I believe in many situations, a special monitor will have to be appointed by the court with the expertise to assist law enforcement while protecting the rights of other property owners. The court-appointed monitor will need to design a protocol of specific steps to be followed, including an audit trail, acceptable to by law enforcement, the court, and the underlying owner of the computer. The monitor's role and function will require private investigative expertise, including handling digital evidence and being experienced with legal procedures, the courts, and law enforcement. In other situations, the government has had need for subject matter experts (complex computer systems, art, etc.) that may not be readily available within the investigative agencies. In civil cases, the courts have sought advice from firms as they heard evidence in proceedings. For example, our firm served as advisors to the court in the recent AMD v Intel antitrust matter before Judge Vincent J. Poppiti. In matters where the courts have granted defendants supervised release under monitorships, such as in the Bernard Madoff matter, a private investigative firm was appointed by the court to provide the monitoring service so the court order could be properly executed.
Richard Power is a Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon CyLab and a frequent contributor to CSO Magazine. He writes, speaks and consults on security, risk and intelligence issues. He has conducted executive briefings and led professional training in forty countries. Power is the author of six books. Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, Power served as Director of Security Management and Security Intelligence for the Global Security Office (GSO) of Deloitte Touche Tomatsu and Editorial Director of the Computer Security Institute.
This story, "Private Investigations in the Information Age" was originally published by CSO.