Electronic Discovery and Evidence

Retrieving Electronic Evidence in the Courtroom.

Complex cases often depend on electronic evidence organizers. "Deborah Burk showed how effective litigation support technology can be in a dramatic “gotcha” moment during the 17th day of the Peregrine Systems fraud trial, a Tuesday morning in May. VideoTrack owners Deborah Burk and Shayne Davidson stood in the mock courtroom where lawyers practice presentations. The control room has a one-way viewing window for observers.  Under questioning by a prosecutor, Peregrine's former assistant controller, Denise Mastro, described how she helped others . . . "

Erasing Hard Drives

Hide-and-seek a hard-driving game. The business of wiping out computer files isn't child's play. "Delete isn't enough anymore. As anyone who watches shows such as CSI can attest, pressing "delete" makes files invisible, perhaps, but it doesn't make them gone. Making files gone is a growing business.  Sales of Evidence Eliminator ($149.95) run in the millions of dollars each year, says Andrew Churchill, managing director of Robin Hood Software of England -- and it's just one of more than a dozen file shredder or anti-forensic products on the market. Eraser, a similar tool available free from the Internet, is downloaded about 2.5 million times per year, according to its distributor, Ireland's Heidi Computers. . . "

AMD v. Intel, Electronic Evidence

For AMD, a Risky Legal Road. "The chipmaker's antitrust battle with giant rival Intel could alienate the very customers the smaller company most needs. " With the hoopla quickly dying down from Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD ) antitrust lawsuit against larger rival Intel (INTC ), the legal battle is turning into what could be a delicate, behind-the-scenes effort on AMD's part to see potentially crucial evidence preserved. And the outfit must achieve that goal without alienating the very customers from which it hopes to win more business, should it prevail. In a suit filed June 27 in federal court in Delaware, AMD accused Intel of engaging in a "relentless" campaign to maintain a virtual monopoly of the multibillion-dollar market for microprocessors in personal computers and servers . .  . In a document filed July 1, AMD lawyers acknowledge that little evidence likely exists beyond internal, electronically posted gripes of Intel's customers alleging that the giant used a carrot-and-stick approach to cow them into limiting AMD purchases.

Employers Watching Employees Online

Employer monitoring: It's a small world after all.  "Banish the notion forever that you are alone at work when performing your various job functions. Indeed, as just one example of workplace monitoring, according to the 2005 Electronic Monitioring & Surveillance Survey by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute, 76% of employers monitor Web site connections of employees. . ."

Online Conversations Ruled Inadmissible

Cheated wife on spyware wiretap rap. "A Florida wife who installed spyware on her husband's PC in order to catch him in flagrante while he indulged in Yahoo! Dominoes with his online lover has been found guilty of violating state law. . . The three judges further ruled that O'Brien could not reveal the content of the online conversations, and neither were they admissable as evidence in the couple's divorce proceedings."

Using Google to Support Your Client's case

Enron's Ken Lay uses Web site for support. "Ken Lay, the former head of Houston-based Enron, is using his own Web site to put his side of things out to the public and reporters. Lay's computer-literate litigation team is making use of "sponsored links" and the Web site kenlayinfo.com to highlight carefully chosen articles about their client, interviews with Lay, some of his legal filings, biographical information and some op-ed pieces written by Lay, the Houston Chronicle reports. . . ."

GPS - Location of Illegal Trash Sites

Trash Terrorists Beware: Man w/Technology Is On the Hunt.

"The mornings are sometimes quite cold and unpleasant but the environmental code officer Greg Cross is at work looking for illegal trash dump points and to find the responsible party to require clean-up using new technology tools to speed environmental enforcement. Unfortunately, the number of such sites are too many resulting in lengthy and complicated investigations when trying to determine the responsible parties and determine the real estate owner. But GIS mapping and satellite GPS technologies are helping make progress against the 'War on Trash' in Wise County. Trash terrorists beware! You will be caught and make to clean-up. It is a matter of time and technology. . . "

Electronic Trail Leads to Murderer

Electronic trail leads to mother’s alleged killer - Computer IP address narrowed search.  "In the end, it wasn’t a fingerprint or a blood spatter that led authorities to the woman suspected of strangling a mother-to-be and cutting the baby from her womb. It was an 11-digit computer code. . . ."

Proposed Federal Rules on Electronic Evidence

Taking The Fear Factor Out Of E-Mail.  "An obscure committee is proposing controversial rules for digital evidence Tort reform is a hot topic again. Taking advantage of the most favorable political climate in years, business lobbyists are pushing for new federal laws that would mop up the asbestos mess, cap medical malpractice damages, and help companies steer class actions out of hostile state courts. . . "

RFID tags on Drugs

Tiny Antennas to Keep Tabs on U.S. Drugs.  "The Food and Drug Administration and several major drug makers are expected to announce initiatives today that will put tiny radio antennas on the labels of millions of medicine bottles to combat counterfeiting and fraud.
Among the medicines that will soon be tagged are Viagra, one of the most counterfeited drugs in the world, and OxyContin, a pain-control narcotic that has become one of the most abused medicines in the United States. The tagged bottles - for now, only the large ones from which druggists get the pills to fill prescriptions - will start going to distributors this week, officials said.

Experts do not expect the technology to stop there. The adoption by the drug industry, they said in interviews, could be the leading edge of a change that will rid grocery stores of checkout lines, find lost luggage in airports, streamline warehousing and add a weapon in the battle against cargo theft.

"It's basically a bar code that barks," said one expert, Robin Koh, director of applications research at the Auto-ID Labs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The technology, Mr. Koh said, could "make supply chains more efficient and more secure."

Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense have already mandated that their top 100 suppliers put the antennas on delivery pallets beginning in January. Radio tags on vehicles and passports could become a central tool in government efforts to create a database to track visitors to the United States. And companies are rushing to supply scanners, computer chips and other elements of the technology."