Welcome Minnesota State Bar Association!

We're pleased to welcome our friends at the Minnesota State Bar Association to the Fastcase family. Minnesota is the eleventh state bar association to offer Fastcase as a member benefit -- the consortium now includes more than 275,000 lawyers from across the country. For members, logging in is simple: go to your state bar's web page, click the Fastcase link, and enter your state bar association username and password. Poof! You're logged in to one of the world's most comprehensive online law libraries, free of charge.

Does your state bar association offer Fastcase? If not, spread the word -- we'll be happy to come visit and show your how fast and easy it is to add Fastcase as a member benefit. In the mean time, welcome to our new members in Minnesota!

DHS Cancels Controversial Data Mining Program

The Associated Press and The Register are reporting that the Department of Homeland Security has terminated its ADVISE data mining program. The Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement program (ADVISE), which was designed to interpret large volumes of data for the federal government, cost $42 million to develop but was roundly criticized by privacy advocates as well as the General Accounting Office. The GAO warned that "the ADVISE tool could misidentify or erroneously associate an individual with undesirable activity such as fraud, crime or terrorism." Pilot tests were suspended in March when it was reported that ADVISE was being tested on live data from individuals, and not the test "dummy" data it was supposed to be running against.

The U.K. Wants Your DNA

Lord Justice Stephen Sedley, a senior British judge, has announced his belief that all British citizens and all international visitors to the United Kingdom should have a DNA record on file with the British government. Britain currently stores the DNA samples from 5.2 percent of it's citizens. In the United States the percentage is less than 1/2 of 1 percent. The collection of DNA from every citizen and visitor would dramatically increase the magnitude of the DNA database and would possibly cause an outcry among international travelers who fly into the United Kingdom.