OT: legal obligations

[Herb Richter]

> This got me to
> wondering what my, and other computer techs', obligations are if we find
> illegal content when doing a similar search? Thoughts?

A few years ago, over dinner, I was talking with a friend who owned a 
(hard disk) data recovery company about content that might be porn, 3rd 
party IP or even terrorism related that his techs might recover or see.

I suggested that he might require each customer, in whatever engagement 
contract normally used, to disclose if there is or might be this type of 
content on the drive.  If "yes" then he could refuse to recover the 
data, if "no" then he might have reason to delete the file or report the 
find.

Or he could state in the contract a (new) company policy that such files 
would not be recovered and maybe reported.

I don't know what changes may have been made here since he sold his 
company soon after.

Hmmm, I wonder, if the file is not restored (i.e. not recovered from the 
faulty media and transferred to good media) does the bad content exist?

I would think that if the file contents might be evidence of a crime 
then it should not be deleted.


--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists