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Observer
& Eccentric Newspapers
36251
Schoolcraft
Livonia,
Michigan 48150 USA
(734)
591-2300
From FBI to PCs
Former
agent now corporate Internet
sleuth
By Sam
Tricomo
Forensic
reports taken from crime scenes
once were the maps John Gifford
used
to track and apprehend suspected
felons. But now, electronic
flashes stored deep
within computer servers lead him
to his culprits.
Gifford, a retired FBI agent from
Bloomfield Hills, today offers
private sleuthing services
to large and medium-sized
corporations seeking to insulate
themselves against the
heat of employee discrimination
suits.
"We can track exactly how a
computer has been used through the
course of the
day and tell an employer exactly
where an employee has been,"
Gifford said.
When he first opened his private
detective business in 1993,
Gifford was more
familiar with chasing paper trails
than electronic ones.
But growth in the use of
electronic communications devices
in the work place brought
on a growth for the need of
e-detectives like Gifford.
"More and more e-mail is becoming
a part of communicating in the
work place,
"Gifford said. "And like anything
you are going to have people who
abuse it."
Proof of Gifford's theory that
e-mail and web access can cause
problems in corporate
settings can be found in the
recent firings of several
employees at the Midland-based
Dow Chemical Corporation.
There, as many as 50 people were
terminated after a corporate
search of a computer
server found hundreds of racially
and sexually oriented e-mails had
been transmitted
between employees.
"These type searches usually stem
from an employee complaint or the
filing of some
type of discrimination or
harassment suit," Gifford said.
When that is the case,
investigators like Gifford are
called in to examine the
electronic
trails left behind with every
click of a computer's mouse.
To follow the trails, Gifford must
have access to the heart of the
company's computer
system, the server.
"People don't really realize that
even transferring e-mails to the
trash does not mean
they have been eliminated,"
Gifford said.
In one recent case, Gifford said
two employees of a company were
thought to be
falsely conspiring to collect
disability compensation.
A search of the company's computer
system showed electronic
conversations regarding
the conspiracy had taken place.
"But one of the employees knew
enough about computers to know how
to truly erase
something," Gifford said. "The
other one was not." Gifford would
not reveal the steps
necessary to erase data stored
within a computer.
Bloomfield Hills employment
discrimination attorney Sue Ellen
Eisenberg calls
investigations into workplace
electronic communication an
emerging issue.
Eisenberg represented both
employers and employees in
discrimination suits and
often uses Gifford's agency.
"Companies entrust their
communication equipment with their
employees, but that can
have a big impact on others in
terms of transmissions of
suggestive e-mails or people
accessing sexual or racially
oriented websites," Eisenberg
said. But not every case
that comes Eisenberg or Gifford's
way involves sexual or violent
content.
Often companies seek out time
thieves. "It's not all sex
websites," Gifford said. "I can
discover if employees have spent
their days shopping on the web."
Other than sifting through loads
of computer data contained on
servers, Gifford's
work-life mirrors that of a
typical private investigator.
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