Information Theft and What You Can Do About It

August 2007
Employment Law Notes
Recently, a former Boeing employee was charged with first degree computer trespass under Washington State law for taking more than 320,000 pages of confidential Boeing documents. According to the prosecutor’s charging papers, the Boeing documents were not encrypted or password protected, but the employee had to exploit a weakness in Boeing’s computer systems to obtain the files. Had the documents been leaked to competitors, Boeing calculates that the potential financial damage for the disclosure of even a portion of the documents could have meant a loss of $5-$15 billion. While the case is pending, the court has ordered injunctive relief that prevents the dissemination of any purloined data.