Facebook Cites ‘Smoking Gun’ Proof of Fraud by Paul Ceglia(bloomberg.com)
bloomberg.com
Facebook Cites ‘Smoking Gun’ Proof of Fraud by Paul Ceglia
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-05/facebook-cites-smoking-gun-proof-of-fraud-by-man-claiming-company-stake.html
2 comments
Wow. There is almost no extra information in this article beyond the title. I suppose there is a brief history of the dispute, but nothing at all related to the"smoking gun evidence" besides the original statement and a couple of "no-comment" follow ups.
Facebook petitioned the court and obtained permission to contract a forensics firm to inspect Ceglia's hard drive. My understanding is that the firm Facebook is working with is Stroz Friedberg, which has an exceedingly good reputation. As a result of the investigation, Facebook has now filed a motion saying they have obtained what amounts to clear evidence that Ceglia forged the contract he claims proves his ownership stake in Facebook.
Facebook cannot publicly disclose the evidence their firm found, because they are bound by a confidentiality order that accompanied their access to Ceglia's personal computers.
What more do you want Bloomberg to report? This is clearly a big deal. I see how they aren't fully satisfying your curiosity, but currency and accuracy are probably more important in a news org than "most satisfying writing".
Facebook cannot publicly disclose the evidence their firm found, because they are bound by a confidentiality order that accompanied their access to Ceglia's personal computers.
What more do you want Bloomberg to report? This is clearly a big deal. I see how they aren't fully satisfying your curiosity, but currency and accuracy are probably more important in a news org than "most satisfying writing".
I wonder how such analysis is conducted. are there experts for both parties present? Or just the judge? Seems strange to allow one of the parties access to the computer, there should be a neutral person operating the computer and only do stuff after both parties agree to it. Could take some time though...
The analysis was conducted by an independent forensics firm. There are many of those; Facebook is apparently working with Stroz, one of the best.
To clarify, you hire some (really expensive) people who start by prying the computer apart and making a copy of the hard drive(s). They then go through it, looking for interesting stuff in files (Word documents can contain previous versions, for instance), in the browser history, in unused parts of the drive (i.e. for deleted files), etc. There is no "operating the computer" in the conventional sense involved: using the computer would destroy evidence (i.e. overwrite deleted files).
In cases like this, I'd imagine one would have an obligation to respect the owner's privacy (except where relevant to the case) - dragging all his/her porn into court is not exactly classy.
In cases like this, I'd imagine one would have an obligation to respect the owner's privacy (except where relevant to the case) - dragging all his/her porn into court is not exactly classy.
It is unlikely that FB was given free reign to the original hardware. A more likely case is that they were given a duped version of the drives.
A duped drive would be useless. When you delete a file, the OS marks it as gone, but the data is still physically on the drive until you overwrite it with more data. The forensics team would need access to the original drive to uncover that data.
Don't such forensic activities do a sector-for-sector copy of the original hard drive and work from there? So the access they need to the drive is limited to the time it takes to do an image copy.
So if by "duped drive" you mean an image copy, it is not useless.
So if by "duped drive" you mean an image copy, it is not useless.
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