of the trial as matters merely collateral to the claims tried before the jury. There is no risk defense counsel will be called to testify at trial.”

With regard to the defendants’ motion for sanctions, the plaintiff declared (under penalty of perjury) he tried to confer with defense counsel about the motion to compel by letter (and included a copy of the letter), but received no response.  Conversely, defense counsel declared (under penalty of perjury) he received no letter from the plaintiff and contended the plaintiff was “a liar and a fraudster who has maligned defense counsel’s character”.  There was a dispute over whether the prison logs outgoing mail from prisoners, but Judge Davis said:

“The declarations create material issues of fact on facts immaterial to the merits of the claims and defenses: whether the plaintiff lied when he said he mailed the letter, whether defense counsel lied when he said he never received the letter, whether no one lied because the letter was sent but not received due to inadvertent misplacement or loss at the prison, the post office, or defense counsel’s office, and whether defense counsel misled the Court by suggesting the log would reflect outgoing mail. In the interest of the just, speedy, and inexpensive resolution of this action…the Court declines to conduct an evidentiary hearing on these collateral issues or otherwise divert limited resources to trying to resolve them and thus denies the defendants’ request for sanctions…But to confront an alleged but unaddressed misrepresentation by a lawyer, the Court directs defense counsel to inform the Court whether any log actually would reflect outgoing mail sent by the plaintiff…The information must be provided by April 30, 2020.”

So, what do you think?  Should the plaintiff be given the benefit of doubt under the circumstances?  Please let us know if any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Case opinion link courtesy of eDiscovery Assistant.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

No Fooling! It’s Time for the 2020 Internet Minute Infographic!: eDiscovery Trends

This is not an April Fool’s Joke!  With all of the craziness of the past few weeks, it slipped up on me, but here is the 2020 Internet Minute infographic!

Hard to believe that we’ve been looking at internet minute infographics each year for the past five years, but time flies – minute by minute (see what I did there?).  ;o)

The updated graphic shown above, once again created by Lori Lewis, illustrates what happens within the internet in a typical minute in 2020.  As always, there are a couple of different categories tracked in this graphic than last year’s, but most are the same and those that are carried forward are, once again, (almost) all up compared to last year – some more than others.  For example, people “Tweeting” is up nearly 2.5 times last year and Instagram scrollers nearly twice as much.  No word whether the current craziness (I’m not going to say the “C” word today) was factored into the Netflix increase of 10% (my guess – not), or what percentage of those Netflix viewers were tuned into the  Tiger King limited series (trust me, you can’t stop watching it).

Regardless, here is a comparison between 2019 and 2020 (we previously published the graphic for 2016, 2017 and 2018):

In her post, Lori also goes through some of her observations on the trends.  As always, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the numbers, so take them for what it’s worth.  Nonetheless, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but an infographic is worth one blog post topic (at least once a year).   ;o)

Speaking of trends, Rob Robinson’s Complex Discovery site has published its list of eDiscovery Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments in Q1 2020.  As you can imagine, with the current climate having unfolded as the quarter progressed, M&A+I activity is down significantly in 2020 (nine total events, five of those in January) vs Q1 2019 (fifteen total events) and vs. Q1 2018 (fourteen total events).  As always, Rob provides a list of M&A+I events between November 2001 and current (419 of them), so feel free to check those out — they are always interesting.

So, what do you think?  How have the challenges of various sources of data affected your organization?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Parties Are Battling Over Whether COVID-19 Should Delay CCPA Enforcement: Data Privacy Trends

With so many other initiatives being delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic, it was only a matter of time before compliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was one of those being considered. However, despite several organizations pushing for enforcement of CCPA to be pushed back six months to January 1 of next year, other organizations are resisting any delay by the state.

According to LAW360 (COVID-19 Fuels Heated Fight Over CCPA Enforcement Timing, written by Allison Grande), the California attorney general’s office has said it has no intention to cave to mounting pressure from businesses (including the California Chamber of Commerce, UPS, the Internet Coalition, the Association of National Advertisers and 30 others) to delay enforcement of the California Consumer Privacy Act until early next year.  However, calls for such a pause are only likely to intensify in the coming months as the novel coronavirus forces companies to reevaluate their priorities and stretches IT departments thin, attorneys said.

“Companies understandably need to focus now almost singularly on the health and safety of their employees and consumers and on business continuity,” said BakerHostetler partner Alan Friel, whose firm filed comments with the attorney general on March 16 arguing for the planned July 1 enforcement deadline to be extended by six months.

“Just as tax return and payment obligations have been pushed back to allow time and resources to be directed to COVID-19 response, so should the CCPA enforcement date,” Friel said.

That stance has faced resistance from advocacy groups such as Consumer Reports, which has urged the state to stay the course in order to ensure that the CCPA’s robust consumer protections are being properly implemented during these unprecedented times.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has also opposed the bid to delay enforcement, with its president, Marc Rotenberg, telling Law360 that he was “very disappointed” to see the business community attempting “to use a public health crisis as a reason to delay implementation” of the law.

“That is both reckless and irresponsible,” he said.

However, even if the California Chamber of Commerce, UPS, the Association of National Advertisers and others are successful in their bid to secure a delay or even a formal assurance that the state will go easy on enforcement, companies can’t just write off their obligations to adhere to the law, which took effect Jan. 1, or to implement regulations that the attorney general is still drafting.

While Attorney General Xavier Becerra isn’t allowed to begin bringing enforcement actions until July, nothing prevents the regulator from coming down on companies for conduct that dates back to the law’s Jan. 1 effective date, and the attorney general has already said he intends to hold businesses accountable for their actions across CCPA’s entire lifespan.  Of course, business groups, in both their latest letter and a separate January correspondence seeking a similar enforcement delay, have also urged the attorney general to take into account that the regulations meant to help guide companies’ implementation of the novel law haven’t been finished.  So, as usual, the CCPA situation is clear as mud.

By the way, LAW360 is offering free coronavirus legal news during the pandemic, including this resource that enables you to see the latest with regard to the affect of the pandemic on Federal and State courts.  Simply hover your cursor over the state (or territory) to see an update for that selection.  Postponements of dockets are pretty much universal all over – the only question is for how long.

So, what do you think?  Should organizations be responsible for compliance with CCPA during the pandemic, especially given that the California AG hasn’t finished the regulations yet?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Return of the eDiscovery Daily Thought Leader Interviews!: eDiscovery Trends

Let’s face it, we need something to take our mind off the COVID-19 pandemic more than ever.  So, with that in mind, the appearance of the dancing light bulb can only mean one thing – it’s time for another thought leader series!

Given that there’s not a lot of eDiscovery-specific news to cover right now with Federal and State courts closed and other eDiscovery activities limited, I thought now might be a good time to bring back the Thought Leader interviews that I conducted at Legaltech for eight years straight from 2011 to 2018.  Over the first 7+ years of our existence, eDiscovery Daily published several thought leader interviews from various thought leaders throughout the eDiscovery community, including an annual series of interviews at Legaltech New York (LTNY) from 2011 to 2018.

We would have continued doing them, but I went from managing one product at the beginning of 2018 to 5+ products now – with regard to the “+”, more on that later – and CloudNine hosted the NineForum presentations the past couple of years at LTNY, which left little time for me to conduct thought leader interviews.  Hence, the pause.

But, now we need something to talk about.  Something, anything other than COVID-19.  So, I thought it would be a great time to bring back the thought leader interviews and I reached out to several well known eDiscovery thought leaders to gauge their interest in participating (with the intent to reach out to several others as well).  At least half a dozen expressed an interest and willingness to do an interview, so it’s on!

Unlike past years when we have conducted them, I won’t be publishing a schedule in advance.  My goal will be to publish one a week for as long as I have eDiscovery thought leaders willing to be interviewed.  Hopefully, that will be at least as long as we are all “on pause” during this pandemic.  If not a lot longer.

So, what do you think?  Are you looking for other topics to read about during the COVID-19 pandemic?  Me too  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Despite Estimate of 37 Years to Crack iPhone, Government Doesn’t Have to Return it – Yet: eDiscovery Case Law

Tired of stories about COVID-19?  So are we.  So, here’s an interesting case to take a look at instead.  :o)

In U.S. v. Morgan, No. 1:18-CR-00108 EAW (W.D.N.Y. March 6, 2020), New York District Judge Elizabeth A. Wolford denied the defendant’s Motion for Return of Property Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g), ruling that “[t]he government’s evidentiary interest in the [defendant’s] iPhone outweighs Defendant’s interest in its return, at least at this stage of the proceedings”.

Case Background

In this case involving a Superseding Indictment alleging conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud served on this defendant on May 21. 2019, a search warrant over a year earlier was issued for Morgan Management, LLC, which included search and seizure of “multiple servers, computers or storage media … including but not limited to … devices … associated with … Robert Morgan.”  Later the same month that the search warrant was issued, a 62-count indictment was returned against other defendants, but Robert Morgan was not initially named in the indictment.

Nonetheless, sometime in May of 2018, the government started to try to crack the defendant’s iPhone’s passcode, using a device called “GrayKey”, which uses “brute force” to try and access the iPhone, a process by which a computer program enters potential passcodes seriatim until the correct passcode is revealed.  A six-digit passcode yields 1,000,000 potential passcode combinations, but the iPhone’s hardware only allows two or three passcode attempts each hour.  Even though this defendant wasn’t charged until a year later, GrayKey’s “painstaking” efforts to unlock the iPhone continued, with “a mere 960,526 possible passcodes” remaining as of January 9, 2020.  As a result, on January 2, 2020, the defendant filed a Motion for Return of Property Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g).

While the government argued that it was the defendant’s burden to show that either the seizure was illegal or the government’s need for the device as evidence has ended, the defendant argued that regardless of the government’s stated need for the property, it was unreasonable for the government to continue its retention of the iPhone.

Judge’s Ruling

Judge Wolford noted that “Rule 41(g) allows ‘[a] person aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure of property or by the deprivation of property [to] move for the property’s return…. If it grants the motion, the court must return the property to the movant, but may impose reasonable conditions to protect access to the property and its use in later proceedings.’”  But she also noted that “Defendant does not argue that the government’s continued possession of the iPhone and its efforts to access it constitute an untimely seizure. Instead, Defendant argues that his interest in his iPhone and the information contained therein exceeds the government’s interest in the device, and thus, the Court should order its return.”

With that in mind, after a review of the history of Rule 41(g), Judge Wolford stated: “Defendant argues that at its current pace, it may take the government 37 years to successfully unlock the iPhone. The Court agrees that anywhere close to 37 years is an unreasonable time to retain the iPhone. This does not mean, though, that the government should be compelled to return it now. The government suggests that if it is successful, the contents of the iPhone could still be used at trial, regardless of when the contents are eventually accessed. At this stage of the proceedings—with a trial not scheduled to commence until next year…the Court agrees that there is still plenty of time for the government to access the iPhone’s contents. In the context of the current motion, the Court will not resolve whether that may cease to be the case as the trial date approaches. Indeed, the question of specifically how long the government can retain the device is not before this Court. There may very well come a point where the government’s retention of the iPhone is unreasonable—and that may be a time when the government continues to maintain that it needs the iPhone as evidence—but that date has not yet occurred.”  As a result, Judge Wolford denied the defendant’s motion.

So, what do you think?  How long can the government be allowed to retain a device to attempt to crack the password in a criminal litigation case?  Please let us know if any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Case opinion link courtesy of eDiscovery Assistant.

Here’s another interesting article about this case from David Horrigan of Relativity on Legaltech® News!

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.