Just as sensitive government emails revealed by Wikileak's Julian Assange has damaged foreign relations, prosecutors will be conducting sophisticated worldwide computer forensic examinations of his internal emails designed to find the smoking gun. "They're looking for any electronic communications that proves his intent to do harm and who else was involved", says Mark McLaughlin, President of Computer Forensics International.
Today, nearly everyone communicates electronically through email or instant messaging. People use email as a conversational tool and will say things in messages they believe will be private. But they're not private to a computer forensics examiner who uses an elite suite of software to recover even deleted messages.
"We can even find relevant evidence using wildcard or proximity search terms, and then gain deeper insights into how each message relates to the other through a very cool graphical relationship display", says McLaughlin. "It's really like Star Wars technology. Our software tools are the same ones used by governments worldwide and we use them in support of attorneys and corporations every day. We're very successful at finding things people don't want to be found."
Mark McLaughlin has amassed over 25 years experience in computer forensics, electronic discovery, expert witness testimony, corporate security investigations, information systems management and law enforcement. He's a frequent lecturer, trainer and resource to news organizations on matters of computer forensics, Internet and data security.
# # #