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Cybersleuths glean evidence from backup tapes
A SPOT-CHECK of employee electronic mail revealed this alarming message: "I'll lose my job if they find out what I sent you."
Had company secrets been transmitted over the Internet? To find out, anxious officials at the West Coast company called Computer Forensics, Inc., a Seattle firm that combs through hardware and software for evidence that some people expect to be hidden or erased.
Enter Joan Feldman, the 44year-old president of the cybersleuth firm, rolling her hardsided Samsonite suitcase. It's packed with portable hard drives and proprietary software tools that help her pry open computer files and backup tapes.
As it turns out, the E-mailer hadn't revealed corporate goodies. But he had sent pornography, allegedly to a minor in a chat room.
"The good news was the guy wasn't a thief The bad news was he was a potential pedophile," Feldman said.
Feldman and her team of former Secret Service agents, retired military investigators and hard-core geeks root around a company's information systems and look for evidence. The field is called computer forensics.
Sometimes a company hires forensics experts, but more often they are hired by opposing attorneys seeking the "smoking gun" that could lead to a courtroom victory.
For example, Vermont Microsystems, Inc. won $25.5 million in a I994 trade secrets theft case after the discovery that file directories at Autodesk, Inc. had the same names as the original directories at Vermont Microsystems.
Electronic evidence also played a role when Chevron Corp. paid four plaintiffs $2.2 million in I995 to settle a sexual harassment case that involved allegedly offensive E-mail.
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