Vermont Chimes in on Metadata

The Vermont State Bar Association has issued an opinion on metadata mining, concluding that the practice is generally permissible. 

To date, fourteen bar associations have examined whether lawyers should be permitted to engage in metadata mining. The opinions fall into three categories: some say the practice should almost always be impermissible (seven opinions -- Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Maine, New Hampshire, the New York State Bar, and the New York County Bar); some say it should almost always be permissible (three opinions -- ABA, Maryland, and Vermont); and some say that it should be permissible, but with some limitations (four opinions--Colorado, District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia).

In previous posts, I had broken the list down into two categories, but after looking at the opinions more closely, I think they really fall into three.

Comments

[asadeghi]

While establishment of the idea of metadata is a great idea; especially for back up and promotion of electronic filing system verses paper filing, I strongly believe it fully compromises the privacy of attorney client confidential information and make available access to people that may or may not be ill-intended. This computer and computerized era of trusting the machine to restore your bank account balances, credit card numbers, date of birth and social security number, and any and all information about us has finally came to the "finality" of ultimate disclosure: "attorney client confidential information and attorney notes." I am not a computer whiz but I know enough to know anyone, especially government can easily access anything stored in our portable brains; lab tops and find out every detailed information about us. I always thought, there is one thing they could never figure out, and that is how we think; I have to admit the whole idea of metadata is clearly an innovative idea to penetrate to our minds; including legal ones and figure out our thought process. It is quite irrelevant to me whether we have to disclose the contents or not; they can get it anyways!