4 ms·

What happens if he refused the lawyer request to scan his hard drive?

• shadowgovt 3y ago
  The article unpacks that a bit. IIUC, he did refuse the request, and purged the files and verified the purge using his own tools. With lawyers involved, the city became inclined to accept that as sufficient to protect city interests. Had he dug in completely, the city was treating the situation as if they would bring charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (which I don't think precisely fits, but might have been the only leverage the city had to prevent a potential bad actor from capitalizing on their mistake).
• legitster 3y ago
  Criminal proceedings. Honestly, the city had no way of knowing that he hadn't already sold the entire dataset on Silk Road, so they were instilling a huge amount of trust that he was being a "Good Samaritan".
• kelnos 3y ago
  He did refuse it, and nothing bad happened, it seems. Unfortunately, he had to get his own lawyer involved, who likely negotiated with the city's lawyer in order to get them to back off. That kind of assistance was probably not cheap for OP.
• ender341341 3y ago
  IANAL but the city could sue, whether or not they would would win IDK, if I were fighting it I'd argue along the lines of "if I meant to misuse the data I wouldn't have told you I had it and scanning my hard drive opens up my personal data to the same potential mis-distribution that I notified the city of." I agree with the author's reaction though, and any non-court ordered scanning of my system would have to happen under my supervision, with strict agreement on the how.