Associated Press

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— Not since

the glory days of letter-writing,

before the advent of the tele

phone, have people committed

so much revealing staff to writ

ten form as they do in the age

of computers.

E-mail revealed the shred

ding of documents atArthur

Andersen, and exposed Merrill

Lynch analysts condemningstocks as a disaster or a

‘dog” while publicly touting

them to investors.

Mid-American sentirnentsin

messages Taliban fighter John

Walker Liridh and shoe bomb

suspect Richard Reid sent to

Where art e-miI can be found

In the sender’s

interoffice

server and

backup

tapes.

One reason is that computer data are difficult to destroy.

Just clicking “delete” won’t do

it, as Oliver North learned dur

ing the 1980s Iran-Contra

probe, one of the earliest inves

tigations to rely on backup

copies of electronic messages.

DeietedVfjles can linger, hid

Dn the servers of

the Internet service

provider and themajor talecom

provider. .___i•

All those e-mail messages

.‘( and electronic les are a treasure trove of evidence for the recipient’s law

en.forcement officers whether interoffice server

they are targeting and backup tapes terroristscrooLed CBOs or local drug

dealers h h d d On the hard drive The challenge for police and teeseer rive of the recipients prosecutors is learning how to Cam puter computer and on dig up and preserve these elec any other tromcgems computerthat

“Any agent can come in and receives a copy

look through papers but not SOURCE KroII Ontrack Inc. A? V evely agent can do a thoroug V

V •The best way to get rid of càmputer, search,” said David V V.Afld when Wall Street Jour- V

V

computer data is to take the Green, deputy chief of the insareporter Daniel Pearl was V hàrddrive and pnund it with

a ticeDepartuient’s computer V lddnapp and killed in Paid- ha±rimer and throw it Vjfl

a fjj 1.. V crime section, which helps V V Stan, invëstigator used emajJs V nace,!said John Patrakis, pres Irain federal and state invest from his abductors to track identof Guidance Software, gators. them down. which makes forensic software Green teaches that a mistake When drug dealers are ar- that helps police End hidden as simple as tunting offa cornrested police search their elec- ifies puter can wipe away valuable tromc orga.ruzers and cell

.- i Even that might not work evidence. Knowing such basics; phones for associates V names with e-mail, which mvestlga and th ins and outs of Prracy . telephone nujiribers When I tars may also be able to track law, is essential when elec- V

someone isacced of molest— ‘ down in an empldyee’s office V tonic evidence. may play a role ing a child, his computer is V server, stored by Internet pro- in so many cases V searched for child parnogra viders or in the recipients “It’s like the gift that keeps phy. When a company is sued, computer.

on glving,” said Tom Greene, a V it can beforced to turn over V

V

To go hunting through corn ..

‘. deputy attorney general in Cal- thousands of employee mes- V

V puter data, law officers need a ifornia, one of the states suing V sages.

V V

Microsoft , search warrant issued by a Corp. in an antitrust “E-mail has become the judge. Winning legal Vpermnis case built largely cmi computer

messages. . place where everybodyloves to V sion to eavesdrop onemail as “People are so lOok,” said Irwin Schwartz, it’s transmitted is more diffi chatty in e-mail.” V president of the National cult, because that is cDnsidered ciaflon of Ci-iminal Defense the same as wiretapping a tele Lawyers. phone. investigators generally

need a court order based on.

probable cause that the wiretap will reveal evidence of

a fel

oily.

Criminals, or people who

si.mply want to protect their secrets,can use encryption soft

ware to scramble their e-mail.

And specialsoftware can over-
Careftil

what you

e-mail

I

f you have any dou.bts

that the é-mails yousend on your office per

sonai computer might be

open to scrutiny by your

boss, think again.

V

“Almost 33 percent of 140

North American businesses

na&nwide report they con

duct regular audits of out

bound e-mail content,”

according to a 2004 study by.

Proofpoint Inc., a messaging

security technical firm in Cu

pertino, Calif., and Forrester

Research Inc., in Cambridge,

Mass.

The study, which includes

firms with 20,000 workers ormore, also shows that 43

percent of the companies

“employ staff that monitors

outbound mail”

— even if

reviews are not done on a

• regular basis.

My advice: Don’t write

anything in an e-mail that

you wouldn’t want to see onyour office bulletin board

— or announced over your

company’s loudspeaker.

Carol Kleima, writes about

the workplace and careers for Vthe Chica9o Tribune.

CAROL ILEJMAN
e-mail

it leaves

.a trail

And it’s been the

smoking gun ifl

many

a scandaL

By GREG BURNS

ChiagbTrib1p

CH3CAGO

— Alberto Gon—

zales won’t do it anymore and

President Bush hasn’t done it

in years.

It got Harry Stonecipher fired

from the top post at Boeing

Co., and it earned investmentbanker Frank Quattrone an 18-

month prison sentence.

The culprit? E-maiL

Indispensable for uniting

workplaces and private lives,

e

mail has proven adept at bring

ing down highflying careers aswell. Those billions of elec

tonic messageS lurking in cy

berspace have provided the

smoking gun in scandal after

scandaL - Among top officials in go

emment and business, balanc

ing the benefits of e-mail with

its potenthi pitfalls has become

a difficult judgment call. Withthe number of messages sky

rocketing nearly every corpora-

-ion and arm of government

jas imposed common-sense

guidelines for e-mailing. Many

use sophisticated software to

profile individuals 

cluded the risks of e-mail out

weigh the benefits. Their

decisions may hold lessons for

less prominent members of So

ciety who currently e-mail,

send instant messages and blog

with abandon. And they point

to a continuing erosion of pri

vacy as digital communications

advances

Attorney General Gonzales

told the Chicago Tribune edito

rial board last week that he

worries about “perfectly inno

cent” electiOruc comlflUlilca

tion being twisted by critics of

the administration. With that

in mind, he has gone cold tur

key “I don’t get e-mail and I

don’t send e-mail,” he said.

His boss, President Bush,

has sworn it off as well. Once

an avid e-rnailer, Bush sent hislast cyber-message in the days

before his 2001 inauguration,telling friends and family that

his correspondence would be

considered a public record

from the moment he took of

fice.

In a speech before the

American Society of Newspa

per Editors this spring, Bush

explained that he was forced

to give up e-mail to prevent

the disclosure of “personal

stuff,” such as correspondence

with his daughters. “I’ve made

an easy decision there,” he

saii “I just don’t do it. Whichis sad, really, when you think

about it.”

ner offices in Manhatran and

Washington, D.C.— the na

tion’s epicenters of high

proffle e-mail gaffes. Executives in California still hit the

send button far too much for

their own good, said Chicago

corporate lawyer Robert

Tarun. “E-mail traffic among

high-level execs decreasesfrom the West Coast to the

East Coast, but the West is

learning.”

The high-level paranoia

about the perils of e-mail

comes amid booming usage.

The number of active elec

tronic mailboxes in the world

has more than tripled over the

past five years to Li billion,

according to the RadicatiGroup Inc., a California re

search firm. Messages exceed

20 billion a day.

For every prominent person

who steers clear of e-mail,

many others embrace it. For

mer Secretary of State CoHnPowell, now working for an in

vestment bank, has rhapso

dized about its globespanning qualities. Senate

Majority Leader Bill Frist issaid to prefer his Blackberry

messaging device to a conver

sation, hands down.

At Andrew Corp., e-mail is

“the lifeblood,” said Ralph Fal

son, chief executive of the Orland Park, ill-based supplier

of high-tech communications

gear. “I can be in China andcommunicate with family and

business colleagues almost in

stantaneously. I cannot imagine someone that doesn’t use

e-mail. If it does ferret out

those who aren’t practicingproper behavior, maybe that’s

positive.”

Defense lawyers say it’s not

;o simple,

A spontaneous

e

tion, research suggests threveal more on computer tha

they do on paper or in conver

sation.

And what e-rnaiier hasn

wanted one back irnmediatel

after sending it? Michar

Pietsch, publisher at Litth

Brown, said he has learned t

pass along all criticism or ha

news in person, because

mail can carry a greater emc

flonal wallop than intende

“If you have something neg

five to express, don’t put it i

an e-mail,” he warned.

For Chicago attorney

I

chael B. Hyman, who repr

sents plaintiffs in class actior

e-mails have become a “ho.

anza,” because they invite“informal lowering of ti

guard,” he said. “It’s so easy

push that button and regret

later on. Even if you try

make it disappear, there a

ways to make it re-appear.”

The same goes for oth

digital communications.. C

WayBackMachine (www.

w

back-machine.orgi, for exan

pie, Web pages that we

taken down can be recover

years later.

Around the time e-m

was becoming common

the 1980s, Oliver Nor

thought incriminating

m

sages had been safely deletin the Iran-Contra scand

As North later told Congre

“Wow, were we wrong.”

Some shun

Top lawyers have been

urging that kind of caution for

years. E-mail is dangerously

overused, said Robert Morvfflo, the New York defense at

torney who defended Martha

Stewarr in a criminal case in-

- volving a disputed e-mail.. Tlail involves imprecision, and

“They pop up in virtually i cryptic phrase or not-soI every investigation. It’s almost iinny joke can unfairly supii - — 1. _fl ......-.*.-..-. ‘ ;nrt A-nn-,r,,--,n ;,-l-.-.--.-,—.÷;.-,.-,-

For all the pious

pronouncements peopl

make about exercising

care and caution,

research suggests theyreveal more on

romouter than they do