Securing Evidence from an Employee’s Phone while Complying with Privacy Laws
LTI played a pivotal role in helping a European antitrust investigation by securing critical WhatsApp evidence from an employee’s phone, while ensuring legal compliance and privacy protection.
Situation
An investigation revealed employees were breaching antitrust laws by using WhatsApp to share confidential information. The investigators required this data to be presented to Competition Authorities, but privacy concerns arose as the phone was personally owned.
Challenge
Although the employee was cooperative, they were reluctant to hand over their phone due to privacy issues. The lawyers needed to extract relevant communications without infringing on personal data, particularly messages, photos, and other sensitive information unrelated to the case.
Solution
LTI collaborated with the external law firm engaged on the mandate to design a privacy-focused approach. LTI’s expert consultant, along with the legal team, met the employee and used Oxygen Forensic® Detective software, a mobile phone forensic software, to carefully extract the necessary data from the device, ensuring no personal information was improperly accessed. The process involved saving the data to an encrypted USB drive and ensuring the employee was present for each step.
The filtered, case-relevant data included WhatsApp group chats, 1-to-1 communications, and even deleted messages detected through OCR and keyword searches. Each piece of evidence was flagged and securely exported for further analysis.
Exporting the selected Evidence
The extracted data was delivered in three formats:
- PDF for a chronological report of the messages and phone details.
- RSMF to integrate the messages into eDiscovery platforms.
- OXY Viewer to maintain data integrity for review within Oxygen Forensic® Detective.
By balancing the legal team’s needs with employee privacy concerns, LTI successfully secured 450 key pieces of evidence for the investigation, ensuring compliance with both legal and ethical standards.
Contact us to discover how LTI can help with your next investigation.
info@legaltechinnovations.com
