When asked about his role during a congressional hearing last month, which examined the destruction of e-mails and other documents, Duncan invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself. 23 meeting, during which Andersen partner David Duncan allegedly headed an effort to destroy documents related to Enron after learning the Securities and Exchange Commission had requested financial records from the company. Specifically, investigators have focused on an Oct. Federal investigators have accused Andersen employees of trying to wipe out documents that showed they knew the energy giant was engaged in fraudulent activity. The attempt to destroy documents has become a focus of Enron's collapse and its dealings with its accounting firm, Andersen.
Although forensic details of the Enron meltdown are not yet being made public, powerful data-recovery techniques promise to turn a spotlight on the inner workings of the beleaguered energy company, which abruptly tumbled into bankruptcy in December amid accusations of accounting improprieties. Three years after Justice Department lawyers in the Microsoft antitrust suit embarrassed software mogul Bill Gates with damaging e-mail records, digital trails continue to provide stunningly intimate details of private activities. And we're not taught to think of them that way." It's the closest thing we have in our culture to something that's recording our every thought and every word. "Most people don't think of the computer as a continually running tape recorder," said Joan Feldman, president and founder of Computer Forensics in Seattle. The reason: The average office shredder does nothing to alter the computers where the vast majority of those paper documents originated.Īs investigators contemplate the Herculean jigsaw puzzle of reassembling shredded paper strips, computer forensics experts are preparing for the comparatively easier task of examining desktop computers, laptops, e-mail servers, backup tapes and other digital media for information on the Enron debacle-and any evidence of a cover-up. In the shredding scandale du jour, involving bankrupt energy company Enron and its auditor, Arthur Andersen, the digital office has immeasurably changed the landscape for would-be document destruction-and recovery.
The last time shredders dominated American headlines, Ronald Reagan was president, Fawn Hall was an employee of the National Security Council, and computers were a rarity compared with their ubiquity today.