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

All I have to say.

[dsraistlin]

WTF?!?!?

Re:Two-way crime

[dekemoose]

A chocolate tort would be nice, with a good cup of coffee, hmmmm....

while otherwise you have some good points...

[Phil Urich]

Oh and, btw:

Adolf Hitler

you lose.

Now really, I have to assume here you're perpetuating a misconception of Godwin's Law here. A misconception that has become tradition, true, but it's rather absurd to say that once someone has invoked Nazi analogies that they lose, especially because grandparent was not even making any sort of direct analogy! He was just using something Hitler stated to explain a point: you don't need to convince people if you can win over their children. Note, however, that traditionally your attempt to deliberately invoke Godwin's Law means that you lose!

But yes, otherwise you raise some very valid counterpoints; having deleted the data it's not quite clear what he did, which changes under what grounds the issue is to be decided, so yes. But you still lose :P