How accessible are Internet search records, deleted e-mails, etc?

[Carnac_the_Magnificent]

I’ve heard of marriages turning nasty and the attorneys of embittered spouses seeking access to Internet search records, deleted e-mails, etc. Similarly, recent news stories have shown law enforcement agencies seeking to gain access to this information.

Long question short, what kind and how much data do the various Internet Service Providers (AOL, MSN, Yahoo) and search engine companies (Google, Dogpile, etc) typically retain? Given the huge volume of Internet activity, it seems unlikely that any firm would want to retain anything that isn’t current. News stories that suggest lawyers could gain access to Internet records that go back years trigger my BS alarm.

Any ideas? (I did a quick search on this, but couldn’t find an earlier thread.)

[Gfactor]

Google has also pointed out that residual copies of email may remain on its systems, even after the user has deleted them from his or her mailbox and even after a user has terminated the account. Again, this is true of all email systems

http://www.cdt.org/publications/pp_10.06.shtml

[msmith537]

@Carnac the Magnificent!

I’ve heard of marriages turning nasty and the attorneys of embittered spouses seeking access to Internet search records, deleted e-mails, etc. Similarly, recent news stories have shown law enforcement agencies seeking to gain access to this information.

Long question short, what kind and how much data do the various Internet Service Providers (AOL, MSN, Yahoo) and search engine companies (Google, Dogpile, etc) typically retain? Given the huge volume of Internet activity, it seems unlikely that any firm would want to retain anything that isn’t current. News stories that suggest lawyers could gain access to Internet records that go back years trigger my BS alarm.

I work for a management consulting firm in the technology group of their litigation consulting practice. In English, we basically help companies deal with the business issues surrounding litigation and document retention.

In plainer English, we collect emails for lawyers.

There are several answers to your question:

1. How hard is it to legally acquire emails from an ISP? The answer it requires a court order. The ease of obtaining, someone who is a lawyer would need to answer.

2. How far back do ISPs maintain records? - once again, this will depend on the ISP. Businesses are generally required to back up certain documents for certain time periods (often indefinitely) and many end up saving everything in order to avoid potentially costly centure by the courts for failing to produce.

3. How technically difficult is it to recover emails? Not at all. We send a couple of our goons in to image the drive of your computer or a server. We can recover deleted files. We even have special software and 1000s of monkeys (lawyers and forensic accountants really) on 1000s of computers to rapidly locate what’s relevant to the case.

[Gfactor]

@msmith537

I work for a management consulting firm in the technology group of their litigation consulting practice. In English, we basically help companies deal with the business issues surrounding litigation and document retention.

In plainer English, we collect emails for lawyers.

There are several answers to your question:

1. How hard is it to legally acquire emails from an ISP? The answer it requires a court order. The ease of obtaining, someone who is a lawyer would need to answer.

Getting the order is easy. It’s called a subpoena, and in many jurisdictions, a lawyer can sign it. Otherwise, the issuance is a ministerial act. No showing needs to be made in most cases.

Once you get the order things get a littler trickier. The person whose records are subpoenaed and the person holding the records (or the ISP) can move to quash the subpoena. If the person is a party to the case, they’ll probably lose that motion; otherwise, they’ve got better chances of resisting the subpoena.