Image Courtesy of Gadgetphix
For years, lawyers have been glued to their Blackberries. Every piece of important information contained on one hand-held device was a huge step forward in an attorney’s ease of communication with the firm and clients. I personally know several attorneys who would not know how to function if they were separated from their Blackberries for more than a few seconds.
When the iPhone was released, the Blackberry suddenly had competition. Given the general popularity of the iPhone, the prediction was that the Blackberry would eventually be discarded by lawyers. However, the prediction has yet to be realized. Lawyers tend to grab a hold of a way of doing things and refuse to change (hence, if you have ever read a resolution you have seen archaic language such as “Be it resolved that on the 22nd day of December in the year 2009, Party A and Party B hereby agree that. . .” instead of less formal “Party A and Party agree that . . .”). Therefore, attorneys who have been using the Blackberry for several years have been hesitant to change. Moreover, those who did decide to make the transition to AT&T and Apple’s iPhone have found themselves regretting the decision.
In this week’s edition of the ABA Journal Tech Report there was an interesting article about iPhone and security concerns. It seems that the iPhone takes screenshots of its pages and stores the information. Perhaps the worst news for the iPhone is that the security risk is created by a purely aesthetic feature (the shrinking of windows when they are closed by pushing the home button). Beyond aesthetics, the feature is useless. Although such stored information can be useful in solving criminal cases, it presents confidentiality issues for attorneys. Just imagine the ethical implications created when there is a copy of confidential documents floating around beyond the control of the attorney . . .
Yet another security risk exists because the content stored on the iPhone itself is not difficult to access. Even if the iPhone is password protected, the contents can be accessed in under a minute by jailbreaking the iPhone. I wonder whether there were ever similar issues with the Blackberry? Is the Blackberry really that much safer?
It seems that lawyers will remain inseparable from their Blackberries for awhile longer.
The jailbreaking of an iPhone by itself is largely the cause for alarm in data security on the iPhone. Without the ability to hack the iPhone via jailbreaking, the screenshot issue probably wouldn’t have received the attention it did. But, since jailbreaking is a possibility, data security is an issue.
Apple is notorious for its locked-down approach to the iPhone. Apps have to be approved before they can become available to iPhone users. And Apple hasn’t had the best track record with App developers. So I guess the situation was ripe for a work-around that ended up compromising the security of the iPhone. It’s certainly well-within Apple’s ability to alter the firmware of the iPhone to prevent jailbreaking. But it remains to be seen whether Apple takes the security issue seriously enough to prevent jailbreaking and thereby alleviate the screenshot worries.