Illustrate with an example the problems caused by commingled data.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

ANSWER: Suppose that during an examination, you find adult and child pornography. Further examination of the subject’s hard disk reveals that the employee has been collecting child pornography in separate folders on his workstation’s hard drive. In the United States, possessing child pornography is a crime under federal and state criminal statutes. These situations aren’t uncommon and make life difficult for investigators who don’t want to be guilty of possession of this contraband on their forensic workstations.

You survey the remaining content of the subject’s drive and find that he’s a lead engineer for the team developing your company’s latest high-tech bicycle. He has placed the child pornography images in a subfolder where the bicycle plans are stored. By doing so, he has commingled contraband with company’s confidential design plans for the bicycle. Your discovery poses two problems in dealing with this contraband evidence. First, you must report the crime to the police; all U.S. states and most countries have legal and moral codes when evidence of sexual exploitation of children is found. Second, you must also protect sensitive company information. Letting the high-tech bicycle information become part of the criminal evidence might make it public record, and the design work will then be available to competitors. Your first step is to ask your organization’s attorney how to deal with the commingled contraband data and sensitive design plans.