The American Association of Law Libraries recently released a report assessing the trustworthiness of government-hosted state-level primary legal resources on the internet, entitled “State-By-State Report On Authentication Of Online Legal Resources.”  The report summarizes and analyzes a 50-state survey undertaken by the AALL in 2006-2007 to examine the extent to which, if at all, state-level primary legal resources online can be trusted as authentic and official.  The report cites problems with authentication, in that there is currently a lack of methods for users to discern whether the legal resources online have or have not been tampered with or altered in any way.  

This issue was also the focus of a “National Summit on Authentic Legal Information in the Digital Age,” held by the AALL this year in Chicago on April 20-21.  The summit was held “to explore legal and technological solutions to this issue, to develop an action plan and strategies for implementation, and to build new alliances with other organizations.”  (http://www.aallnet.org/press/ftdo_sally_holterhoff_041607.asp)  

The full authentication report is available for free in .pdf format at http://www.aallnet.org/aallwash/authenreport.html.  

The AALL plans on making materials from the 2007 National Summit available on the AALL website at some point in the future, so keep an eye on  http://www.aallnet.org.