I attended a roundtable organised by the #Singapore Academy of Law titled “Generative AI and the Impact on Law and Society”. Although they weren't able to end the seminar without talking about misinformation, I was glad that the technical detail (both on the engineering and legal level) were more advanced. I even heard the word of a Legal #GPT trained on the datasets of local legal materials.
Large language models like #ChatGPT present a unique opportunity to train #lawyers in new ways. I discuss a simple courtroom #simulator I created that is able to mimic the cuts and thrusts of advocacy, and wonder whether anyone will use it.
Like most people, I hate to be wrong. But if I got things right all the time, I’d be a judge, not a blog writer.
More than a year ago, I highlighted the only case on the Personal Data Protection Act I am aware of that has reached the High Court. It was a “rare sighting” of a private action under the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA).
In the post, I concluded that the right of private action was “meaningless” because the High Court held that you cannot claim “distress and loss of control”. That was, after all, what most people face when their privacy is breached. Even so, I thought that individuals going after companies for a breach was too much for one person to bear. That case, after all, concerned a rich, disgruntled data subject facing an intransigent data controller.
The case had gone on appeal to the Court of Appeal, which is understandable, given that the PDPA has never been before the highest court of the land, so clearly there are interesting and novel legal questions to be heard.
Furthermore, the Attorney General’s Chambers (AGC) also participated in the appeal. This is noteworthy because it intervened in essentially a private action. However, as mentioned above, the questions are novel, so the drafters of the PDPA should have a say.
The AGC's submissions largely echoed what I accepted in my previous post. This was essentially how we expected to read the legislation. This included accepting the general belief that emotional distress is not claimable under law.
Well, the Court of Appeal has spoken, and I was wrong.
The Court of Appeal held that “distress and loss of control” can be the subject of a right to private action. This was different from the common law, which generally does not regard emotional distress as actionable. (You can’t make a claim against another person for making you feel sad; such is “the vicissitudes of life”.)
What do I read from this? The Court probably abhors meaningless rights. As noted in my previous article, following the lines of the Government and the High Court’s judgement, the private action was not useful to anyone who had their privacy breached.
With the Court of Appeal’s pronouncement, the right to private action has more life in it. However, it’s still probably impracticable to exercise. Not only does a claimant have to bear the costs and stress of litigation, but it also depends on the actions of the respondent. In the instant case, the respondent explicitly (and inexplicably) refused to undertake not to use data without consent. The private action would be wholly unnecessary if everyone acted reasonably.
It was surprising to me that the Government’s position was not accepted by the Court of Appeal. The big picture is that there will always be some uncertainty about how the Court would read a piece of legislation in a dispute. This might make the Government’s recent insistence that only Parliament can decide what is marriage more understandable.
For now, until the Court of Appeal says so, maybe we shouldn’t be too confident when we make predictions on what the law is.
#Law #Singapore #SupremeCourtSingapore #AGC #ConsentObligation #Enforcement #Government #Judgements #Lawyers #Legislation #News #PersonalDataProtectionAct #Undertakings
If you’re interested in technology, you will confront this question at some point: should I learn to code?
For many people, including lawyers, coding is something you can ignore without serious consequences. I don’t understand how my microwave oven works, but that will not stop me from using it. Attending that briefing and asking the product guys good questions is probably enough for most lawyers to do your work.
The truth, though, is that life is so much more. In the foreword of the book “Law and Technology in Singapore”, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon remarked that technology today “permeates, interfaces with, and underpins all aspects of the legal system, and indeed, of society”.
I felt that myself during the pandemic when I had to rely on my familiarity with technology to get work done. Coincidentally, I also implemented my docassemble project at work, using technology to generate contracts 24/7. I needed all my coding skills to whip up the program and provide the cloud infrastructure to run it without supervision. It’s fast, easy to use and avoids many problems associated with do-it-yourself templates. I got my promotion and respect at work.
If you’re convinced that you need to code, the rest of this post contains tips on juggling coding and lawyering. They are based on my personal experiences, so I am also interested in how you’ve done it and any questions you might have.
Lawyering takes time and experience to master. Passing the bar is the first baby step to a lifetime of learning. PQE is the currency of a lawyer in the job market.
Well, guess what? Coding is very similar too!
There are many options and possibilities — programming languages, tools and methods. Unlike a law school degree, there are free options you can check out, which would give you a good foundation. (Learnpython for Python and W3Schools for the web come to mind.) I got my first break with Udemy, and if you are a Singaporean, you can make use of SkillsFuture Credits to make your online learning free.
Just as becoming a good lawyer is no mean feat, becoming a good coder needs a substantial investment of time and learning. When you are already a lawyer, you may not have enough time in your life to be as good a coder.
I believe the answer is a strong no. Lawyers need to know what is possible, not how to do it. Lawyers will never be as good as real, full-time coders. Why give them another thing to thing the are “special” at. Lawyers need to learn to collaborate with those do code. https://t.co/3EsPbnikzK
— Patrick Lamb (@ElevateLamb) September 9, 2022
So, this is my suggestion: don’t aim to conquer programming languages or produce full-blown applications to rival a LegalTech company you’ve always admired on your own. Focus instead on developing proof of concepts or pushing the tools you are already familiar with as far as you can go. In addition, look at no code or low code alternatives to get easy wins.
By limiting the scope of your ambitions, you’d be able to focus on learning the things you need to produce quick and impactful results. The reinforcement from such quick wins would improve your confidence in your coding skills and abilities.
There might be a day when your project has the makings of a killer app. When that time comes, I am sure that you will decide that going solo is not only impossible but also a bad idea as well. Apps are pretty complex today, so I honestly think it’s unrealistic to rely on yourself to make them.
It’s related to tip 1 — you’d probably be able to learn faster and more effectively if you are doing things related to what you are already doing. For lawyers, this means doing your job, but with code. A great example of this is docassemble, which is an open-source system for guided interviews and document assembly.
When you do docassemble, you would try to mimic what you do in practice. For example, crafting questions to get the information you need from a client to file a document or create a contract. However, instead of interviewing a person directly, you will be doing this code.
In the course of my travails looking for projects which interest me, I found the following interesting:
I wouldn’t suggest that law is the only subject that lawyers find interesting. I have also spent time trying to create an e-commerce website for my wife and getting a computer to play Monopoly Junior 5 million times a day.
Such “fun” projects might not have much relevance to your professional life, but I learned new things which could help me in the future. E-commerce websites are the life of the internet today, and I experiment with the latest cloud technologies. Running 5 million games in a day made me think harder about code performance and how to achieve more with a single computer.
Not many people think about this, so please hang around.
When I was a kid, I had already dreamed of playing around with code and computers. In secondary school, a bunch of guys would race to make the best apps in the class (for some strange reason, they tend to revolve around computer games). I learned a lot about coding then.
As I grew up and my focus changed towards learning and building a career in law, my coding skills deteriorated rapidly. One of the obvious reasons is that I was doing something else, and working late nights in a law firm or law school is not conducive to developing hobbies.
I also found community essential for maintaining your coding skills and interest. The most straightforward reason is that a community will help you when encountering difficulties in your nascent journey as a coder. On the other hand, listening and helping other people with their coding problems also improves your knowledge and skills.
The best thing about the internet is that you can find someone with similar interests as you — lawyers who code. On days when I feel exhausted with my day job, it’s good to know that someone out there is interested in the same things I am interested in, even if they live in a different world. So it would be best if you found your tribe; the only way to do that is to develop in the open.
I find that it’s vital to be open since lawyers who code are rare, and you have to make a special effort to find them. They are like unicorns🦄!
So, do lawyers need to code? To me, you need a lot of drive to learn to code and build a career in law in the meantime. For those set on setting themselves apart this way, I hope the tips above can point the way. What other projects or opportunities do you see that can help lawyers who would like to code?
#Lawyers #Programming #LegalTech #blog #docassemble #Ideas #Law #OpenSource #RulesAsCode
I wrote this “emergency” post to note that after what seemed to be a lifetime of debate, the government has given the most unambiguous indication that section 377A of the Penal Code will be repealed.
Section 377A is a provision inherited from our colonial masters criminalising sex between men, including in private.
Although this is a hot topic and has something to do with law and love, I've stayed away from it on this blog mainly because you can find other places with better write-ups on it. In case anyone wants my opinion on it, I don't know why it's taken so long and become so hard.
e-Archive | SAcLJ | AP Journals Onlinee-First Menu
Even the former Chief Justice waded in.
Section 377A is ridiculous because it's straightforward why it should be repealed. Simply stated, we don't put men who have sex with each other in jail. However, the repeal of section 377A has become an apocalyptic symbol of the downfall of society for some.
This brings me to the uneasy compromise: I wouldn't accept having a constitutional amendment to “enshrine” marriage between a man and a woman for the repeal of section 377A. It's like we decided to recognise the dignity of gay couples only to take it away at the same time.
Not just vanilla illegal, but constitutionally illegal. They're going to amend the supreme law of the land—the one that all other laws have to align with—to say that we, Singapore, as a country, do not and will not recognise same-sex couples as a legal family unit. https://t.co/MwTPijlzvO
— Kirsten Han 韩俐颖 (@kixes) August 21, 2022
I am not sure this constitutional amendment makes sense politically. Section 377A is inherited, so we can't blame the government of the day for it. On the other hand, they will own a constitutional provision which apparently can't be challenged in court, so they can't pass off its effects to the courts as they do for the death penalty.
Constitutional amendments are easy now because the government has had a supermajority forever. It's not clear whether this will be the case in the future. If for some reason, we are stuck with something more challenging to change than section 377A, we now risk splintering society even further with no easy way out.
I feel that this “compromise” was meant to end the debate on LGBTQ issues by giving these weird people whatever they were clamouring for in the first place.
Bigger fights are on the way: workplace discrimination is among the most interesting ones for me. Marriage for all sorts of couples? That's another big one that we've never debated (but is now going to be constitutionally enshrined?).
So, I honestly think this compromise is a trojan horse, and I would never have accepted it if it was up to me. However, that's my principles, and I think the current situation demands we take what the government of the day has given us.
If you, like me, feel a bit discouraged that this debate has ended this way, I would remind myself of this: There is one difference between the people who would like marriage equality and those who don't. Only one of these groups has real victims who are hurt by the policies we chose as a society. When we recognise them, there is only one answer to these questions.
So, have faith that love conquers all. Good night.
#blog #News #Newsletter #Government #Law #Singapore
☝🏼
Key takeaways:
Web scraping is a useful and unique project that is good for beginners.
Scrapy makes it easier to operationalise your web scraping and to implement them at scale, by providing the ability to reuse code and features that are useful for web scraping.
Making a transition to the scrapy framework is not always straightforward, but it will pay dividends.
Web scraping is fundamental to any data science journey. There's a lot of information out there on the world wide web. Very few of them are presented in a pretty interface which allows you just to take it. By scraping information off websites, you get structured information. It's a unique challenge that is doable for a beginner.
There are thus a lot of articles which teach you how to scrape websites — here’s mine.
After spending gobs of time plying through books and web articles, I created a web scraper that did the job right.
GitHub – houfu/pdpc-decisions: Data Protection Enforcement Cases in SingaporeData Protection Enforcement Cases in Singapore. Contribute to houfu/pdpc-decisions development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHubhoufuThe code repository of the original web scraper is available on GitHub.
I was pretty pleased with the results and started feeling ambition in my loins. I wanted to take it to a new level.
Turning your hobby project production-ready isn’t so straightforward, though. If you plan to scan websites regularly, update your data or do several operations, you run into a brick wall.
To run it continuously, you will need a server that can schedule your scrapes, store the data and report the results.
Then, in production mode, problems like being blocked and burdening the websites you are dealing with become more significant.
Finally, scrapers share many standard features. I wasn’t prepared to write the same code over and over again. Reusing the code would be very important if I wanted to scrape several websites at scale.
The solutions to these problems are well-known, such as using multithreading, asynchronous operations, web proxies or throttling or randomising your web requests. Writing all these solutions from scratch? Suddenly your hobby project has turned into a chore.
Enter scrapy.
The scrapy project is of some vintage. It reached 1.0 in 2015 and is currently at version 2.6.2 (as of August 2022). Scrapy’s age is screaming at you when it recommends you to install it in a “virtual environment” (who doesn’t install anything in Python except in a virtual environment?). On the other hand, scrapy is stable and production ready. It’s one of the best pieces of Python software I have encountered.
I decided to port my original web scraper to scrapy. I anticipated spending lots of time reading documentation, failing and then giving up. It turned out that I spent more time procrastinating, and the actual work was pretty straightforward.
Here’s another thing you would notice about scrapy’s age. It encourages you to use a command line tool to generate code. This command creates a new project:
scrapy startproject tutorial
This reminds me of Angular and the ng command. (Do people still do that these days?)
While I found these commands convenient, it also reminded me that the learning curve of such frameworks is quite steep. Scrapy is no different. In the original web scraper, I defined the application's entry point through the command line function. This seemed the most obvious place to start for me.
@click.command() @click.argument('action') def pdpcdecision(csv, download, corpus, action, root, extras, extracorpus, verbose): starttime = time.time() scraperesults = Scraper.scrape() if (action == 'all') or (action == 'files'): downloadfiles(options, scraperesults) if (action == 'all') or (action == 'corpus'): createcorpus(options, scraperesults) if extras and ((action == 'all') or (action == 'csv')): scraperextras(scraperesults, options) if (action == 'all') or (action == 'csv'): savescraperesultstocsv(options, scraperesults) diff = time.time() – starttime logger.info('Finished. This took {}s.'.format(diff))
The original code was shortened to highlight the process.
The organisation of a scrapy project is different. You can generate a new project with the command above. However, the spider does the web crawling, and you have to create that within your project separately. If you started coding, you would not find this intuitive.
For the spider, the starting point is a function which generates or yields requests. The code example below does a few things. First, we find out how many pages there are on the website. We then yield a request for each page by submitting data on a web form.
import requests import scrapy from scrapy import FormRequest
class CommissionDecisionSpider(scrapy.Spider): name = “PDPCCommissionDecisions”
def startrequests(self): defaultform_data = { “keyword”: “”, “industry”: “all”, “nature”: “all”, “decision”: “all”, “penalty”: “all”, “page”: “1 }
response = requests.post(CASELISTINGURL, data=defaultformdata)
if response.statuscode == requests.codes.ok: responsejson = response.json() totalpages = responsejson[“totalPages”]
for page in range(1, totalpages + 1): yield FormRequest(CASELISTINGURL, formdata=createform_data(page=page))
Now, you need to write another function that deals with requests and yields items, the standard data format in scrapy.
def parse(self, response, **kwargs): responsejson = response.json() for item in responsejson[“items”]: from datetime import datetime nature = [DPObligations(nature.strip()) for nature in item[“nature”].split(',')] if item[ “nature”] else “None” decision = [DecisionType(decision.strip()) for decision in item[“decision”].split(',')] if item[ “decision”] else “None” yield CommissionDecisionItem( title=item[“title”], summaryurl=f”https://www.pdpc.gov.sg{item['url']}“, publisheddate=datetime.strptime(item[“date”], '%d %b %Y'), nature=nature, decision=decision )
You now have a spider! (Scrapy’s Quotesbot example is more minimal than this)
Run the spider using this command in the project directory:
scrapy crawl PDPCCommissionDecisions -o output.csv
Using its default settings, the spider scraped the PDPC website in a zippy 60 seconds. That’s because it already implements multithreading, so you are not waiting for tasks to complete one at a time. The command above even gets you a file containing all the items you scraped with no additional coding.
Transitioning from a pure Python codebase to a scrapy framework takes some time. It might be odd at first to realise you did not have to code the writing of a CSV file or manage web requests. This makes scrapy an excellent framework — you can focus on the code that makes your spider unique rather than reinventing the essential parts of a web scraper, probably very poorly.
If being forced to write spiders in a particular way isn’t irritating yet, dealing with pipelines might be the last straw. Pipelines deal with a request that doesn’t involve generating items. The most usual pipeline component checks an item to see if it’s a duplicate and then drops it if that’s true.
Pipelines look optional, and you can even avoid the complexity by incorporating everything into the main code. It turns out that many operations can be expressed as components in a timeline. Breaking them up into parts also helps the program implement multithreading and asynchronous operations effectively.
In pdpc-decisions, it wasn’t enough to grab the data from the filter or search page. You’d need to follow the link to the summary page, which makes additional information and a PDF download available. I wrote a pipeline component for that:
class CommissionDecisionSummaryPagePipeline: def processitem(self, item, spider): adapter = ItemAdapter(item) soup = bs4.BeautifulSoup(requests.get(adapter[“summaryurl”]).text, features=“html5lib”) article = soup.find('article')
# Gets the summary from the decision summary page paragraphs = article.find(class='rte').findall('p') result = '' for paragraph in paragraphs: if not paragraph.text == '': result += re.sub(r'\s+', ' ', paragraph.text) break adapter[“summary”] = result
# Gets the respondent in the decision adapter[“respondent”] = re.split(r”\s+[bB]y|[Aa]gainst\s+“, article.find('h2').text, re.I)[1].strip()
# Gets the link to the file to download the PDF decision decisionlink = article.find('a') adapter[“decisionurl”] = f”https://www.pdpc.gov.sg{decision_link['href']}”
adapter[“fileurls”] = [f”https://www.pdpc.gov.sg{decisionlink['href']}“]
return item
This component takes an item, visits the summary page and grabs the summary, respondent’s name and the link to the PDF, which contains the entire decision.
Note also the item has a field called file_urls. I did not create this data field. It’s a field used to tell scrapy to download a file from the web.
You can activate pipeline components as part of the spider’s settings.
ITEM_PIPELINES = { 'pdpcSpider.pipelines.CommissionDecisionSummaryPagePipeline': 300, 'pdpcSpider.pipelines.PDPCDecisionDownloadFilePipeline': 800, }
In this example, the pipeline has two components. Given a priority of 300, the CommissionDecisionSummaryPagePipeline goes first. PDPCDecisionDownloadFilePipeline then downloads the files listed in the file_urls field we referred to earlier.
Note also that PDPCDecisionDownloadFilePipeline is an implementation of the standard FilesPipeline component provided by scrapy, so I didn’t write any code to download files on the internet. Like the CSV feature, scrapy downloads the files when its files pipeline is activated.
Once again, it’s odd not to write code to download files. Furthermore, writing components for your pipeline and deciding on their seniority in a settings file isn’t very intuitive if you’re not sure what’s going on. Once again, I am grateful that I did not have to write my own pipeline.
I would note that “pipeline” is a fancy term for describing what your program is probably already doing. It’s true — in the original pdpc-decisions, the pages are scraped, the files are downloaded and the resulting items are saved in a CSV file. That’s a pipeline!
Someone new to the scrapy framework will probably find the settings file daunting. In the previous section, we introduced the setting to define the seniority of the components in a pipeline. If you’re curious what else you can do in that file, the docs list over 50 items.
I am not going to go through each of them in this article. To me, though, the number of settings isn’t user-friendly. Still, it hints at the number of things you can do with scrapy, including randomising the delay before downloading files from the same site, logging and settings for storage adapters to common backends like AWS or FTP.
As a popular and established framework, you will also find an ecosystem. This includes scrapyd, a service you can run on your server to schedule scrapes and run your spiders. Proxy services are also available commercially if your operations are very demanding.
There are lots to explore here!
Do I have any regrets about doing pdpc-decisions? Nope. I learned a lot about programming in Python doing it. It made me appreciate what special considerations are involved in web scraping and how scrapy was helping me to do that.
I also found that following a framework made the code more maintainable. When I revisited the original pdpc-decisions while writing this article, I realised the code didn’t make sense. I didn’t name my files or function sensibly or write tests which showed what the code was doing.
Once I became familiar with the scrapy framework, I knew how to look for what I wanted in the code. This extends to sharing — if everyone is familiar with the framework, it’s easier for everyone to get on the same page rather than learning everything I wrote from scratch.
Scrapy could afford power and convenience, which is specialised for web scraping. I am going to keep using it for now. Learning such a challenging framework is already starting to pay dividends.
Data Science with Judgement Data – My PDPC Decisions JourneyAn interesting experiment to apply what I learnt in Data Science to the area of law.
Love.Law.Robots.Houfu
#Programming #Python #WebScraping #DataScience #Law #OpenSource #PDPC-Decisions #scrapy
A recent disciplinary case in Singapore, [Law Society of Singapore v Mohammed Lutfi bin Hussin](https://www.elitigation.sg/gd/s/2022SGHC182) , highlights a common pitfall in legal practice. A lawyer failed to witness the signing of conveyancing documents personally but attested to doing so. Few people may pay attention to a routine conveyancing transaction. Still, this time, the transaction was tainted by fraud: a mortgagor had submitted false documents to a mortgagee to obtain a higher loan. The lawyer’s license was suspended for three years for claiming to have witnessed the signing when he didn’t.
There’s an uncharacteristic lack of remorse on the lawyer’s part compared to other disciplinary cases. Here’s how he described his practice, which seems rather ordinary at first glance:
This was a routine purchase of the Property by [a buyer] financed by a loan taken from a bank. The transaction could be carried out without my seeing [the Buyer]. My staff are fully capable of dealing with routine transactions such as [the Buyer’s] purchase of the Property. If anything out of the ordinary crops up, they will inform me and I will then see [the Buyer] and sort out whatever problem has arisen. There were no issues at all relating to [the Buyer’s] purchase and for that reason, I did not have to see him.
In contrast, here’s what the Court of 3 Judges (in charge of lawyer discipline) thought of that:
[The lawyer] had put in place a “system” pursuant to which he entrusted his non-legally trained staff to carry out conveyancing transactions, including witnessing the execution of conveyancing documents, so that he did not have to meet his own clients, unless he deemed it necessary. Under this “system”, he presupposed that everything was in order until and unless his staff flagged any issues. In relation to [the Buyer’s] conveyancing transaction, nothing out of the ordinary was brought to his attention. He therefore assumed that all was in order and never met [the Buyer], notwithstanding the fact that the latter had engaged him as his conveyancing solicitor.
It’s important to note that witnessing someone sign a document isn’t likely to have stopped the fraudulent transaction. The nub of the issue was that the lawyer had claimed to do something he did not. The Court recognized that some might call this “technical dishonesty”.
But what’s the point of witnessing someone sign a document? The main idea is that it prevents fraud. Anyone can put anyone’s signature anywhere. The lawyer ensures the signor’s identity, understands the document, and there are no signs of duress or misunderstanding.
Who wants to do an E-Will?COVID-19 offers an opportunity to relook at one of the oldest instruments in law — wills. Is it enough to make them an electronic transaction?Love.Law.Robots.Houfu
A similar problem persists in the area of wills and testaments.
Post-pandemic, though, alternatives are apparent but with questionable legality. If a lawyer witnesses a signing through Zoom, does it count? If e-Signature can be used, what value does being in person add? Banks don’t use lawyers to prevent fraud all the time too. Document submission, such as income and particulars, can now be received directly through the relevant government agency and authenticated fairly securely by the applicant. The wonders of SingPass!
The question is, would the lawyer have escaped sanction if there was actually a “system” in place? The Court describes this as a “non-system” because the lawyer had abdicated his responsibilities to non-legally trained staff. But what if the lawyer had implemented a system to train his staff on when to escalate, use checklists, verify the work, and carry out audits? Would that be enough? Or is the point that no matter what, the lawyer must be physically present?
We aren’t going to find out because everyone understands that witnessing a signing has to be personal. Furthermore, this is a strict requirement promulgated by legislation, so it’s non-negotiable.
These issues are essential because conveyancing is a prime example of volume work in the legal profession. If a lawyer has to be physically present at every stage of the transaction, this would slow down the process and make it expensive. The practice would be harder to justify in the face of more efficient and cost-effective solutions. More people would believe its objective is to maintain a monopoly for lawyers. Even lawyers may be hard-pressed to find efficient ways to do business and inadvertently find themselves on the wrong side of the law.
For now, legal innovators trying to automate manual processes or implement a “system” would have to be careful if they involved any attestation. It’s the law; you can’t change it, and breaking it would get you in hot soup, no matter how dissatisfied you would be.
The Importance of Being AuthorisedA recent case shows that practising law as an unauthorised person can have serious effects. What does this hold for other people who may be interested in alternative legal services?Love.Law.Robots.Houfu
An earlier post explored another common pitfall.
#Law #Lawyers #E-signature #Employee #LawSociety #Singapore #SupremeCourtSingapore #tech
It’s going to be a busy week! I’ll be attending the conferences below:
Here are the sessions that I am looking forward to:
Of all the conferences, this is probably the one with the most practical topics I can apply to my work. So, although maintaining those Continuing Education Units for my certification is a serious challenge (40 points in 2 years?! Video conference at 1am?! 🤮), membership is still very useful to me.
Compared to last year’s regional, I think this one has far more breadth and indeed some depth into hot topics like ESG and Digital Data Management. Hot favourites like compliance training and supply chain management make an appearance too.
I am particularly curious about the finale: “Are robots running the compliance program?” Automation in compliance is that small victory that I think cash- and human resource-strapped compliance departments should look into. From the handout, the “automation” is Microsoft Power Automate, which while simple to understand and used in many corporate environments, is not as widely applicable compared to something like Zapier. Let’s see what new ideas I will get!
Automate Boring Stuff: Get Python and your Web Browser to download your judgementsThis post is part of a series on my Data Science journey with PDPC Decisions. Check it out for more posts on visualisations, natural languge processing, data extraction and processing! Update 13 June 2020: “At least until the PDPC breaks its website.” How prescient… about three months after I wroteLove.Law.Robots.Houfu
It's always important to automate the boring stuff.
They took a long time to flesh this out — back when I bought the early bird ticket in early June, half of the programme was labelled to be confirmed. I’m glad they managed to flesh this out. It’d be my first IAPP Conference even though I have been a member and am CIPP/A-certified since 2019.
I am a pretty practical person, so I am going to list things that have meaning to me.
Alongside IAPP Asia Privacy Forum, the Singapore PDPC also organise the Singapore version of a conference. Topics seem quite interesting, but given my decreasing focus on data privacy in recent years, I am going to give it a pass.
It’s my third TechLaw.Fest and my first in person!
Actually. I don't know whether this is an in-person event. Something about the metaverse.
I count myself as a sceptic of the metaverse and was actually profoundly upset that the programme focuses almost entirely on this topic. Compared to last year where there was an even spread, this year looks like an advertorial to convince you that there is something special.
Three Things: TechLawFest 2021I debrief on the TechLawFest in Singapore which ended recently with three key takeaways.Love.Law.Robots.Houfu
Compared to last year...
Anyway, I am still sorting out my registration because, frankly, the organisation of this event is messy this year.
I will be hiding out in the Tech Talks section this year. I don’t want to hear a big talk about a fad which no one will care about in a year or two. The metaverse is like cryptocurrency and NFTs; somebody is pouring lots of money into it but nobody honestly has high hopes about it.
Live by the Code… Die by the Code?The excitement about Cryptocurrency and NFTs has turned to panic and loss. Will something different take its place?Love.Law.Robots.Houfu
Some of the things I wish they covered:
The past two years have forced a reckoning that the brick-and-mortar law office may not be as essential to lawyering as was assumed by many for a long time. In this session, we hear from a range of legal professionals wrestling with digitalisation and the business of law. #tlf22 pic.twitter.com/ShnH1DRCup
— TechLaw.Fest (@TechLawFest) July 13, 2022
There's going to be lots to do, and I am going to practice live tweeting this year so that I would get better at it. Last year, I tried to write a roundup but it was really tiresome, so please follow me on Twitter!
#blog #Compliance #Cryptocurrency #Ethics #Law #News #NFT #PersonalDataProtectionAct #Privacy #Singapore #TechLawFest #TechnologyLaw #IAPP #SCCE #DataProtectionOfficer
This is one of the most interesting legacies of the Parti Liyani case: a Public Defenders Office. I don’t know how a Public Defender would have changed this story though — the accused’s counsel worked pro bono and by all accounts, performed admirably for his client.
A very, very expensive ordealA domestic worker’s attempt to get compensation from the prosecution for a wrongful conviction shows how difficult it really is.Love.Law.Robots.Houfu
Whatever it is, it’s finally here. As generations of criminal law students are taught, Singapore follows a crime control model. We trust the police and prosecutors to get the case right.
A public defender’s office constituted under the Ministry of Law would provide another outlet for the accused to get legal representation and definitely improve the accused’s rights here. Does this mean ( gasp ) that we are moving to a rights-based society?
The emphasis here is [another outlet](https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/how-new-public-defenders-office-differ-lawsoc-criminal-legal-aid-scheme-1866531?cid=internalinarticlelinksweb07072022tdy). There is already the CLAS scheme run by the Law Society in Singapore (and also LASCO, but the parallels are not as strong). They also serve similar functions — giving needy accused the ability to get legal representation for criminal offences. The overlap is so apparent, that some lawyers believe it may cause confusion.
Personally, I feel that there is a lot to scratch under the surface.
First, many criminal law practitioners don't start out as lawyers. They started as police officers or deputy public prosecutors. It's part of the basis of SUSS. In this area of law, knowing the internal workings of the police is great value for your clients.
Essentially, choosing to work in this area of law straight out of law school is uncommon. That makes sense: the money is modest if your client is of modest means. The pro bono spirit is not enough to feed a young family.
Second, for younger folk, working for the government may be less risky than a small law firm. You can write that in your CV.
Of course, the implementation of a great idea is worth more than the idea itself. In an ideal world, there would be transfers between public defenders and deputy public prosecutors. The accused can choose to be represented by a public defender even if such assistance came from the government.
In a less ideal and plausibly realistic situation, a public defender is a dumping ground for lawyers waiting for the next assignment. Stark differences between prosecution and defence underline the government’s policy that this was always about legal aid, not the accused’s rights.
So which way would this turn out? It depends on whether we had a change of heart. Top management asserts that the prosecution acts in the public's interest (which includes treating the accused in an even-handed manner). A public defender's office is an opportunity to reinforce a change in perspective. Time will tell when actions speak louder than words.
#Law #Singapore #AccesstoJustice #AGC #Lawyers #News
It's an exciting time to be alive. In last year's TechLawFest, Singapore's signature legal conference for folks who need to shore up their tech gravitas, NFTs were discussed furiously. Back then, NFTs were the hottest thing in the universe, and lawyers either knew NFTs or didn't.
The world is much different these days. TechLawFest has already moved on to the “Metaverse”.
We've got more top-notch speakers to break down every aspect of the Metaverse for you.
Don't miss out: https://t.co/BvgY2wOqpy #futurelaw #lawandtechnology #tlf #tlf22 #techlaw #techlawfest pic.twitter.com/c6OMnx5f3Q
— TechLaw.Fest (@TechLawFest) May 24, 2022
In the meantime, the value of NFTs and cryptocurrencies plunged. Two years of financial gains were wiped out. Suddenly, celebrities piping cryptocurrencies went quiet and were ordered to do some soul searching.
It's the biggest “I told you so” moment in my recent memory. This makes the websites of crypto sceptics fun to read. The “counter” memes are fun too.
Diamond Hands is crypto slang, by the way.
Anyone familiar with the reality in this space is well aware that scams and frauds are plentiful, and the dreams are as beautiful as the chasms you can fall into. This isn't an investment blog, but high risk doesn't lead to high returns. A get-rich scheme is not for the faint-hearted or the ethically firm.
I am secretly happy that cryptocurrencies and NFTs have finally had their long-coming reckoning. It's not because I like people losing money. Or that crypto bros will finally shut the hell up.
My interest in this area is quite intellectual. I think such technologies raise fascinating questions, which is the most lawyerly thing you will hear me say on this blog for a long time.
Take stolen NFTs, for example:
Looking forward to precedent setting debates on IP ownership & exploitation, having spent 18 years studying copyright & the industry laws. I’d ather meet @DarkWing84 to make a deal, vs in court. We can prove the promise of ape community https://t.co/U1GpYK2X7d
— Seth Green (@SethGreen) May 24, 2022
You might remember Mr Green as either Dr Evil's son, a voice on Family Guy, or the creator, writer, etc., of Robot Chicken. He was also a victim of a phishing scam which took away his NFT. All this sounds rather ordinary, but Mr Green also had plans to use the Ape referred to in his NFT for a show. Without his NFT, he can't make his show.
Sorry, what?
Presumably, it's because when you own an NFT, you own the right to parade it in other material. You know, like how some people pick which shows their pets will star in. If you don't own a pet, there's no show.
However, it's not so simple. An NFT is a reference to a particular bunch of data on a blockchain. Furthermore, “owning” a thing isn't necessarily the same as owning its intellectual property. No one gets the idea that because they bought a Harry Potter book, they get to start their own Harry Potter universe.
Even so, this confusion is particularly rife with digital products. Just because you own the “metaverse” handle on Instagram doesn't take away Meta's right to take back their handle per their terms of use.
Beware the metaverse. It's not all fun and games out there.
In this regard, BAYC's terms of use are a crap shoot.
Source: https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/terms (access 12 June 2022)
Of course, this may be only a snapshot of the agreement between BAYC and the owner of NFT. Other terms like the smart contract or at OpenSea may apply. However, with terms this grossly vague, it's hard to expect the other conditions to be an improvement or fully resolve all arguments. You'd expect any lawyer with a bit of imagination to have a field day with this.
This is perhaps why Mr Green would love to make a deal rather than meet the current owner of his phished NFTs in court.
Regarding the issue of who “owns” a stolen NFT, you may be surprised that there are precedents. In fact, this problem is so well known that it forms a key part of a first-year contract law student’s learning.
The theory, distilled, is as follows. The original owner didn’t intend to transfer his NFT to a fraudster. There was a mistake that voided his consent to the (smart) contract that operated the transfer. If such a contract is voided, the fraudster had no right to transfer his NFT to his unwitting buyer. The unwitting buyer thus doesn’t own the NFT. The court will order the buyer to transfer the NFT back to the original owner.
We would be short-changing the law students if the issues were so straightforward:
It’s even more surprising that you don’t have to travel out of a web3 world to find an example. In Quoine Pte Ltd v B2C2 Ltd [2020] SGCA(I) 2, computers were made to trade Ethereum and Bitcoin at superfast speeds and without human intervention. The code led to unexpected results such that USD285 million in Bitcoin (back then) were contested between two market participants. Was the bug a mistake that allowed one participant to cancel the contracts? The majority of the court said no. The code was doing what everyone intended.
If this was the case, how is hitting the transfer button a mistake? In a decentralized and “trustless” world, a buyer isn’t expecting the identity of a seller to be a material issue in a transaction. Aren’t you supposed to be taking good care of your account yourself anyway? The system is working as expected.
“Working as expected” is the kind of phrase you throw around when you are feeling unkind. Quoine’s dissent is also interesting, and I reproduced it here:
There is nothing surprising, impermissible or unworkable therefore about a test which asks what any reasonable trader would have thought, given knowledge of the particular circumstances.
Three Things: Our Robots made our mistake worseThe plot sounds like something from right out of a movie. In the dead of the night, computers have been doing their thing — buying and selling cryptocurrencies based on maths and science. One morning, a human checks in and realises that something has gone very wrong. A glitch in the algorithm caused…Love.Law.Robots.
In Blog version 2020, I wrote about this case.
A reasonable trader, or a reasonable market participant, isn’t an ordinary guy. He represents the best of us, the fairest of us and the guy we need to be when we are tempted by greed, hubris and selfishness.
In a world replete with scams and grifters, perhaps a reasonable person is what cryptocurrency needs.
Photo by Hello I'm Nik / Unsplash
In other news, a law firm in Singapore managed to secure a worldwide freezing order over an NFT in a purely commercial dispute (a botched loan agreement). There aren’t any details on how such an order will be enforced — would they serve it on an online marketplace and force them not to process any transactions? In any case, the fact that it succeeded will tempt others to try it themselves.
The more people look to the legal system to enforce what they perceive as their rights, the more opportunities courts will have to comment on them. The outcome might not be what early adopters prefer or expect — a court can hold that it isn’t reasonable to claim that a phished NFT belongs to an unwitting buyer because the code of the smart contract worked as expected. Similarly, cryptocurrency is as decentralised as finding a marketplace which wouldn’t obey court orders.
The key here is that there must be people who value their NFTs enough to request a court to protect their rights. In a bull run, the incentive to do so is muted because it would probably be more profitable to continue investing. In a bear market, when the chips have fallen, promises that have been made must be kept. And that’s when the lawyers come in.
Hopefully at some point, we’d clear the deck of grifters and scam artists, and leave cryptocurrency, NFTs and even maybe the Metaverse with the norms of a sustainable enterprise.
That’s what everyone wants, right?
#tech #TechLawFest #TechnologyLaw #Cryptocurrency #NFT #Contracts #Law #News
JomDaryl Yang
