Enron electronic data is called incomplete

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.ocregister.com/news/dunn00618cci1.shtml

June 18, 2002
By JOHN HOWARD
The Orange County Register 

SACRAMENTO -- Enron Corp. turned over electronic data under subpoena
to state Sen. Joe Dunn's investigative committee that are incomplete,
rife with erasures and apparently altered to cloak the power
merchant's activities in California, Dunn said Monday.

The missing or damaged material on nine compact computer discs
includes e-mails among ranking Enron executives, including former
Enron President Jeffrey Skilling; encrypted memoranda, scheduling and
price information, and other documents, said Dunn, D-Santa Ana. Some
information sought by the committee was not provided and other,
irrelevant data was duplicated.

In some cases, Dunn said, a data specialist hired by the committee
cracked encryption codes and passwords to obtain documents for the
committee.

"Of the nine CDs, there was perhaps one and a half CDs of
nonduplicative information," Dunn said, "and missing were the e-mails
of certain high-level Enron management folks, and documents relating
to the energy crisis."

The Senate Select Committee to Investigate Price Manipulation of the
Wholesale Energy Market was negotiating with Enron to obtain all the
documents, and the company has promised "full, unfettered access to
the information," Dunn said. If that access is not forthcoming,
however, the committee could consider contempt proceedings against the
company, which could entail $1,000-a-day penalties.

An Enron spokeswoman said the company provided all the required
information to Dunn and that Enron sought to cooperate with the
Senate's investigation.

"We have been working with him. We have made every effort to
accommodate his requests," Karen Denne said.

The committee's information-technology expert hired to review Enron's
electronic data is expected to testify next week, detailing
allegations of alterations and deletions in the submitted material.

The consultant's team cracked encrypted messages among Enron
executives and found that large amounts of information were excised,
said committee attorney and lead investigator Laurence Drivon.

"We did not get the quantity of information we wanted. Their (Enron's)  
search was too restrictive in nature," Drivon said.

Enron lawyer Gary Fergus of San Francisco said in an April 24 e-mail
to Dunn's committee that "Enron does not believe" there was any
"intentional concealment or destruction" of material on the CDs.

Fergus also said Enron had seven clusters of servers to handle its
Microsoft Exchange-Outlook e-mail load, plus a Lotus Domino Notes
system. He said some e-mails sought by the committee may not have been
found in keyword searches because individual users' mailboxes were
moved between servers for "performance and load balancing reasons."

"Enron fully described and disclosed the search protocol to the
California Senate," Fergus added.

But Dunn said the committee's data specialist found "numerous
examples" in which information appeared to have been deliberately
erased, and that there was little or no information submitted about
the company's business practices, even though the committee's request
targeted Enron's top executives. He also said the committee's expert
rejected Enron's position that the company did not deliberately
mishandle information.

The committee declined to identify the forensics consultant or his
company, citing a confidentiality agreement.

Dunn also seeks voluntary testimony July 11 from H. Ross Perot, the
head of Texas-based Perot Systems, and documents relating to Perot
Systems' efforts to sell information about California's energy market.  
Dunn on Monday said he would subpoena Perot if the company didn't
supply documents to the committee by this evening.

Perot Systems helped set up the electronics for the state's
deregulated energy trading system under a 1997 contract.



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