![]() ![]() Recover - get your laptop and your life backįor most people, the odds of recovering a stolen laptop aren't encouraging.Digital Cameras / Keyboards / Input Device.SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard with 5-10 CAL."Because it's currently still under legal proceedings, Absolute isn't commenting on the story at this time," he said. Asked if the company's agents have changed the way they operate in light of the lawsuit, Absolute spokesman Stephen Midgley declined to respond. The judge ultimately ruled that although Absolute might have had a noble purpose in assisting the school district in recovering its laptop, "a reasonable jury could find that they crossed an impermissible boundary."Īccording to Absolute's web site, it recovers on average 14 laptops a day. The company cited its agreement with the school district, which gives Absolute's staff "the ability to view and recover any files that are present" on the school's computers.īut the school district has asserted that it never knew this meant that Absolute would intercept communications that a suspected thief might have with third parties. The ECPA statute prohibits intercepting or disclosing the contents of someone's wire or other electronic communications without their knowledge.Ībsolute also insisted it was acting on behalf of its customer, the school district, and therefore was covered under "color of law" and "safe harbor" statutes. She said Absolute had a right to collect her IP address in an effort to track the laptop, but that it broke the law when it intercepted her communications to track her and then passed those images to police. They asserted that Clements-Jeffrey should have known the laptop was stolen based in part on the $60 price the seller was asking for it and on the fact that the serial number had been scraped off the bottom of the machine.Ĭlements-Jeffrey, however, asserted she never noticed the missing serial number and had no reason to doubt the asking price for the two-year-old machine, since the computer had been wiped clean of software before she bought it. The defendants moved for summary judgment on grounds that courts have ruled in the past that there is no legitimate expectation of privacy in cases involving known stolen property. The case rests largely on whether Clements-Jeffrey knew the laptop she bought was stolen and whether she and her boyfriend then had a reasonable expectation of privacy. The plaintiffs allege that the police violated their Fourth Amendment rights, and that Absolute violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Stored Communications Act and intentionally invaded their privacy. The charges, however, were dismissed about a week later.Ĭlements-Jeffrey and her boyfriend, Smith, sued Absolute Software, Kyle Magnus, the city of Springfield, Ohio, and two police officers. ![]() They then arrested and charged her for receiving stolen property. When the police showed up at the plaintiff's apartment to collect the laptop, they were brandishing the explicit images Magnus had sent them. Magnus subsequently sent the pictures and recorded communications, along with Clements-Jeffrey's name and contact information, to a police detective. In one picture, her legs were spread apart. At one point, while snooping on Clements-Jeffrey's webcam communications with her boyfriend, Magnus also captured three screenshots from her laptop monitor, which showed Clements-Jeffrey naked in the webcam images. But Absolute's theft officer Kyle Magnus went further and began to remotely intercept e-mail and other electronic communications going to and from Clements-Jeffrey's machine in real time.Īccording to court documents, in June 2008 Magnus began recording Clements-Jeffrey's keystrokes and monitoring her web surfing. Ordinarily, the next step would be for Absolute to provide a suspect's IP address to law enforcement agents, so that they could issue a subpoena to the suspect's ISP to obtain the user's name and physical address. The system gives Absolute employees remote access to a stolen computer and allows them to record and intercept any data from the machine.Īfter the school district reported the laptop stolen, Absolute began collecting the IP address from Clements-Jeffrey's laptop when it connected to the internet. What she didn't know was that Clark County School District, which legally owned the laptop, had purchased Absolute's theft recovery service, which includes the installation of its remote-recovery software LoJack for Laptops, onto client computers. ![]() In the course of their courtship, she exchanged sexually explicit email and instant messages with her beau, using the computer she had just purchased. ![]() Clements-Jeffrey, described in court papers as a 52-year-old widow, had recently renewed a romance with her high school sweetheart, Carlton Smith, who lived in Boston. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |