Deleting Files is a Crime?

cemaco writes "A former employee of International Airport Centers, who is currently embroiled in a legal dispute with them, returned his company laptop as required. Hoping to find incriminating evidence, I.A.C. attempted to retrieve deleted information from the laptop in question with no success. This employee had beaten them to the punch. He had used 'secure delete' software, in order to make sure nothing could be recovered. He is now being charged with a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act."

Comments

Two-way crime

[Too many errors, bai]

So if he has the files, he's a criminal. But if he doesn't have the files, he's also a criminal? How is deliberate obstruction determined in a case like this?

Re:Two-way crime

[ackthpt]

So if he has the files, he's a criminal. But if he doesn't have the files, he's also a criminal? How is deliberate obstruction determined in a case like this?

Seems to me what is lacking here is IAC arguing before the court what specific contents should be on the computer which were destroyed, without authorisation, thus doing harm to the company.

Lord knows, everywhere I've worked, when I left I was expected to clean out my desk, not have a bunch of business analysts doing it to be sure I didn't throw anything useful away. Gosh. To think the massive amount of crap which would litter my computer and desk if I didn't dispose of things is daunting. I must be trusted to use good sense and not throw valuable stuff away, huh?

Re:Two-way crime

[Ossifer]

Seems to me what is lacking here is IAC arguing before the court what specific contents should be on the computer which were destroyed, without authorisation, thus doing harm to the company.

Exactly! The 7th Circuit has merely stated that the action could be a violation of the act--something to be determined at a trial. They haven't convicted anybody or even claimed that a law was broken, only that the alleged act is conceivably a violation.

Re:Two-way crime

[Drogo007]

FTFA:
"Jacob Citrin was once employed by International Airport Centers and given a laptop to use in his company's real estate related business. The work consisted of identifying "potential acquisition targets."

Essentially the product of his job was the information about which properties to acquire.

From the Judges decision (PDF here: http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/R31363C0.pdf ):
"decided to quit IAC in violation
of his employment contract, he resolved to destroy files that
incriminated himself and other files that were also the
property of his employer"

He apprently deleted the files containing the information he had been hired to collect after violating what sounds like a non-compete clause in his employment contract because he wanted to go into business for himself doing the exact same thing he'd been hired to do.

Poor analogy: As a surveyor for a mining company, it's my job to find mineral deposits for my employer. Using company time and equipment, I find such a site, but fail to disclose the location because I decide I want to start my own personal Survey firm. I'd say they'd have a pretty darn good case against me.

I also don't think the case from TFA is going to get laughed right out of court.

Re:Two-way crime

[mindstrm]

"With point 1, I get a chuckle when I walk by someone on a computer, typing up an email, and when they see someone approaching from behind they flip to another window or hit screensaver etc. I want to say to them "you DO realize that's not private in any way shape or form and I or any of your managers could easily read it?" but I usually just walk away smiling at their ignorance."

Do you have an ego problem or something? Just because someone minimizes something and doesn't want your nosy ass reading over their shoulder, or seeing what they are doing doesn't mean they are stupid. Perhaps what they are doing is none of your business?

Just because you are a sysadmin, and can technically do these things does not make them right, or even legal, depending on your jurisdiction. Depending on the company, even a mighty sysadmin can be fired for doing this without the proper authorization.

Do you think telephone technicians sit there and laugh saying "Man people are so stupid, they think their phone calls are private!"... no, they don't. It's understood that yes, they can and do listen to calls on occasion, and they have the integrity and ethics not to blab about it or let it leave the equipment room.

"Man people are so stupid, they think that their personal conversations at home are private, but I have this parabolic microphone!"... man, what ingorant people.

Re:Was it classified as evidence?

[Chas]

From reading the article, it looks like there wasn't anything resembling an investigation under way. Merely a guy who was leaving the company to pursue another job (albeit a competitive one). He returned the laptop, as he pretty much was required to do.

THEN they went looking for dirt on him.

That order right there is what's important. If the guy had been informed of an investigation, and had then returned the laptop, wiped, he could be guilty of destroying evidence.

But he returned the laptop, then an investigation was begun.

Sorry, no investigation first, no crime.

Granted, this COULD be an internal policy issue for the company too. However, they're not suing him for violating company policy. They're suing him under "hacking" charges. Which pretty much says that there was no policy in place regarding the data on the laptop. Moreover, the guy's employment contract, apparently, SPECIFICALLY allowed him the option of destroying data on the machine.

In agreeing to that, the company pretty much just abrogated ownership of the data.

This guy's in for a really long court battle. But, eventually, he's going to be acquitted.

alarmist

[RelliK]

Once again, slashdot summary is wrong and you didn't read the article.

Ideally, a judge would, like the article's author, take one look at the charges and say, "whaaaaat?" just before throwing the whole silly thing out. Now three loops have decided returning the drive clean is a crime, unanimously.

RTFA. That's exactly what the judge did. The company appealled the decision, and the appeals court sent it back to the judge saying: no, you can't throw this out. The company might be right. You need to hold a trial to figure it out.

Having read the article, I agree. The issue is not so clear-cut that it should be dismissed out of hand: it deserves its day in court. The guy may have deleted incriminating information (which is a crime, see Enron paper shredders). He may also have been propping up his business at company's expense (i.e. using whatever data he acquired while making sure the company doesn't get a hold of it). That's for the judge to decide, and that's exactly what the appeals court said should happen.

Oh and, btw:

Adolf Hitler

you lose.

THAT is bullshit!

[emptycorp]

That is bullshit. If that were true: a company could argue that the government can't look at their financial records because it would incriminate them; a murderer could deny police access to their premises because they would find a body in her freezer that would incriminate her.

A murderer CAN deny access to their property even having a dead body in the freezer, enless the police have a warrant. A company CAN refuse to turn over documents enless the police have a warrant. Police can't walk in anywhere they want and/or just take things because they may or may not be incriminating, it's called probable cause. They must have enough viable reason to further their investigation, you can't just bother every citizen because you may or may not know a partial bit of information about a crime.