03.21.11 Hearing Transcript

109
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Barry L . Fanning , RMR , CRR - Official Court Reporter Suite 17205 - 700 Stewart St . - Seattle , WA 98101 1 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT WESTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON IN SEATTLE ---------------------------------------------------------- LONDI K. LINDELL, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF MERCER ISLAND, et al, Defendants. ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) No. C08-1827JLR ---------------------------------------------------------- HEARING ---------------------------------------------------------- BEFORE THE HONORABLE JAMES L. ROBART March 21, 2011 APPEARANCES: For the Plaintiff: Scott Blankenship Rick Goldsworthy Nazik Youssef THE BLANKENSHIP LAW FIRM For the Defendant: Stephanie Alexander Suzanne K. Michael Thomas P. Holt MICHAEL & ALEXANDER

Transcript of 03.21.11 Hearing Transcript

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

Suite 17205 - 700 Stewart St. - Seattle, WA 98101

1

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURTWESTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON

IN SEATTLE

----------------------------------------------------------

LONDI K. LINDELL,

Plaintiff,

v.

CITY OF MERCER ISLAND, etal,

Defendants.

)))))))))

No. C08-1827JLR

----------------------------------------------------------

HEARING

----------------------------------------------------------

BEFORE THE HONORABLE JAMES L. ROBART

March 21, 2011

APPEARANCES:

For the Plaintiff: Scott BlankenshipRick GoldsworthyNazik YoussefTHE BLANKENSHIP LAW FIRM

For the Defendant: Stephanie AlexanderSuzanne K. MichaelThomas P. HoltMICHAEL & ALEXANDER

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EXAMINATION INDEX

EXAMINATION OF PAGERICHARD CONRAD DIRECT EXAMINATION

By Ms. Michael:6

KATIE KNIGHT DIRECT EXAMINATIONBy Ms. Michael:

9

CROSS-EXAMINATIONBy Mr. Blankenship:

11

REDIRECT EXAMINATIONBy Ms. Michael:

16

MIKE KASER DIRECT EXAMINATIONBy Ms. Michael:

17

CROSS-EXAMINATIONBy Mr. Blankenship:

20

JONATHAN YEH DIRECT EXAMINATIONBy Ms. Michael:

27

CROSS-EXAMINATIONBy Mr. Blankenship:

48

ALAN MUCHMORE DIRECT EXAMINATIONBy Ms. Michael:

53

CROSS-EXAMINATIONBy Mr. Blankenship:

97

EXHIBIT INDEX

EXHIBITS ADMITTED PAGE

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

Suite 17205 - 700 Stewart St. - Seattle, WA 98101

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THE COURT: The clerk will call this matter.

THE CLERK: Case C08-1827, Londi Lindell versus

City of Mercer Island. Counsel, please make your

appearance.

MR. BLANKENSHIP: Scott Blankenship for

Ms. Lindell.

THE COURT: Do you want to introduce the other

people at the table?

MR. BLANKENSHIP: Yes. Nazik Youssef, Allison

Goodman, Londi Lindell and Rick Goldsworthy.

MS. MICHAEL: Your Honor, Suzanne Michael for the

defendants, along with Stephanie Alexander and Tom Holt.

THE COURT: Thank you. Counsel, we are here on

the defendant's motion to dismiss for spoliation of

evidence, found in our docket at 319. I can tell you that

I have had an opportunity at this point to read all of the

material that both of you have filed. That would be the

motion filed by the City, and the supporting materials

that go with it. And I have reviewed the plaintiff's

opposition to the motion, and the supporting materials

that accompany it.

As is my usual practice in these matters, I will

accept as evidence all of the declarations which have been

filed. That would be much more Mr. Holt. I am not sure I

will get all of these. Mr. Weibling, Ms. Goodwin,

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Ms. Youssef, Ms. Lindell and Mr. Goldsworthy. I may have

left one back in chambers.

I will ask you, if we call live witnesses, not to

repeat the testimony which is found in the declarations,

but to proceed to cross-examination, or if you have

additional material that is not in the declaration that

you want to present in connection with the motion. So

that will hopefully speed us up some.

The second thing I would like to say is to once

again just ask you to remember your decorum. It is really

not good advocacy, and yet both sides are guilty of it,

because you obviously feel very passionately about this.

Not everything is a misrepresentation, not everything is

incredibly inflammatory, not everything is conclusory, not

everything is pure fiction. You know, lying, thieving,

malfeasance, bad faith, particularly when you are talking

to me, they don't help you. They make me to think less of

all of you. You can do it, but it just causes me think

less of all of you. When you get to a jury, they are

really going to toast you for it because they don't think

adults behave that way.

I thought about ways to control that. The best I

came up with was to start a list of banned words and fine

you $25 every time you use one of those banned words. And

at least my tentative list includes: Incredibly

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Suite 17205 - 700 Stewart St. - Seattle, WA 98101

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inflammatory, conclusory, pure fiction, bad faith. We

will just not do that. And, frankly, at some point, if

need be, in front of the jury I will sanction both of you

for just that kind of behavior. It doesn't have a place

in the courtroom.

Having said that, this is the City's motion.

Ms. Michael, you are taking the lead?

MS. MICHAEL: Yes, your Honor, I am.

THE COURT: Please call your first witness.

MS. MICHAEL: May I ask that witnesses that are

going to be testifying be excluded while others are

testifying?

THE COURT: Yes.

MS. MICHAEL: Anybody that expects to be a

witness, please step outside.

MR. BLANKENSHIP: My only concern with that, your

Honor, is these are technical computer issues, and I would

like to have Ms. Goodman here just so if something comes

up that is new that I don't understand, she would be able

to help me respond to it.

THE COURT: Do you want to respond to that?

MS. MICHAEL: Your Honor, we have had about four

hours to review all of the materials they filed this

morning. So we are already playing on an unlevel playing

field, I guess I would say. To have their expert witness

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

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get to listen to our expert witness and tailor testimony

as a result I think would be unfair.

THE COURT: I will permit Ms. Goodman to stay. I

will invite your witness to come in, although he may be

called first, which we will get to anyway. That way we

will attempt to have somewhat more of a level playing

field. It seems this would be more expedient, if each

side hears what the other says about it. Your first

witness is?

MS. MICHAEL: Mr. Richard Conrad.

THE COURT: Thank you.

Whereupon,

RICHARD CONRAD

called as a witness, having been first duly sworn, was

examined and testified as follows:

THE CLERK: State your name for the record and

spell your last name.

THE WITNESS: Richard N. Conrad, C-O-N-R-A-D.

MS. MICHAEL: Your Honor, before I start with

Mr. Conrad, I know the court has allowed Ms. Goodman to

stay. May I ask that the other computer tech people --

THE COURT: The other tech people are out.

MS. MICHAEL: Thank you, Judge.

DIRECT EXAMINATION

By Ms. Michael:

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

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Q. Would you state your name and spell your last name for

the court reporter?

A. Richard M. Conrad, C-O-N-R-A-D.

Q. And what is your address, sir?

A. 4418 77nd Avenue Southeast, Mercer Island, Washington.

Q. And what is your job with the City of Mercer Island?

A. I am the city manager of the City of Mercer Island.

Q. Was that your position throughout Ms. Londi Lindell's

tenure?

A. Yes.

Q. I want to discuss the laptop computer that remains in

Ms. Lindell's possession. How did she come to get that

laptop, sir?

A. The specific laptop that we have been talking about

was purchased by the City at Ms. Lindell's initiation to

be a laptop that she would use in the course of doing

business for the City.

Q. As I understand, she had a previous laptop, but it

needed to be replaced; is that right?

A. That's correct. There was another laptop that she had

sought, and actually I required that she have in

connection with some time off that she took in 2005, 2006.

Q. In order --

MR. BLANKENSHIP: Your Honor, my understanding

was that you didn't want us to be addressing the ownership

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

Suite 17205 - 700 Stewart St. - Seattle, WA 98101

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of the laptop at the hearing. It seems like that is

exactly what we are doing right now.

THE COURT: I am assuming this is going to be

some foundation, and then we will cut it off. As I have

said from the start, the question of who owns the laptop

isn't in federal court.

MS. MICHAEL: Your Honor, we can short circuit it

if Ms. Lindell will acknowledge she has used the laptop

for both City purposes as well as information with regard

to her lawsuit and her claims.

MR. BLANKENSHIP: She has already declared that.

THE COURT: That is in her declaration.

MS. MICHAEL: Fair enough. Sometimes it has been

denied.

THE COURT: We don't need those rejoinders.

Let's stay on the facts.

MS. MICHAEL: I apologize, your Honor. The next

witness -- Mr. Blankenship might have some cross.

MR. BLANKENSHIP: I don't have anything, if it

was about the ownership of the laptop, which is about all

I heard.

THE COURT: Mr. Conrad, you may step down.

MS. MICHAEL: The City would call Katie Knight.

Your Honor, I have an exhibit to mark.

THE COURT: Why don't we wait until we get the

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

Suite 17205 - 700 Stewart St. - Seattle, WA 98101

9

witness sworn in.

Whereupon,

KATIE KNIGHT

called as a witness, having been first duly sworn, was

examined and testified as follows:

THE COURT: You have an exhibit you wish to give

the clerk?

MS. MICHAEL: I do.

THE COURT: You may approach.

THE CLERK: Would you state your name for the

record and spell your last name?

THE WITNESS: Katie Knight, K-N-I-G-H-T.

DIRECT EXAMINATION

By Ms. Michael:

Q. Ms. Knight, can you tell us your address?

A. 12950 297th Place Northeast, Duvall, Washington,

98019.

Q. What is your title at the City of Mercer Island?

A. I am the city attorney for Mercer Island.

Q. Was there a period of time in 2008 where you came to

have access to Londi Lindell's desktop computer?

A. Yes.

Q. Can you tell us what period of time that was?

A. Approximately mid-February to about mid-April.

Q. And what was your purpose in accessing her desktop

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

Suite 17205 - 700 Stewart St. - Seattle, WA 98101

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computer?

A. There was ongoing concern that Ms. Lindell was

continuing her campaign, so to speak, against the city

manager. The need was felt to observe what she was doing.

Q. And in your ability to access the laptop -- I'm sorry,

the desktop computer, what did you discover?

A. I learned that she was having frequent conversations

and forwarding e-mails to Pete Mayer. She was also

preparing her case essentially against the City on the

desktop computer.

Q. Was there anything else about the desktop that caused

you any concern?

A. In reviewing the documentation, obviously I was

concerned that she was preparing her mediation and her

briefing and structuring what appeared to be a case

against the City. There was also missing documentation on

there.

Q. What do you mean by "missing documentation"?

A. She had some files located on it. I think she had a

mediation folder. And there would be certain -- I don't

know if they were shortcuts. I am not very techie, but

there would be certain shortcuts to a file, where if you

clicked onto it, the information would not be located

there, even though it indicated it should be there.

Q. Did you ever receive any sort of message from the

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

Suite 17205 - 700 Stewart St. - Seattle, WA 98101

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desktop when you accessed it, and, if so, what kind of

message?

A. To the best of my recollection, it was something like

"shortcut not found" or some sort of shortcut to another

file. And I believe I determined or learned somehow that

there probably needed to be a CD or a DVD or a flash drive

put in to access additional information that might be

located with the shortcut.

Q. So there was information that had been on the desktop

that you were not able to access; is that right?

A. Correct.

MS. MICHAEL: I have no further questions. Thank

you. I did want to ask the one question about the exhibit

I marked, which is the e-mail policy.

By Ms. Michael:

Q. Showing you Exhibit Number 1. As the City Attorney,

can you tell us what employees are told with regard to

their right to privacy with regard to City-provided

material?

A. That they will not have any expectation of privacy in

the use of the City-provided computers, materials and

software.

MS. MICHAEL: Thank you.

THE COURT: Mr. Blankenship.

CROSS-EXAMINATION

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

Suite 17205 - 700 Stewart St. - Seattle, WA 98101

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By Mr. Blankenship:

Q. Good afternoon, Ms. Knight.

A. Hello, Mr. Blankenship.

Q. If I understand your testimony, you were basically

secretly going into Ms. Lindell's computer and removing

information without notifying her; is that right?

A. I was not removing any information.

Q. You were searching it without telling her; isn't that

right?

A. I was reviewing the work that she was doing on her

City computer, correct.

Q. What was your role at this time? Had you become the

City Attorney?

A. I was the acting City Attorney.

Q. Had you received your $40,000 raise yet for replacing

Bob Sterbank?

A. I don't think I ever got a $40,000 raise, counsel.

Q. You got a significant raise, though, didn't you?

MS. MICHAEL: I would object, your Honor. It is

beyond the scope.

MR. BLANKENSHIP: It goes to credibility.

THE COURT: I will permit the question. I think

we need to move on.

By Mr. Blankenship:

Q. You got a significant raise when you went from

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

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assistant attorney to City Attorney, didn't you?

A. I got a series of steps over a period of three years.

And I was doing two jobs.

Q. Can you give me an approximate about what the change

was in your pay?

A. I think as the acting City Attorney I might have been

bumped up $10,000 or so.

Q. So were you aware of a time when Mike Bolasina

provided Ms. Lindell with documents in order for her to

prepare for her mediation?

A. Yes.

Q. And you have been -- Are you aware that the documents

that were in the mediation file have been produced to

you -- to the City?

MS. MICHAEL: Object, your Honor. That is not

completely accurate.

THE COURT: We will take that up on redirect

examination.

By Mr. Blankenship:

Q. Are you aware that any documents that were saved under

a folder that says "mediation" were actually produced

through discovery?

A. Through discovery? I'm sorry, discovery in the

mediation itself or discovery subsequently after the

lawsuit was filed?

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

Suite 17205 - 700 Stewart St. - Seattle, WA 98101

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Q. In this case.

A. I believe that -- I'm not sure I understand what

you're asking. The documents that were in the body of

what I was reviewing?

Q. Right. You referenced a mediation folder. I guess my

questions to you is, are you aware that all the documents

that were in the mediation folder were documents that were

produced by Ms. Lindell?

A. I don't know if I can answer. There were tens of

thousands of pieces of paper that were produced. I know

there were some from Ms. Lindell. But I think we

received -- Some of them are drafts. I would say, no, I

don't believe that all of those were produced, frankly.

Q. Were you aware that Mike Bolasina told Ms. Lindell to

prepare for the mediation?

A. I believe so. He knew I was going through these.

Q. But he also told Ms. Lindell that she should prepare

for the mediation?

A. I don't know if he told her that or not. You would

have to ask him.

Q. You basically identified this e-mail and internet use

policy document, correct?

A. Correct.

Q. You would agree that an expectation of privacy -- that

somebody would have an expectation of privacy in a

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

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computer that they used after their employment ended,

wouldn't you?

A. It depended on who owned the computer. If it was a

City-owned computer, no.

Q. So your personal computer, do you think you have a

right to privacy with respect to it, or should I be free

to go through everything on your personal laptop?

MS. MICHAEL: Object, your Honor. This is far

afield.

THE COURT: I will sustain the objection. It is

also argumentative, counsel.

By Mr. Blankenship:

Q. Isn't it true, though, that you have and you had

access to all of the e-mails that Ms. Lindell sent from

her Mercer Island e-mail account, right?

A. From everything she had on the desktop.

Q. It is not only on the desktop. The City of Mercer

Island has a server, don't they?

A. Correct.

Q. And the server would keep track of e-mails, would it

not?

A. As far as I understand it, yes.

Q. So to the extent there were e-mails that were sent

from Ms. Lindell's City e-mail, the City would have access

to it, correct?

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A. Correct.

Q. And as you sit there, you have no knowledge or

information that Ms. Lindell had any other e-mail accounts

that she was using, other than the City e-mail account, do

you?

A. I believe she was using Bill Hansen's e-mail account.

There were e-mails she sent from the City server to Bill

Hansen, which was her home account. And I had received

some from her in the past from that account.

Q. Other than Hansen, though, do you agree with

Ms. Lindell's declaration that she wasn't using a personal

e-mail account at all until after she was fired?

A. I didn't have a chance to review her declaration.

MR. BLANKENSHIP: Thank you, Ms. Knight.

REDIRECT EXAMINATION

By Ms. Michael:

Q. Are you familiar with the Llindell at live dot com

account?

A. No.

MS. MICHAEL: I have no further questions. Thank

you.

THE COURT: Anything further, Mr. Blankenship?

MR. BLANKENSHIP: No, your Honor. Thank you.

THE COURT: You may step down.

MS. MICHAEL: The City would call Mike Kaser.

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

Suite 17205 - 700 Stewart St. - Seattle, WA 98101

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Whereupon,

MIKE KASER

called as a witness, having been first duly sworn, was

examined and testified as follows:

THE CLERK: Please state your name and spell your

last name.

THE WITNESS: Mike Kaser, K-A-S-E-R.

DIRECT EXAMINATION

By Ms. Michael:

Q. Good afternoon, Mr. Kaser. Would you tell us your

address, please?

A. 7030 Carmichael Avenue Southeast, Snoqualmie,

Washington 98065.

Q. And what is your position with the City of Mercer

Island?

A. I am the information services manager.

Q. And how long have you been the information services

manager?

A. Since 2006.

Q. I am going to short circuit a lot of what you and I

discussed, because the court has ruled that the issue of

Ms. Lindell utilizing -- getting the laptop from the City

and utilizing it is not going to be part of this hearing.

So I will move right into another area. The area I want

to move into is, in your work with the City are there

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

Suite 17205 - 700 Stewart St. - Seattle, WA 98101

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occasions where users will have a bug or a virus or some

issue with the operation of their computer?

A. Yes.

Q. What do they do if they have an issue with a virus or

a bug or something? What is your role?

A. Typically we will get the help desk to help them, or

our antivirus system will let us know whether they do or

not, if it has detected something. Depending on the issue

specifics, we will either do a simple scan or go grab the

computer and do some more troubleshooting to solve the

problem.

Q. Have you ever in your work operated, because someone

reports a virus or a bug, something like CCleaner, that

selectively destroys or removes data?

A. No.

Q. At the City of Mercer Island, are there ever times

that you do intentionally destroy data on a computer, and,

if so, when?

A. Yes, there is. Through our standard surplus cycle, as

we replace computers, bring computers in, we completely

wipe the hard drives, and/or we send the hard drives off

to a Shred-It type company that will destroy the hard

drive for us before we deliver the computer to recycling.

Q. Why do you do that?

A. So no City data leaves the City and falls into someone

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

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else's hands. We don't do anything that exciting at the

City of Mercer Island, but kind of standard practice.

Q. Why is it you don't selectively remove data from

computers that have viruses or bugs?

THE COURT: Counsel, we are going to need you to

slow down. You will need to pause periodically to

breathe.

Ms. Michael

Q. Mr. Kaser, why is it that at the City of Mercer

Island, when you are troubleshooting and trying to find

out if there is a virus and whatnot that you do not

selectively remove data from a computer with a program

such as CCleaner?

MR. BLANKENSHIP: Your Honor, I would object to

foundation, that this witness even knows what CCleaner is.

There is a presumption to the question.

THE COURT: I will sustain the objection. Lay

the foundation.

By Ms. Michael:

Q. Can you describe your knowledge with regard to

products such as CCleaner and what they are designed to

do?

A. Sure. We are not specifically -- I am not

specifically familiar with CCleaner itself. I am familiar

with a large variety of computer software and things that

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are used to either wipe a computer or clear a cache or how

to work with the registry and that type of stuff, just out

of general computer knowledge or working in this industry

for ten years now. So not CCleaner specifically, but from

what I have read about CCleaner, it is not the only type

of software out there like that.

Q. And is that the type of software that you have some

general familiarity with? If not the specific CCleaner

product, other types?

A. Yes. We don't use anything like CCleaner in our

troubleshooting or wiping of data at the City.

Q. And why is it that you don't use anything like

CCleaner or any other data destruction type device?

A. Our purpose in getting rid of data is to completely

wipe the hard drive. We write zeros to it, meaning there

is nothing recoverable on it, including the operating

system, because we are delivering it off to be recycled.

MS. MICHAEL: I don't have any other questions.

Thank you.

CROSS-EXAMINATION

By Mr. Blankenship:

Q. Hello, Mr. Kaser.

A. Hello.

Q. How long have you worked for the City of Mercer

Island?

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A. About seven years now.

Q. And I want to go back to some of your testimony when

you were talking about wiping hard drives. Do you

remember that testimony?

A. I do.

Q. If I understand your testimony, if you wipe a hard

drive, you cannot recover data from it after that; is that

correct?

A. In theory. The way that we wipe them, yes.

Q. So you would expect if a hard drive was wiped, that

you wouldn't be able to recover data from it the way you

wipe it, right?

A. Yes. In the way that we wipe them, yeah.

Q. And what program do you use to wipe computers at

Mercer Island?

A. We have used -- it is called DOD Wipe. Essentially it

stands for Department of Defense Wipe. But it is a

product that's -- I think it was developed by Symantec,

and it essentially goes in and writes zeros to the hard

drive.

Q. Basically it overwrites all of the data on the hard

drive, right?

A. It writes zeros to the hard drive.

Q. Which would eliminate all of the data in the free

space, correct?

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A. Essentially it writes zero to every sector on the hard

drive. Not just the free space, but all space.

Q. So you wouldn't be able to recover documents from

Mercer Island on that laptop, for example, right?

A. We have not gone through the practice of forensically

trying to rebuild any of these hard drives, so I couldn't

conclusively say that. But in theory, yes, you would not

be able to recover any data off of the drive that we wiped

with --

Q. Is that based on your personal knowledge as you sit

there, and based on your understanding of how things work,

once something is wiped, it is not recoverable, correct?

A. Using the software that we use, yes.

Q. And you have never used CCleaner, right?

A. No.

Q. About how much of your work entails repairing

computers for people, employees?

A. Are you looking for a percentage of time?

Q. Sure.

A. Roughly, maybe 30 percent.

Q. So you don't send out the computers at Mercer Island

to a place like PC Doctor; is that correct?

A. No. We do all of our work in-house.

Q. Did you ever work with Londi Lindell?

A. Yes.

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Q. Did you ever work with her and the laptop?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you recall transferring data from one laptop to the

other for her?

A. Yes.

Q. And do you recall that data including personal

information, such as family things and stuff with her

kids?

A. I don't really recall all of the contents of that

data. We transfer data from people's old computers to

their new computers in our standard process all the time.

Q. You would agree, sir, that it was more than just work

data? There was personal data on there, too, wasn't

there?

A. I don't recall exactly what was on there.

Q. Does Mercer Island use like a remote desktop program

that allows somebody to log on from home and log into

their desktop at work?

A. We do.

Q. Isn't it true that Ms. Lindell had a desktop at work,

right?

A. It is.

Q. And that she used the laptop computer to remote access

into the desktop, right?

A. I couldn't say that. Normally people who have laptops

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don't remote control their desktops. It is people who

don't have laptops from home that will remote control

their desktops at work.

Q. It is your testimony -- When I use remote desktop, I

am actually on my desktop computer. Is it your testimony

that Mercer Island doesn't log on remotely to their

desktop computer?

A. Most of the time people don't have a laptop and a

desktop; they have one or the other. So for those who

don't have a laptop, they will remote control their work

desktop from whatever home computer they are using. For

the users that have a laptop, typically it is also their

work station, and they have a dock station, which wasn't

in this case. I wouldn't recommend to somebody who has a

laptop, per se, to necessarily connect to their desktop at

work, because their work laptop may also already have the

software that they need or the access to the network that

they need. There might not be a reason to connect to the

work desktop also.

Q. Wouldn't it make more sense to log into the server?

You would agree that in any case Ms. Lindell would be

logging into the server when she was accessing work

through her laptop, correct?

A. To the first part of your question, I wouldn't say it

would make more sense, because her laptop would be part of

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our network anyway, meaning it is joined to our domain and

has access to all of the stuff. All she would need to do

is establish a connection to our network, and then her

laptop would behave just as a desktop might. I'm not

quite sure what you mean by connecting to the server.

Q. I could be mistaken about how it works. I appreciate

your information on that. Did you ever search

Ms. Lindell's laptop? Did you ever remove data from it or

inspect it?

A. No.

Q. Were you doing that with her desktop?

A. There may have been a time where we scanned her

workstation, after she left, for anything. I don't

recall.

Q. Do you know in this case that there are allegations

that Ms. Lindell wiped her hard drive?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. And would you expect that she would be able to recover

data from a hard drive that was wiped?

A. Using a computer software program like CCleaner, my

understanding is that it does not wipe the computer. It

simply wipes selective things, like your registry, keys

that are no longer used, browser cache, that type of

stuff. I was not aware that she wiped the computer in,

say, the same sense that I am describing for the City's

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practice of recycling the computers.

MR. BLANKENSHIP: Thank you, sir.

MS. MICHAEL: No additional questions, your

Honor.

THE COURT: You may step down.

MS. MICHAEL: We would call Jonathan Yeh.

Whereupon,

JONATHAN YEH

called as a witness, having been first duly sworn, was

examined and testified as follows:

THE CLERK: Will you state your name for the

record and spell your last name, please?

THE WITNESS: Jonathan Yeh, spelled Y-E-H.

MS. MICHAEL: Your Honor, I have a series of

documents I would like to have marked as either one

exhibit or each separately, if the court has a preference.

I don't. These are from Mr. Yeh's file with regard to his

communications with the Blankenship Law Firm.

THE COURT: Mr. Blankenship, have you seen these

documents?

MR. BLANKENSHIP: Counsel, are these the

documents that were produced by this witness?

MS. MICHAEL: They are. They are a selection of

them. I have all of them, but I will only be asking about

a selection.

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MR. BLANKENSHIP: If those are the documents,

your Honor, then I have seen them. I don't have them with

me.

THE COURT: All right. You may mark them as one

exhibit.

MS. MICHAEL: Thank you, your Honor. I will go

ahead and give Mr. Blankenship -- I ended up with extra

copies, but each one I will be talking about is in there.

So there are three copies of each one I have been talking

about.

DIRECT EXAMINATION

By Ms. Michael:

Q. Mr. Yeh, would you tell us your address, please?

A. Our business address is 157 Yesler Way, Third Floor,

Seattle, Washington 98104.

Q. And what is your profession, sir?

A. I am an attorney.

Q. And do you have a special expertise in computer work?

A. The firm specializes in electronic discovery and

computer forensics work.

Q. Are you the technical person that gets in and does

that kind of work?

A. It depends. Mostly not. We have a computer software

technician and engineers that do most of the actual

hands-on work. Depending on staffing issues, sometimes I

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will perform some of the functions.

Q. And have you had a chance to review the file in this

case that Blank Law & Technology has on this matter?

A. I have.

Q. When was Blank Law & Technology retained?

A. I believe in early November 2010.

Q. And by whom were they retained?

A. By the Blankenship Law Firm.

Q. Would you look, please, sir, at your Bates number 1 of

Exhibit A-2. It appears that you might have been retained

on or about November 8th by the Blankenship Law Firm; is

that correct?

A. I believe so, yes.

Q. When was it that you came to understand that you were

actually supposed to be the independent third-party

forensic examiner the court had ordered?

MR. BLANKENSHIP: Object to foundation.

THE COURT: Overruled. I think I will be able to

track what I did.

THE WITNESS: I believe that was made aware to me

somewhere around just prior to Christmas time via a letter

from your firm.

By Ms. Michael:

Q. And we sent a letter November 15th of 2010, indicating

that we believed you were the independent forensic firm.

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That is not part of Exhibit A-2 because that is not part

of your communications with the Blankenship Law Firm.

Does that refresh your memory about when you were notified

that in fact you were supposed to be the independent

expert?

A. Sure. I don't have that letter in front of me, but it

is a dated letter.

Q. Fair enough. I understand you entered into an

engagement agreement with the Blankenship Law Firm; is

that correct?

A. Yes.

Q. Would you please look at your Bates number 8? That is

an e-mail from you, dated November 8th of 2010. When you

say, "We will then begin extracting the active files,"

what were you telling Mr. Goldsworthy?

A. Basically, when you have a computer hard drive, there

are files that are sort of, I guess, active versus deleted

and fragmented space. So we were extracting just the sort

of active files for processing into a database.

Q. Do you typically as a forensic examiner get asked to

extract only the active files?

A. It sort of depends on the project. Sometimes yes,

sometimes no.

Q. So as a forensic examiner, sometimes somebody will

actually ask you to clone the hard drive and only pull

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active files?

A. Yes.

Q. How often does that happen?

A. It is hard for me to say percentage wise. It does

vary from case to case.

Q. Active files are something I personally can pull off

without any special expertise; isn't that right?

A. It depends how you mean "pull off." A lot of times

people will copy off active files themselves. But it

changes what we call the metadata on the files a lot of

times. Even just pulling off the active files, people

will engage our firm to make sure these things remain

intact.

Q. But "active files," you don't require any special

software to get the active files, do you?

A. No.

Q. So I could do it at my desktop at work?

A. Yes.

Q. At some point, as I understand it, the Blankenship Law

Firm gave you a list of search terms that they had come up

with; is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. And then later on you were given far more search terms

that we did in collaboration with the Blankenship firm?

Is that your understanding?

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A. Yes.

Q. I would like to ask you to look, please, at Exhibit --

Bates Stamp 17 of Exhibit A-2. It is an e-mail dated

November 9th of 2010. Down at the bottom you were telling

Mr. Goldsworthy of the Blankenship Law Firm in the second

paragraph, "I have been told that there is very little

e-mail on the laptop. I don't know if that is relevant or

surprising to you or not, but many of these kinds of

matters focus on e-mail, so I thought I would mention it

in case it was a surprising fact." Do you see that?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. Do you recall talking with Mr. Goldsworthy about that?

A. I recall writing this e-mail. I do not recall that we

had any additional discussion on that subject.

Q. At this point in time had the technician that was

actually searching the Lindell laptop had conversations

with you about what he was or was not finding?

A. Yes.

Q. And are they memorialized in writing anywhere?

A. Not other than the sort of general description here in

this e-mail.

Q. One surprising fact you are finding is there is very

little e-mail; is that right?

A. Sure. Yes.

Q. If you would next look at your Bates number 21,

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please, an e-mail dated November 9th? And it indicates

that "they," which I assume means the Blankenship firm,

and please correct me if I'm wrong, "would like the

following tagging buttons." And they list four, which are

"produce, responsive, nonresponsive, privileged slash work

product." What does this mean, "tagging buttons," with

those four categories?

A. Basically we had been asked to create a database of

the files from Ms. Lindell's laptop. Once that is up

there, the reason you create that database is for the

attorneys to review the various documents that are in

response to search terms.

And once they do, they usually have some sort of

tagging function. The online display has these little

buttons so you can say this document is responsive, this

document should be produced, and that tells us what to do

with the documents later.

Q. And so they were going to tag these as produced,

responsive, nonresponsive or privileged?

A. Yes.

Q. To your knowledge, did that occur?

A. I wasn't there, but I believe so.

Q. Do you have any way of knowing if the City was

provided with all of those documents?

A. All of which documents?

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Q. Produce, nonresponsive, responsive or a privilege log

for the privilege?

A. No.

Q. I want to ask you to please look at Bates number 27

from the documents that you provided. My copy has a

slight handwritten note I have covered up. This is an

e-mail down at the bottom, November 10th, to Rick

Goldsworthy from you. It indicates, "I notice your review

team has marked some files for production and just wanted

to give you a heads up on production time lines." Do you

see that?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. My question is, do you recall discussing what files

they didn't want you to produce?

A. No. Our job is just whatever gets marked "produce,"

we produce. I wasn't given any instructions about what

specifically was not to be produced.

Q. Do you still have records that would establish what

you did produce to the Blankenship firm -- in what format

all the documents were produced?

A. I believe the database that we set up for them is

still sitting there.

Q. Would you please look next, sir, at Bates number 29?

It is an e-mail, November 14th, from I guess -- Is

Mr. Tsuji a technician?

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A. No, he is another attorney in the firm.

Q. Is he another technical person as well?

A. It is a small firm, so we sort of have mixed roles,

all of us. Mr. Tsuji is sort of the head of the technical

department.

Q. And Mr. Tsuji indicates he wants to give you an update

on this case. "Come find me first thing in the morning."

Do you remember what his update was on November 14th?

A. Not just off the top of my head, no.

Q. Do you recall having any discussions at any time with

the Blankenship firm about things that you were either

puzzled by, other than the lack of e-mails? Anything that

you were puzzled by or found intriguing or wanted to bring

to their attention?

A. No.

Q. If you would look next, please, at Bates number 45?

Down at the bottom is an e-mail from you to Rick

Goldsworthy. You are asking him, "How would you like us

to produce the new data set for review? We can just turn

over a CD with the native files or we can process the

files and upload them to your existing database. We can

upload them as a separate subdatabase." And then

Mr. Goldsworthy responds, "I think having the documents

uploaded to the database would be more expedient and

transparent and efficient, especially considering the

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

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review process we previously engaged in."

What exactly did you do for the Blankenship Law Firm

on January 5th?

A. I believe the reason I sent this e-mail is at this

point it became a little vague as to who was paying our

bills for what, and therefore who I needed obtain

authorization from for what. So basically I consulted

Mr. Goldsworthy and Mr. Youssef to sort of determine how

they wanted to review this new set of files.

After I sent this e-mail, I believe I recall sending

an e-mail to your firm and you sort of describing the same

process, and whether or not you authorized the payment,

the cost of this. If I remember correctly, you didn't.

So what we ended up doing was just producing a CD with

just the native files, instead of doing the database.

Q. Isn't it accurate to say that the Blankenship firm had

access to your database and the City was not offered that?

A. The database of the original documents that we had

processed, yes.

Q. And if we can look at the next page of that document,

the same date, the same e-mail. It says, "So, for

instance, if you already marked a large number of

documents, responsive, nonresponsive or privileged,

et cetera, and those identical documents are also in the

new set, we can port over the tags to the new subdatabase

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Barry L. Fanning, RMR, CRR - Official Court Reporter

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so that you would not have to re-review those documents."

What are you telling Mr. Goldsworthy would occur?

A. Originally when we had the database and pulled off the

active files, they reviewed them and tagged them however

they would have tagged them. So once we had this new set

of native files -- Because the search terms, some of them

overlapped, some of them didn't, probably some of these

search results from the two sets. If we had uploaded them

into another sub-database, we would have been able to

match up which ones they already reviewed and which ones

they already tagged, and just sort of copy over those

designations to the new database, just to save the time of

reviewing those documents again.

Q. Again, this is directed only to the Blankenship Law

Firm, the City was not involved in this?

A. At this point, no.

Q. If you would look next, please, at Bates number 55, an

e-mail from Mr. Goldsworthy to you, dated Monday,

January 24th. That states, "I just wanted to follow up

with you regarding when you think you will be able to send

us a spreadsheet listing all of the withheld files. Will

you be able to send that over today?" Do you see that?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you send them a spreadsheet of all of the withheld

files?

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A. Yes, we did.

Q. Does the spreadsheet indicate which ones they had

tagged as responsive, nonresponsive, privileged, or do you

recall?

A. I believe the spreadsheet was just a straight export

of the metadata fields, and FTK, the program we were using

at that point to search the data for those files. At that

point, they weren't in a database. You wouldn't have been

able to tag anything specifically.

Q. So what are the "withheld files" you are referencing

in this e-mail?

A. I believe at this point, when we didn't do the

database for the second time around, we produced all of

the files that had been responsive, the native files, just

on a CD. And so they then came back and identified a list

of files that they just designated as withheld. And we

found those files, pulled them from the set that was from

the CD. And then using FTK, extracted -- produced a

spreadsheet of the metadata of that subset of files.

Q. Do you still have the withheld files or are those in

the Blankenship possession?

A. They were produced to the Blankenship firm, but we

keep an archive copy.

Q. You do have an archive copy?

A. Yes.

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Q. If you would look, please, at Bates number 56 of A-2,

an e-mail thread dated January 26th, at the bottom, from

you to Mr. Goldsworthy. It starts, "When you confirm that

you are asking me to produce these three files," and you

list three files, "the LKL chronology, the Egger's short

report," and then something that has some numbers and

letters. And you are told up above, "Those are the

correct documents that we want you to produce." Do you

see that?

A. Yes.

Q. So they had been withheld initially, and then you were

allowed to produce those to us; is that right?

A. I believe so, yes.

Q. Were you told why those particular ones, out of all

the withheld documents, were allowed to be produced?

A. No.

Q. If you would look, please, at Exhibit 58 of Exhibit

A-2, a February 25th e-mail thread, from Alex Harmon to

you. Who is Alex Harmon?

A. He is a computer technician in our firm.

Q. And Mr. Harmon indicates, "Under USB storage

device --" First of all, what is a USB storage device?

A. Basically your computer has what are called USB ports.

It is a little slot on the side you can connect various

devices to it. So it is like a thumb drive or any of

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these portable data storage devices.

Q. So if I wanted to download information from my

computer, I could put in a USB drive, download some

information and maybe take it to another computer?

A. Or vice versa.

Q. Or download information into the computer from the

thumb drive?

A. Yes.

Q. And did it used to be more prevalent to do CD burning

techniques rather than thumb drives or USB drives?

A. I don't know what you mean by "used to be more

prevalent."

Q. Have USB drives or thumb drives become more popular in

the last few years?

A. I don't know. In my own personal usage, yes. But

other than that, I can't say industry-wide. I don't

really have an opinion on that.

Q. Do people sometimes burn information to CDs?

A. Yes.

Q. So you can do the same type process, where you take

information off a computer, burn it to a CD, and then you

take the CD to another computer?

A. Yes.

Q. And so that way you have arguably removed obvious

evidence of documents that were on the computer by

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downloading them to either a thumb drive or a CD? I say

"obvious evidence," to a nonforensic examiner person.

A. Sure. Let me make sure I am getting your question.

Are you saying it is obvious when you do that or --

Q. For example, if I download a file from my computer to

a thumb drive, then there is no obvious evidence that the

file was there because now it has been removed?

A. I wouldn't really say that is true. Usually people --

Not usually. I mean, the process can be, you can copy

things over, you can move things over, you can cut and

paste things over. Depending on what method you use, you

will either leave the original copy on your computer as it

is, or you will move it off, but at that point usually

what the computer does is it just tags that as being

deleted, and it is still there, but it is hidden from

view.

Q. Hidden from view. Right. And so in this e-mail from

Mr. Harmon to you, he is looking at USB storage devices.

He indicates, "I found multiple results, including USB

thumb drives and iPods." Do you see that?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. So he is just reporting to you the findings of his

research?

A. Yes.

Q. And he goes on to say down below, "I identified

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multiple instances that may indicate CD burning activity

from February to November of 2010." Do you see that?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you discuss that with anyone at the Blankenship

firm?

A. I sent sort of a condensed version of this e-mail to

both Blankenship, and then eventually to your firm.

Q. I see that you sent it to Blankenship's firm on

February 28th, where you are identifying essentially what

Mr. Harmon told you. And that is Bates number 62.

A. Yes.

Q. I don't see that we are on that e-mail.

A. No. At this point the process that we agreed on is we

would provide that information first to the Blankenship

firm, in the case it revealed anything that was privileged

or otherwise -- basically privileged, so that they would

have a chance to review it first before we produced it to

you.

Q. Under "CD burning," you are indicating that you

examined the Windows system event log for evidence of IMAP

CD burning events, and identified multiple instances that

could indicate burning activity from February to

November 2010. Do you see that?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you have any reason to believe the fellow that told

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you that was the case was inaccurate?

A. No.

Q. If you would look, please, at number 59. This is

dated March 1st, the date that we got the third and final

CD from your office. Do you remember that?

A. I do.

Q. And on this one, again, from Mr. Goldsworthy to

Mr. Yeh. It indicates they have removed the information

that you sent to them, and they would like you to now

produce the following documents and files from

Ms. Lindell's laptop computer that were previously

withheld by Ms. Lindell. And then there is a listing of

several files numbers. Do you see that?

A. Yes.

Q. Did they tell you why they were authorizing you to

release that group of files from the withheld files?

A. No.

Q. Again, it is not your concern what they are

withholding and why; is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. At this point in time, on March 1st, did you perceive

that you were the independent forensic examiner retained

by the court, or did you perceive that you were an expert

hired by the plaintiff?

A. At this point we believed we were sort of a neutral

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party that was basically subject to instruction from both

sides.

Q. Although you would check with the other side if we

made a request, correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And in the past, if the Blankenship firm had made a

request, you didn't check with us, did you?

A. That would be before your letter.

Q. Is this the first time that you have been in a

situation where you were first retained by a party, and

then put in the spot where you perceive yourself as

neutral, or do you do that on other occasions?

A. It has happened before. It is not that common, but

yes, it has happened before.

Q. And do you see any issues with ethical -- Strike

that. Never mind.

I have just a couple more of these documents to ask

you about, and then a few follow up questions and I will

be finished, Mr. Yeh.

These seem to be a bit out of order, but this is the

Bates number order I got. This is Bates number 78, an

e-mail from Mr. Goldsworthy to you, dated January 21st.

It states, "Attached are two lists containing the files we

are withholding from defendants. The only two files that

are not on the attached lists that we also want to exclude

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are the two I reviewed yesterday and I asked you to pull."

And there are two files listed. "Please withhold those

files as well. Also, please generate an Excel spreadsheet

of the withheld files, including the file names and paths,

and produce the rest of the files to the City." Do you

see that?

A. Yes.

Q. And did you do as they instructed?

A. Yes.

Q. And if you would look at number 79, an e-mail thread

from Mr. Goldsworthy to you, Tuesday, January 18th. It

says, "I am attaching five separate documents containing

separate lists of files we have reviewed from plaintiff's

laptop computer that should not," underscore not, "be

produced to defendant City at this time. The attached

lists contain approximately 339 files we wish to exclude

from production. Once you have excluded these files,

please produce the balance of the 'produced' files to the

defendant." Do you see that?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you know why they were withholding some of the,

quote, "produced files" from the defendant?

A. No, nothing was explained to me.

Q. I would like to ask you about one of these

spreadsheets that was provided that Mr. Muchmore will talk

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a bit more about. I have copies.

MS. MICHAEL: Your Honor, may I have a document

marked?

THE COURT: Yes. You may approach.

THE CLERK: A-3.

By Ms. Michael:

Q. Do you have A-3 in front of you, sir?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. I would like you to look at the section I am about to

highlight from the screen, "French art presentation

66923." Do you see that?

A. Yes.

Q. That number is 66926 in the log that we were given.

Do you know why that would be -- why the numbers would be

out of sequence like that?

A. Which set of documents is this?

Q. This is from the Lindell laptop native production.

And Mr. Muchmore will have testimony about this as well.

I am wondering if you know why there is a gap in the

numbering.

A. I'm sorry. Can you tell me again what you are asking?

Q. You bet. The one that I have highlighted that says

"French art presentation," and then it has the number

669226 -- I'm sorry, the number is 669223 on your

document. On the spreadsheet that we have got, the number

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is 66926 (sic). Do you know why that would be?

A. I don't. The number itself is something that is added

by FTK. It is not in the original file. They should

match up between the spreadsheet that goes with this list

of files and the file name here.

Q. And if they don't, what are the explanations for why

they don't match up?

A. It could be a lot of different things, particularly

with this particular production. Prior to the production,

we had a software crash internally. I don't know if you

recall my mentioning that to you. And so we did end up

having to reindex the drive. And so when we pulled some

of the things out, the original numbers might have been

changed. I don't know if that applies to this situation.

Other explanations for why sometimes the numbers

differ, sometimes there are different fragments of the

same document that might have the same file name but have

different numbers. Again, as to this particular file,

whether either of those explanations apply or not, I can't

tell you just right off the top of my head.

Q. Can you confirm that 669223 represents the forensic

toolkit ID number; is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. We found, and Mr. Muchmore will talk about this, the

numbers after approximately 520,000 do not match the

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produced slash privilege log and the file listing. Other

than the fact that you had an issue with your hard drive

or something, why would that be?

A. I really can't speculate without looking at what is

going on.

Q. There are documents in the production and privilege

log that Mr. Muchmore will address that do not appear on

the file listing. Why would that be?

A. There are documents here in the production --

Q. In the production that we have received and the

privilege log that do not appear on the file listing. Why

would that be?

A. Again, without being able to compare the two, I can't

explain that right now.

Q. What do shortcut files tell a forensic examiner such

as yourself?

A. It depends. For instance -- It depends on where they

are located, it depends on what they are a shortcut to.

Q. What kinds of information can you obtain as a forensic

examiner from shortcut files?

A. Well, basically that the document at some point was

linked to that shortcut. Whatever the destination of that

shortcut link is, was at some point accessed using this

computer.

Q. And let me know if I get over your head in any way

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here. Can you not tell when a document was created?

A. I don't believe so.

Q. Can you tell when it was accessed?

A. Again, I think you are a little beyond what I would be

qualified to testify on.

Q. So this is beyond your scope of expertise?

A. Yes.

MS. MICHAEL: Your Honor, I don't think I have

anything else for Mr. Yeh at this time. Thank you.

CROSS-EXAMINATION

By Mr. Blankenship:

Q. Good afternoon. I want to just ask you about this

database and see if I can clear up what the database is

for. Why in the first instance -- What would be the

reason for creating a database for online access?

A. It just simplifies the review process. There are all

sorts of reasons you would create a database.

Q. Is it fair to say it would make the search more

efficient and the ability to go through the documents

easier?

A. The documents that you have, yes, in the database.

Q. And did you understand that part of what you were

charged to do by the court was to work with my office to

make certain that we didn't produce privileged documents

and privileged files?

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A. At what point are you talking about?

Q. I am talking about once you became an independent

forensic examiner.

A. Yes. Part of our role is to help you identify what is

privileged and what should and should not be produced for

that reason.

Q. At any point, did anyone from my office ask you to

improperly withhold something or express concerns to you

about anything relating to your job or what you did?

MS. MICHAEL: Object to the form, your Honor.

THE COURT: Overruled.

THE WITNESS: To whether or not anything was

withheld improperly, I can't tell you. I was just told to

withhold a certain set of documents based on ID numbers,

and based on file names, and we did.

Mr. Blankenship:

Q. Is it fair to say you weren't involved in the

decision-making as to whether something was privileged or

not privileged?

A. No, we weren't involved.

Q. I want to go to the issue of e-mail. And there was

some testimony about not seeing a lot of e-mail. Do you

remember that testimony or the e-mail that reflected that?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. Isn't it true that, unless you have Outlook or Outlook

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Express, web-based e-mail wouldn't be captured or

downloaded on the computer?

A. That is true.

Q. If, for example, Ms. Lindell had used Hotmail, and she

just used it on the web, would you expect or not expect to

find her e-mails on the computer?

A. Normally you would not expect to find that much

e-mail. Sometimes you will find little bits and pieces

here and there. As a whole -- I guess in my previous

e-mail when I said it was surprising, I mean, it is just

that there wasn't e-mail on there. It didn't account for

the fact whether she used Outlook. I wasn't aware of any

sort of behavior she engaged in.

Q. At any point did someone say, hey, here is what this

case is about, here is what the issues are, here is what

we expect to be on the e-mail, or did we basically ask you

to mine information from the computer?

A. Basically we were asked to pull off certain kinds of

files, and then search them.

Q. And if I understand your testimony, there was only one

database, right?

A. Yes.

Q. But whatever you would have put in a database the

second time, which would have made things more efficient,

you produced in the CD-ROM, correct?

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A. I may have misspoke just now. There were in fact two

databases. There is only one via Relativity, the online

platform. The other is an FTK database that is in a

separate, more forensically-geared software. There are

two databases. The first one we did for your firm was in

a product called Relativity. And this had the online

functionality.

Q. So if there weren't -- If I understand what you are

saying, you had your own internal database, and then when

we hired you to make sure that we had located all the

active files on the computer, you made a database so we

could quickly and efficiently find things that were

responsive and privileged, and not have to open and close

each one of them with special software? Is that fair to

say?

A. Yes.

Q. Since there wasn't a third database, you know, with

respect to the documents that you were doing the broader

search that involved the City, there were no tags because

there was no third database, correct?

A. I guess the second database I was talking about, the

one in the FTK software, that is the one we used to do the

searches for the City's requests after the 15th or

whatever. So in that database -- That software does not

have that kind of functionality. Well, it does, but it

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wasn't utilized.

Q. I know that earlier you testified that anybody could

get on a computer and find active files. I kind of want

to understand. When you said that, do you mean without

any type of forensic software? Is that what you mean?

A. I believe so. You have files on your computer on your

desktop that you can click to them and copy them to

anything you want to. You obviously don't need any

special forensic software for that. I mean, Windows has a

search tool that you can click on and ask for it to find

files under certain terms. It is slow and it is clunky,

but it is possible to find.

Q. You have to know, though, that it is there and how to

use it, correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And just to let you know, you found stuff that we

hadn't found. I mean, we did our best.

MR. BLANKENSHIP: I don't have any further

questions. Thank you.

MS. MICHAEL: I have no further questions, your

Honor.

THE COURT: You may step down.

MS. MICHAEL: We would call Alan Muchmore as our

next witness.

Whereupon,

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ALAN MUCHMORE

called as a witness, having been first duly sworn, was

examined and testified as follows:

MS. MICHAEL: May Mr. Muchmore have a moment to

set up his laptop? He has a PowerPoint presentation.

THE COURT: Yes.

THE WITNESS: Is there a place for me to plug

this in? Would it be possible for me to testify from

another location?

THE COURT: You will have to be able to manually

manipulate it.

MS. MICHAEL: If I can just take a moment with my

paralegal, your Honor?

THE COURT: Counsel, we are running long. I

expect this witness is going to be here for a while.

While you sort through this, we will take a break. We

will be in recess.

(At this time a short break was taken.)

THE COURT: You may proceed.

MS. MICHAEL: Thank you, your Honor.

DIRECT EXAMINATION

By Ms. Michael:

Q. Mr. Muchmore, would you state your address for the

record?

A. 5518 17th Avenue Northeast, Seattle, Washington 98105.

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Q. Would you please tell us about your background and

credentials?

A. I have been working in the field of computers and IT

since about 1986, professionally. At the time, it would

be summer jobs or jobs while I was in school, until I got

out. And then I worked in the IT department in Houston.

And in 1991, I moved to Austria to write antivirus

software in the emerging field of antivirus. When I came

back and went to law school, I again worked in IT during

the summers and during the school year for extra money.

When I came to Seattle, I started working for law firms.

So starting in about the year 2000, I formed Muchmore

Consulting, where I began working for a number of

different law firms, that for my business included

providing IT support, networks, but also at that time

helping them with their cases when they touched upon

computer issues, performing forensic evaluations. And

then starting about six years ago, I started working as an

expert witness.

Q. And in the materials we received today, the

plaintiff's expert, I believe her last name is Goodman,

indicated that you have referred work to her. Do you

recall referring work to her, and, if so, can you tell us

the circumstances?

A. There have been circumstances where we have referred

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work to each other. I can think of two circumstances in

which there were drives or computers that needed to be

analyzed in a very timely fashion that just fell right

when I was on vacation, and I asked her to help with

those. I can think of a couple of other instances,

including one very recently, in which the attorney asking

for an expert was very close to me and decided that I

would not work well as an independent expert. So I

referred that to her. There have also been instances

recently in which there were items, say, extracting

e-mails from a server, that Alice has referred to me.

Q. Do you think she is more or less qualified than you in

the field of forensic examination of computers?

A. The work together -- We worked together in one

particular case in which she analyzed drives. And

everything -- my work with her has indicated she is

completely competent and knowledgeable enough to be a

forensic examiner. But I wouldn't have any knowledge that

would say she is more or less so than I.

Q. Thank you. Your resume is already in front of the

court, so I don't want to go into any more detail. I

would like to ask you -- And I know you have a PowerPoint

presentation. Can we talk about CCleaner and what it

does?

A. Certainly. When I first noticed the CCleaner software

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on this machine it caught my eye because I had heard of,

but I was not particularly familiar with it. So, of

course, one of the first items that I did is go to their

website and read about how they describe the software.

The company that creates it is called Piriform.

Q. Before we go any further -- I don't mean to interrupt

you, but let me ask you this: How did it come to

your attention -- I think I left out a little

foundational information. Would you describe the three

disks that you got and how you ultimately came to realize

that CCleaner had been used?

A. Of course. So the initial two CDs that were received

from the Blank Law Firm contained individual documents

that had been -- or other files that had been exported

from their forensic toolkit software. So those were the

initial two. But then the third CD, that I believe was

March 1st, included what I understood to be a complete

file listing of all the different objects in their

forensic toolkit database, which represents what it found.

Now, that listing did not include the contents of the

files or the contents of anything, just the metadata about

the files.

We were also provided with the registry information

from that computer. The registry is the database that

Windows maintains that lists settings. It lists the color

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of your background, it lists the positions of your icons,

but also individual software programs that run on it, not

by Microsoft, but Adobe Acrobat, or in this case,

CCleaner, can actually store their settings in that

registry.

Q. So it wasn't until March 1st that you were provided

any information that gave you the knowledge that CCleaner

had been utilized; is that right?

A. No. Yes. Excuse me. That is right, I had not.

Q. Let's talk first, and use your PowerPoint as you need

to to discuss CCleaner, what it does and why it was of

concern to you?

A. What I determined about CCleaner was first by looking

at their website and how the software company described

the software. I also read some third-party reviews. And

then I conducted a number of tests where I actually ran

CCleaner on a test computer to see how it behaved. As the

company describes it, it is a free program designed to --

they mention to protect your privacy by removing

information from the computer. And basically removing

information is what it does. It is all that it does.

MR. BLANKENSHIP: Your Honor, are we going to go

over old ground with the witness? This is all in his

declaration about what CCleaner is, how it works.

THE COURT: I think on both of these witnesses I

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would like to hear the whole story.

MR. BLANKENSHIP: Okay. Sounds good.

THE WITNESS: So three of the items that caught

my attention are the ones that are discussed in this case,

and we will discuss more, are the first items where it

removes the shortcut files.

By Ms. Michael:

Q. And why is that important?

A. The shortcut files --

Q. I am going out of order. Just tell me how you get to

it.

A. Shortcut files -- I will discuss that more in just a

moment. But basically those can include information about

when documents were accessed and where they were accessed

from, and also information about documents no longer on

the computer. It also, "it" being CCleaner, removes the

internet cache files that has information about websites

that someone on the computer has visited, and usually the

contents of those websites.

Q. For example, if I wanted to research how to -- what a

forensic examination of a computer means, and then used

CCleaner, would there be evidence that I had in fact done

that research?

A. Before running CCleaner, there is a great likelihood

that the evidence of which sites you visited you could

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read about and the contents on there. After CCleaner --

As I said, the purpose of CCleaner is to remove

information of that type. So web mail, such as use of

Hotmail or Yahoo Messages, where a person reads the e-mail

through a web browser as opposed downloading in a program

like Outlook or Outlook Express, the temporary internet

files are usually the primary source of information about

usage of that e-mail or what e-mails were accessed.

Q. So all of the Llindell at live dot com e-mails, if

CCleaner was used, what happens to those?

A. I'll have a more detailed description of that in just

a moment. The third option that we have discussed is that

it has the option to wipe information about files that

have already been deleted from the free space of a

computer. And I will show some more information about

that also.

So the first item is the shortcut files. So basically

what a shortcut file is, as Mr. Yeh testified, it is just

a file in the background that has a dot LNK. You usually

never see that. It just refers to another file on the

computer or a file that was accessed from that computer.

It shows -- I think I just mentioned this, it can show

to a forensic examiner documents that had been on the

computer, but no longer are on the computer. It can show

oftentimes documents that were accessed from a USB drive

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or a CD drive, and instances, including times and dates,

about when a document that is still on the computer might

have been actually accessed that would otherwise be lost.

Each case is different, each examination is different,

but there have been examinations in which the shortcut

files that I am referring to were the primary piece of

evidence that was useful in conducting time lines about

documents and what was added when.

Just to show what these shortcut files are, why they

are there: They are not in Windows, as far as I know, to

assist a forensic examiner. That is just a side benefit.

So on this particular test computer, I just created a Word

document. At the very top you can see that I actually

called the document -- This is another Word document, and

wrote that in the body. So if you would advance?

I am logged on in this case as User1. In the folder,

"My Documents," which is just a predefined folder that

Windows sets up as a convenient place to put documents, I

have saved the Word document. And this is another Word

document. And you can see it has information about when

these files were created and when they were modified. So

the first document was both created and modified at 7:36.

This is another document created at 7:37, and last

saved -- modified at 7:38.

Now, if you click the start button, which is missing

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off of this screen, by default Windows XP has a little

section here that says "My Recent Documents." And if you

click on that, then you can see these two documents.

In this case it is a pristine test computer that I had

just loaded Windows on. So there were no other documents

here. But you can see these two particular documents that

I had opened up in Word. And this is the reason that the

shortcut files are here. Again, it is not to assist me as

an examiner, as far as I know, but to allow the user to

see what documents. So, say, you had -- say, both

documents weren't just in the "My Documents" folder, say

they were in different locations or different areas, it

can kind of nicely put all in one location where those

documents are so that someone can go back and pull them up

again.

In this case, I held down the shift button and pressed

delete to delete the document. And the significance of

the shift button is it bypasses the recycle bin, so it

actually deletes it. At that point the document has been,

in the parlance I would use, deleted from the computer.

There are no normal means that just a normal user without

using specialized software could use to get that document

back.

But when I click the start button you can see that

that reference to "this is another Word document" is still

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there. The shortcut file that provided that documentation

about the recently used documents did not go away when I

deleted the document.

Now, this folder is a little different. It is a

folder that is normally hidden from the user. But you can

see that it is referring to User1, which is the person

that -- the user name that I was logged in as. And then I

went to the hidden folder of "recent." And in this case,

it shows the shortcut file. This is another Word

document.

It also shows the date -- not the date the document

was created or the date that the document was modified,

but the shortcut file itself. So, unfortunately, in this

example they mirror what was there for the document. But

say I created the document yesterday, and then I opened

the document today, the shortcut file might have

information about it.

Now, you can see here that the little icon has this

little arrow. It is showing Windows as hiding the dot LNK

extension, but you can see from this little arrow that

this is not a Word document, it is one of these LNK files.

Go ahead. When I clicked "file" in the properties

option, we can see some of the data that is contained

inside this recent document file. And that data is this

target. It is cut off at the end here, but you can see

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that the "My Documents" folder is where that file

originally was located. So even though we are looking at

a shortcut file that is in this "Recent" folder, the

original Word document was located in my documents. So

that is a piece of information we can tell.

If that document of the same name had been located on

a USB drive or a CD drive, there likely would be other

shortcut files there that would indicate that that same

document of the same name was located in those other

places.

So when we are doing a forensic examination, I don't

click on these one by one, but we have software that can

basically find all of these files, and in some cases it is

going to be hundreds or thousands, and just very

automatically create a spreadsheet that tells all these

documents -- dates that they were created, modified,

accessed and also the locations. Again, as I was saying,

in some cases I have been able to create a time line based

almost exclusively on these shortcut files.

As I just alluded to, generally what I will find is --

on a computer that has been continually in service for

four or five years, I will generally find hundreds of

these files. There will be more of these for the recent

weeks or months, but they will usually go back to the

beginning of the computer usage.

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I actually just tested this over the weekend. I

logged on to a number of my clients' computers, found some

that were several years old, and confirmed my recollection

that there were cases where I found 800, 900 different

shortcut files.

In this case, I started up the CCleaner software on

this test computer. And you can see on the left the

CCleaner software actually shows the different options

that by default are checked. And I will go over this a

little bit more. One of the items is the recent

documents. That is checked by default.

So I clicked on the button here. So the actual

starting of the program did not clean anything. When I

start the program, it just shows these settings. It shows

what the options are, but it is actually when you click

this "run cleaner" button that it actually starts removing

information off and it pops up this little warning box

warning you this process will permanently delete files

from your system.

So in this case, there wasn't very much information on

this machine, but the circled area I have shows under

"Recent Documents" there were two files, and that those

were removed.

Q. The two files you had created that day?

A. Excuse me. The recent documents referring to those

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two files. So one of those documents was deleted, one of

those documents was still on the hard drive, but those

shortcut links to refer to them were gone. And this is

the same folder we were looking at before, and those two

shortcut files were gone.

So this is a spreadsheet that includes information

from the file listing that was provided from the Lindell

laptop. What I had done is asked for -- I think, as was

alluded to, there were over 700,000 different lines on

this spreadsheet. So to find information I would need to

run queries that would allow me to draw up the pertinent

information.

So what I asked for in this case was link files that

were in a folder called "Recent" in the Lindell profile.

What I found were about 254 different shortcut files.

What I noticed was the earliest of these shortcut

files was created on August 23rd, which I had previously

found, and stated in my declaration, that I had found

evidence that CCleaner program had been run on August

21st.

When I say "the program had been run," at that point

in my analysis I could tell from the registry, and I will

get into this more, that someone had brought up the

CCleaner program. Initially I couldn't tell that anyone

had pressed the button to clean. But to me, the fact that

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abruptly these link files that are 250 and roughly two and

a half months of use, and they abruptly end just within

two days of running that software, suggests that CCleaner

or another program of the same functionality had been run

at that time.

Q. And so there were no link files that predate 8/21 of

2010 or 8/23 of 2010 on the laptop; is that right?

A. Well, link files, as we said, are used for other

purposes. They are used to show the programs in your

start menus. But there were not any located in the

Lindell profile under these recent folders, which

indicated to me that they had been cleaned.

So this is just the bottom part of the spreadsheet

showing many of the lines were skipped. But it actually

goes down to 253. The two is cut off there. It just

shows in that short period of time there was a great deal

of information generated about documents that were

accessed on the computer. But, again, all of that

information prior to that date --

Q. August 23rd?

A. August 23rd, exactly.

So moving on to the next point that I mentioned about

CCleaner, which is the temporary internet net files. So

as you are using your web browser -- By default most web

browsers, including Internet Explorer, which is built into

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Windows, actually store a copy of most of the information

that is downloaded over the internet.

Again, the purpose of this is not to assist the

forensic examiner; the purpose is to speed up your access

to a web page. In most cases accessing information over

the internet can be hundreds of times slower than off the

hard drive. So when you go to Hotmail and it shows you

graphics and information, it downloads those once, and

then saves that information in this cache file.

So this information for use of the forensic examiner

does show information about what websites you visited.

And there is other information that helps with that. It

shows information about the contents of the web pages that

you visited.

So, again, in some cases -- Whereas, in some cases

the shortcut files were the primary piece of evidence,

there have been cases I have been involved in in which

these temporary internet cache contains a picture of what

websites were visited or what e-mails were visited that

was the primary piece of information.

So in this case, as you discussed with Mr. Yeh, there

did not seem to be many e-mails stored on the computer in

a program such as Outlook or Outlook Express.

After talking with you, our understanding was that the

web mail was the primary source for the plaintiff to

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access e-mail. So in that case, we did turn our attention

to what might be showed by these temporary internet files.

And, again, we found that they were discontinued. But I

will discuss that more.

Q. So the Llindell at live dot com, that would be a

web-based e-mail?

A. That is my understanding.

Q. And it would be in the temporary internet files?

A. Well, information -- Think of the temporary internet

files as just a snapshot of what you are seeing on the

screen. So live mail dot com or Hotmail dot com might

have thousands of messages there, but each time you look

at either a directory listing of e-mails or an individual

e-mail, then it is just taking -- think of it as a

snapshot or a picture in time of what you saw on the

screen. So if there is a thousand e-mails there, and you

have browsed through 30 of them recently, those 30 e-mails

would be, most likely, snapshots of those on the computer.

So it can store the messages, the contents.

It very often also includes the attachments to files,

because if you double click on the attachment to a file to

open it up, say, in Word, it has to download it first,

store it on your hard drive, and then open it up. So it

will usually keep that information.

So I created just for illustration purposes a Hotmail

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account. I logged in. It was AH Muchmore at Hotmail

dot com. And then I sent myself 2 e-mail messages. There

was a third e-mail message that was already there that was

a nice little welcome.

So I opened those -- I didn't get screenshots, but I

opened those e-mails and viewed them on the screen. And

in doing so, when I went to look at the temporary internet

files, I found that just that activity had created 138

different files. Now, most of these files didn't contain

any words or text from it, but some of them did.

The place these were located, again, you can see these

are stored in the user profile for User1. So all of this

activity that is being stored is being stored in my User1

profile and in folders underneath. You can see the

folders are local settings, temporary internet files, the

content IE5, IE standing for Internet Explorer, and then

there is a folder that has sort of an eight-character

pseudo random number. So this is a snippet of these

files; not a complete listing, but just shows what they

look like.

This is a little harder to read. But this is a

snippet of the temporary internet files from the Lindell

laptop. Again, what I -- the method I used to extract

these was to look for files that were in a folder under

Llindell, and also under a folder that had temporary

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internet files.

Q. If I could interrupt you now. I wanted to ask you

about Exhibits 2 and 3 to Ms. Goodman's declaration.

Would this be an appropriate time?

A. Let me finish the one note. It shows here creation

dates and modify dates. It shows that this folder,

temporary internet files, was created in 2006, which was

probably around the time the laptop was put in service.

But it also shows that some of these were recreated on

August 21st, which to me, in the tests I ran, was

consistent with the operation of CCleaner.

When I ran it on my test computer I found that some of

these same files were dated at the time. Not that

CCleaner actually popped up on the screen to look at the

options that I showed you, but when the actual button to

run the CCleaner program and remove files was run.

And then I noticed that it was down on -- basically a

little bit on the 28th, but on August 31st and later we

started seeing a rather complete listing of these

temporary internet files. That suggested to me that web

browsing was taken up in earnest on this computer again

starting at that date, August 31st, and appeared to

continue until the computer was turned over to Blank.

Q. Is this a good time for the Goodman declaration?

THE WITNESS: Yes.

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MS. MICHAEL: Your Honor, may I have exhibits

marked?

THE COURT: Yes.

By Ms. Michael:

Q. Which page would you like to start with, Mr. Muchmore,

of Exhibit 2?

A. I think the page marked 3 of 4.

MS. MICHAEL: I think I need to hand a copy up to

the court. May I approach?

THE COURT: What is it?

MS. MICHAEL: This is Exhibits 2 and 3 to

Ms. Goodman's declaration, filed this morning.

THE COURT: I have it. Thank you.

By Ms. Michael:

Q. All right. Mr. Muchmore.

A. The page that I have shows 19 of 22 and Page 3 of 4.

Basically it shows a folder listing from a Hotmail

account. As I said, this isn't most likely a folder

listing of the account as it exists now, but a snapshot in

time of the moment it was viewed.

It shows the dates of August 2009, and then

August 25th, and yesterday, and then another day, which

suggests to me that it was probably viewed in August

of 2009.

So you can see here, if you go down about ten items, I

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just picked a random item, there is one that says it was

from TicketMaster, and your ticket order, and gives a

ticket order. And then there are several orders before

and after that, other messages.

Now, two pages later, maybe three pages later, there

is a snapshot of this same Hotmail account, which I

understand was just taken a few days ago. And one of

those messages is highlighted. But what I noticed is

several of these other messages that were on the previous

page I showed you are also on this page. And that

basically means that they were not deleted.

What I was able to -- at least it appeared, it is not

a very rigorous analysis, but this seems to show that

there was an e-mail from TicketMaster that existed in that

e-mail box in August of 2009, that does not now.

Q. And this is in the B. Hansen e-mail account; is that

right?

A. Correct. So there is no reason -- I am not

suggesting that deletion is relevant to this case, but I

just think that is a good illustration of the way that we

can use this, that is, can be a way to find out if there

was an e-mail that someone forgot about or who knows what

that had been deleted from that account, is no longer

there. But it is important evidence that can be found

that indicates that file -- that message was there once.

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So what happened is, since these temporary internet

files had been cleaned off of this machine, we lost

potentially a tremendous amount of information about which

items had been in that e-mail address and were no longer

there.

So the third point goes to kind of a description. You

have heard of descriptions of deleted files, wiped files,

free space and such. What I am trying to do here is just

give a little bit of information about what this all

means.

Basically what you are looking at is a simplified

version of a hard drive. It is just a platter, like an LP

or 45 record. And the information is actually on that

disk, and it has a hole in the middle. A hard drive could

hold billions, dozens of billions, and modern drives

trillions of pieces of information. That is too much even

for a modern computer to deal with individually. So the

information is gathered together into sectors and

clusters, which are units of data, in which a file might

be stored. So in this case, I think I have 32 different

sectors of data, and that is each of these items, each of

these little blocks.

So in this case, a Word document might be in this

block. The Word document itself might only occupy half of

it, and the rest of it is extra. Windows will still

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allocate this whole block to the Word document so it

doesn't have to keep track of too much information.

So here the dark blocks indicate areas that have files

on it, the light blocks are empty or free space.

This black box, and I am simplifying a little bit, but

basically this one box is containing the information about

all the files stored on the computer. So this is our file

table. I am mimicking the "My Documents" folder that I

showed you a few slides ago. There was a hidden file

called "desktop" and then "Word document." This is

another Word document.

Basically what is contained here is the titles of the

documents that are on the machine. And that is where the

information about the create date and modified date is

stored. It also is pointing to the location on the drive

where the contents are stored.

This black box that I told you about that has this

listing, it doesn't have the contents of any Word

documents. It doesn't have the contents of any web caches

or the target or link files. All it does is tell that

information about where the computer can find it.

Just as I illustrate here, the contents of the Word

document are in that little yellow box.

So what happens when I deleted an item, it didn't

remove any of this information that we are looking at

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right now. It just drew a little virtual line through

that listing, which told Windows that, first, that

document is now designated deleted, and, second, that

yellow spot which was dark and actually used is now a

light spot that is available for wiping.

So if I deleted my file, and then at the moment I

deleted it I yanked the power cord out and didn't do

anything else, that is probably fully recoverable. The

information about when it is created, when it is modified

and the title is probably recoverable, and the free space,

just because it hadn't had the opportunity to override it.

But then what starts to happen is, as you use your

computer, even if you don't create a document or save it,

Windows will start to create files in the background,

temporary internet files, shortcuts, log files, other

information. It is just going to pick a place to store

the file information. And the next one that is created

might overwrite. This is another Word document. Or it

might overwrite a different one. Likewise, it might

overwrite this area of the hard drive or it might

overwrite this area. There are no certainties about which

ones will be overwritten. There is just -- We know that

they will be overwritten, and the more you use the

computer, the more activity there is, the more this

information is going to be overwritten.

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So what we were discussing in wiping free space is not

the same type of free space wiping or the same type of

wiping operation that was discussed by Mr. Kaser for

wiping those hard drives. So that is, if you want a hard

drive, and have absolutely nothing else, you need a

relatively unsophisticated program to just write zeros

over the whole hard drive.

As far as I can tell, what is a little more -- what is

a little more tricky for software is to have a program

that just overwrites the free space without overwriting

the other information.

When the free space option is checked, what the

CCleaner purports to do -- I have not tested -- I have

tested the operation of some cleaning software, but I did

not do this one. What it purports to do is actually go in

and just take the contents of all these files. So,

whereas, if the wipe free space had not been run, I would

definitely expect, after a bit of time, much of it, most

of it, some amount of it would have been overwritten. The

wipe free space just takes it a step further and says all

of it is going to be overwritten. At least that is how it

is designed to work.

Q. We will talk about the two purposes of CCleaner, the

regular options, and then the wipe free space very

shortly. What is next?

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A. This section just goes more to what I found, both in

the way the CCleaner operates and what I found on the

computer. So basically it is software that can be easily

downloaded, displays these options and we will see how it

is used.

What I did was actually -- I actually downloaded it

onto this computer. I didn't download the newest version,

I downloaded what appeared to be the version that was on

the laptop at the time that it was turned over to Blank.

I actually ran some of the other versions just to test

it out, but this is version 2.33.1184. And when you first

run it, what it shows you is, as I mentioned before, the

information that it is proposing to clean. And these are

the Windows options. Some of these are checked.

And I believe the next slide shows some other

applications. It can remove information regarding

Microsoft Office, such as Word or Excel, and other

information from Yahoo, Adobe, etcetera.

Now, what has happened when we have installed this

software is -- I am showing you something that people

would normally never see when using their computer; and

that is the registry. And this is using the registry

editor, which is just a program that is built into

Windows.

And as I was saying, the registry is a database of

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information just about the computer, the setup, the way

programs run and operate. Typically it doesn't store

content or data, but just information about the program.

And what happened on my computer is it created this

CCleaner section in software, which is generally -- that

section is reserved for -- not Windows to write to, but a

program to write to about itself.

Q. And that's how you could tell that CCleaner was used

on Ms. Lindell's computer; is that right?

A. That's how I could tell it was installed.

That was in the machine section, which is common to

all users.

And then in this section there is an area called H key

current user. The way that is designed, starting with

Windows XP, for different people to log onto a computer

using a different account. In this case I had User1 or

admin. But you can see different wallpaper, you can have

different Outlook e-mail, you can have different settings.

And that is -- You can also -- If you go to the "My

Documents" folder, you can see different documents. That

is accomplished by having these different user profiles.

The heart of this is having this section of the

registry that shows current user. Any settings here apply

to that user, but not the other users on the computer.

Q. Are you talking about the use of CCleaner only

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applying to the user profile?

A. Well, I am mentioning that this folder for Piriform,

and the one under it for CCleaner, this is generated under

this user profile. The other user on this computer did

not contain any information. What we can use this for is

to tell some information about what user -- the person

that was logged into the computer, when they were running

the CCleaner software.

So in this case, before I had even run -- when I first

run it, before I had done anything with it, it shows me

the language I selected, the installation, which is 1033,

which is the Windows code for English. It shows this

update key information. In my testing I wasn't able to

see what that update key referred to, but when I installed

or used it under a profile for the first time, it did list

that update key with the date and time. So in this case I

was on March 19th at 2:46 p.m.

It also created -- This is where -- That was the

database of information about the software. It also

created a folder. It shows the date and time that folder

was created. It shows when the CCleaner folder and

program files were copied onto that machine.

MR. BLANKENSHIP: Your Honor, I can shortcut this

a little bit. We are not disputing that CCleaner was run

in the most basic form. All of this is stuff we have

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stipulated to. What we are disputing is whether or not

the free space was wiped. None of this is disputed, what

is being said so far.

THE COURT: I think it goes beyond the free space

was wiped. We have got shortcuts, temporary internet

files. I am going to hear this, because it goes to the

very heart of the dispute.

MS. MICHAEL: Thank you, your Honor. It does.

Go ahead, Mr. Muchmore.

THE WITNESS: I will try to speed it up here. I

went back to CCleaner and clicked on the option for old

prefetched data. What happened is, at that time, under

the user profile for User1, it created that entry for old

prefetched data.

In several tests I ran what appeared to happen

is, under a particular user profile, when someone changed

one of those default options, either by turning one off or

turning one on, it created a registry key of that name,

and showed true if it was checked or false if it was not

checked.

By Ms. Michael:

Q. What is prefetch data?

A. Prefetch data is information about what programs have

been run on the computer and when. It contains

information about how often I run Paint versus Adobe

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Acrobat versus Angry Birds or some other program. The

reason it is there, again, is not to help a forensic

examiner, but it can tell information about what and how a

computer was used.

So I went through and clicked on all of these advanced

options. And then what happened is it showed all of these

advanced options, and it showed that I checked them all as

true.

So in my test case I clicked on the run cleaner

button, and it popped up a warning to let me know this

will permanently delete files from your system. Again,

removing data from the system, as far as I can tell, is

what CCleaner does. That's all it does. It is just

giving you that warning. I clicked okay. It started to

give me a progress bar. And since in this case I had

selected wipe free space, it took a few minutes to wipe

the free space.

So when it was done, you can see that on this test

computer, it removed 451 temporary internet files, some

temporary files. I am not sure if there are any shortcut

files at this time. And that process, including wiping

this computer, took six minutes and 45 seconds.

So the time taken to wipe a computer, six minutes is

on the fast time. It can take hours to do. But there

have certainly been instances, say, for a case I remember

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a couple of years ago, I was requested to wipe the free

space on eight different computers because people had

copied information they shouldn't have. And the time it

took to wipe these actual drives for these people ranged

from a few hours to, in a couple of the cases, less than

ten minutes, to actually wipe the free space. It just

depends on how much empty space -- It is not how big the

hard drive is, but how much empty space is on that

computer.

So I unchecked the option to wipe free space. I think

I have it slightly out of order here. But basically at

that point it changed the wipe free space to false. I can

tell at some point I clicked on that wipe free space

option because it appeared. The appearance of that entry

showed me it had once been clicked and then it had been

unclicked.

I am now looking at some of the same registry

information, not through the Windows program but through a

forensic software, the access data software. And the two

things that it does that the Windows software doesn't do

is allow me to view registry information from another

computer, but it also tells me this last written time.

This last written time for this CCleaner key in the

machine section seems to correspond with when CCleaner was

first installed. In this case, it was 21:45 Universal

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Time.

One thing that bears keeping track of is, a lot of

these stamps are created with Universal Time, which is

seven hours ahead of Seattle in Daylight Savings Time, and

eight hours otherwise. So in this case it was seven hours

ahead.

Now, this portion of the computer registry is the

registry -- it shows it at a different name, but it is the

registry for the user in which I was logged in.

It shows that this key for the Piriform software -- it

again shows that essentially in my test, but usually

within a second or two of the other one, the other key for

the entire machine.

So now we are going back to looking at the final

version of my registry after doing the operations of which

I showed the screen save. Again, it shows this wipe free

space had been clicked on, and then I unclicked it. So

basically from all the tests I ran, it appears -- and this

is not inconsistent with other software I had seen, that

if no one ever clicked that option, that option just

doesn't appear. If someone clicked on it and then

unclicked it, it shows it as false.

Go back one. Lastly, is this -- This time, for the

CCleaner, seems to like -- I don't know that it pins it

down exactly, but it doesn't seem to correspond with the

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installation of CCleaner, but seems to correspond with its

actual usage.

So this is the Lindell laptop. Again, this is showing

on the machine portion of the computer the CCleaner was

created. And this is showing at March 11th. And it is

showing 8:40 Universal Time, which would correspond to

12:40 Seattle time. I put a little footnote in my

declaration that these times -- saying this indicated to

me that this was done at 12:40 was resting on assumptions

that oftentimes I can verify, but I could not at this

time, that the forensic toolkit software that Blank used

was set certain ways, that the computer was set with the

correct time zone, et cetera. But that's what it seems to

be showing me.

So this is the administrator profile of the Lindell

laptop. And, again, the creation of this registry

information was -- on the administrator profile seems to

match up to the time that the CCleaner was first

installed. So from this information, it appeared to me

that the person who was installing the CCleaner software

was logged in as -- when they went to log into the

computer, were logged in as administrator.

And this is what I based my -- based the portion of my

declaration -- where I mentioned at that time on March

11th, someone had selected all of these advanced options,

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and then unselected the wipe option.

Now, what I thought was interesting is that -- I don't

have a screenshot here, but there was information in the

program files that showed that the CCleaner was later

updated. But in the Llindell profile in August, this time

someone logging in -- these keys were first created on

August 21st by someone logging in as Llindell.

Q. So in March, somebody logged in as administrator and

ran CCleaner, and in August, somebody logged in as

Llindell and ran CCleaner?

A. That is what it appears to me. Go ahead. Do one

more.

The one item that I thought was very interesting is,

in all of my tests, the settings -- if you set up CCleaner

while logged in as one user, and then run it as another,

none of those settings as to which boxes were checked or

unchecked seemed to carry over from one user to another.

So the fact that these show the same options suggested

to me that, independently, when someone logged in as the

other account in August, they went through the same

routine of checking all the advanced options, and at some

point after that was checked, unchecking it again. So

basically twice the election was made to check that

option, and then to uncheck it again the next time.

Q. And so if there were more than one user on this

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laptop, what is your understanding of what would happen if

logged in as Llindell when the boxes are checked? What

happens to the other user's information?

A. I will show you that in a moment. I think it is the

next slide. That was a question that came up. I went to

their website and looked at the CCleaner "frequently asked

questions." It showed -- it had the question, "Does it,"

being CCleaner, "clean all the user accounts on the

computer?" So the question being: If you are logged in

as administrator or M. Kaser, does it clean the

information from those subfolders for the other users? It

says, "At the moment CCleaner supports cleaning the

current user's account only." Basically what that is

telling me is that CCleaner doesn't clean the information

from the other account.

But I didn't trust it, so I ran a test. I logged into

my test computer as administrator, ran CCleaner, and see

that it cleaned 146 temporary internet files. So I went

to the temporary internet files for administrator, and I

found that the files that were there were in fact gone,

and what I had found before, that some of these files that

track information were created. But then I found under

that User1, the temporary internet files were still there.

So basically my takeaway from that is that in March,

when it was -- when the CCleaner was run under the

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administrator profile, it would not have likely removed

the temporary internet files or the shortcuts for the

Lindell log-on or the Llindell log-on, but when that was

run in August, it most likely did.

Q. So if Ms. Lindell on March 11th or March 12th had

advised the court that CCleaner had been run on part of

the computer, and then thereafter not used the computer

any further, what is your expectation of what kind of

information we would have today?

A. My expectation is, just from what I have seen, is that

those temporary internet files, those shortcut files, that

information would have been, just under the normal usage

of the computer, as if the CCleaner essentially had not

been run, at least according to that log-on.

Let me just say, it appears that most of the activity

over the last two or three years had taken place under

that log-on of Llindell.

Q. Go ahead.

A. That was it.

Q. That's your last slide?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you have any information that indicates to you --

Whether or not the free space was wiped or not really

isn't the total battle here. Do you have information that

tells you whether it was or was not wiped?

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A. From the information we have, it has been hard to see

whether it was wiped. In this case, unlike most of the

forensic examinations, we did not have access to the

actual computer itself. We received these file listings.

From the file listings that were received, there were not

a large number of data card files or there were not a

large number of deleted files, which would be atypical.

Now, it is unclear to me at this point whether we just

did not receive a complete listing from the Blank Law

Firm, or whether there weren't very many files. So

basically I tried not to use that information on making

this judgment. I put forth the information about the

options that were selected, what we were able to tell just

from the use of CCleaner, and made inferences from there

as to whether someone actually clicked on that wipe option

or not.

Q. Regardless of whether they wiped it, and we will talk

about what information you would need at this point to

determine if they actually did wipe the computer, what

information was deleted simply by the running of CCleaner

in both March and August?

A. Particularly after the August, but in the March,

again, the way -- from the slide that I showed you that

had the picture of the hard drive, as soon as a

computer -- as soon as a file is deleted, then that puts

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it available for overwriting.

Basically, as I mentioned on the temporary internet

files, for example, what I will normally see when I look

at a machine are many files from the last few months, and

I will see some from older periods of time. I showed you

that little subfolder that contains files. Sometimes

Windows or Internet Explorer just seems to forget about

one of those and leaves it there. So two or three years

later I will look at the computer and there might be a

very complete record of the web browsing/surfing from two

or three years earlier, and it might be spotty from other

times.

So basically as soon as these files are deleted,

whether wiped or not, they put them available for free

space where the information about the timing of it can

start to be overwritten, the information about the

contents of it in free space is much more difficult to

access at best, but will start to be overwritten at worst.

If you delete a thousand files, and use the computer, and

come back three months later, some percentage of those

files are going to be irretrievably lost. It just varies

under the circumstance how many, but there would be some.

Q. And the use of CCleaner did what to that ability?

A. It would greatly accelerate, at the very least, the

rate at which this information would be lost. Again, had

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CCleaner not been run, I would have expected to find

shortcut files going back for four or five years. I would

have expected to find these temporary internet files.

From what we found, there is very little information

there. My expectation is that was due to the effect of

CCleaner.

Q. I asked Mr. Yeh about the numbers after approximately

520,000 in the forensic toolkit ID that we were provided.

If they don't match the produced or the privilege log for

file listings, do you have any idea why that would be?

A. The only explanation I can think of -- the only one

from my experience is that once those numbers are created

in a case, they don't change. So all I could think of is

that case was rescanned, and that somehow the options or

the files that it found were different the second time it

was scanned from the first time it was scanned, so that

there might have been files on one listing that were not

on the other listing.

Q. There are documents in the production and privilege

log that do not appear on the file listings. Do you know

why that would be?

A. No. The only two explanations that I have been able

to think of are, one, the rerunning of the file listing

occurred after those files were given to the Blankenship

firm for review and did not appear, or that, second, we

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did not get a complete file listing from the forensic

toolkit software.

Q. If we wanted to determine whether or not the computer

actually had the wiping feature activated and utilized,

what would you need to do that work?

A. It can be hard to determine. Sometimes by giving the

full image of the computer to analyze. Sometimes you can

just see absolute evidence that this must have been wiped.

But in most cases -- It is hard to prove what is not

there. Since the wiping removes information -- again, it

is not always impossible, but most times it is very

difficult to look at that -- to even look at the free

space, particularly if it has been used for several weeks

afterward, and make that determination.

So if you asked me, this computer, was this wiped

yesterday before it had been used much, then the answer is

probably yes. Whether you could determine whether it was

wiped after several more weeks of usage, maybe you could,

maybe you couldn't.

Q. And if somebody had activated the wipe button, and

then a few minutes later decided not to do that and hit

the don't activate the wipe button, what would happen?

Can you interrupt the wiping process, I guess?

A. I tested that out, and did. If I checked the wipe

free space, and hit the button to start cleaning the

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computer, it gave that progress bar. In my case, it was

only six minutes. But I wasn't able to hit cancel on that

option, and then at that point about half of the

information in the free space presumably would have been

wiped. I was able to uncheck the wipe free space button,

run the CCleaner again, and it just removed the

information and left that computer half wiped.

Q. I've got this document with the small print. Can you

tell us, in general, what is this document, and is it

useful to you?

A. That was a spreadsheet that I created from the file

listing that included what seemed to be actual document

files, Word document spreadsheets, PDFs and the like, from

the user-created areas on the computer.

Most of those listings are documents that, if a person

turned on the computer and logged in as Llindell, they

would see.

Q. So these are still available on the computer, but

information CCleaner removed is no longer available for

review?

A. Right.

MS. MICHAEL: May I mark this, your Honor, and

pass it up to the court?

MR. BLANKENSHIP: I object to her passing

something up to the court that I can't --

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MS. MICHAEL: I will make a copy.

THE COURT: Do you intend to question the witness

about it?

MS. MICHAEL: I was not going to ask --

THE COURT: Why don't we mark it as an exhibit?

MS. MICHAEL: I have a copy. Sorry.

By Ms. Michael:

Q. In browsing through that, did you find evidence that

there was a fair amount of work on the computer involving

the Lindell lawsuit?

A. From my basic understanding of the lawsuit, there did

seem to be some folders, such as a folder called

"mediation," and several folders underneath it that --

again, my understanding of the lawsuit is somewhat basic,

but did seem to be related to the legal work or related to

the underlying items that the case is about.

MS. MICHAEL: I will leave it for the court to

peruse to see how much of that does relate. Did I forget

anything, Mr. Muchmore?

THE WITNESS: Not that I can think of.

MS. MICHAEL: Thank you. No more questions.

THE COURT: Before you get started, let's take a

moment here. May I safely assume you are not going to

finish your cross-examination of this witness and put on

your expert by 4:30?

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MR. BLANKENSHIP: That is probably safe. I am

feeling bad about Blake Weibling, who is sitting outside.

I wish we could get him on today before the day ends and

he has to miss work again.

THE COURT: I am sure you will be handsomely

compensating him.

MR. BLANKENSHIP: I don't know about

"handsomely."

THE COURT: Why don't you go ahead and step down

for a moment? Mr. Blankenship, why don't you have a seat.

We will do this informally. You can talk by sitting down.

We are not going to get through today. I think

that is obvious at this point. The next opportunity that

I have to see you is next Monday at 10:00, which is your

pretrial conference. I think you are slotted for an hour

for the pretrial conference.

Mr. Blankenship, do you know how many witnesses

you are going to call?

MR. BLANKENSHIP: I had planned on calling three

witnesses.

THE COURT: When in doubt, always ask the

parties. Mr. Blankenship, how would you like to proceed?

Do you think we can get Mr. Weibling through your direct

examination?

MR. BLANKENSHIP: Yes.

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THE COURT: How long will that take?

MR. BLANKENSHIP: I don't think it will take --

With the court's guidance with respect to the declaration,

I can get him on and off pretty quickly.

THE COURT: I want to make sure everybody gets a

full opportunity. I have looked at the case law again,

and none of the options are attractive to the plaintiff's

case, and therefore I want to give you every opportunity

that you deserve in order to present your case fully. In

fairness to the City, I want to make sure they have their

opportunity to put on their case.

Ms. Michael, how many more witnesses do you have?

MS. MICHAEL: No more in our case-in-chief, your

Honor.

THE COURT: I suspect you would like to examine

Mr. Weibling, and you would like to examine Ms. Goodman?

MS. MICHAEL: Ms. Lindell and their expert, yes.

THE COURT: I don't think we can have

Mr. Weibling finished today. I would rather hear him as a

block. Why don't we have you start with Mr. Muchmore, and

we will go until about 4:15 and adjourn for the day? On

Monday we will resume with your examination of

Mr. Muchmore, and then go into your case.

I am not inclined to try to express any views,

because, as I tell all juries, you need to keep an open

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mind until you have heard all of the evidence. It is very

important to me that we get this right. If that means

vacating your trial date -- I am not going to rush this

in order to try and shoehorn you in. I have an extended

cocaine importation case starting mid-April. I have two

trailing cases that were set for that. Things move

around. It is my intention to take you as quickly as we

can, as opposed to dropping you to the bottom of the

calendar.

I am hopeful that we are not looking at a lot of

out-of-town witnesses who are going to have availability

problems, since these are all local folks. Is that a

fairly accurate assumption?

MR. BLANKENSHIP: Your Honor, it is. There are

people, though, that are having difficulties with

April 4th. Like Marcella Reed, for example, I would have

to take her very quickly, because she was heading out on

the 6th. Bob Sterbank is in Hawaii. He is not available

until the 13th. It is spring break, so a lot of people

are taking off with their families. That is the extent of

the out of state, but that is the kind of issue we have

been struggling with with witnesses.

THE COURT: Ms. Michael, what is it like in your

case?

MS. MICHAEL: We can have our witnesses

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available, your Honor.

THE COURT: Right now I think your trial date is

in real peril. I won't commit to that, but tell

Mr. Sterbank to buy another swimsuit.

We have your motions for summary judgment, we

have your motions in limine. I am not going to have you

start the trial until you have answers to those, because

you can't. I can't rule on those until I know the answer

to this. This string of dominoes is getting ready to fall

over.

The criminal matter started off at five days, it

expanded to ten days, it expanded to twelve days, it

expanded to 15 days, and then it shrank to twelve days.

The last time they were in here, which was this morning at

11:00, it sounded more like eight days. That will put you

in early May, which will, I guess, get us out of spring

break. I am sure someone is going to say, I have a trial

in King County Superior Court, as another reason why we

can't go then.

No, we are not going to finish today. We are

going to start again on Monday at 10:00.

Mr. Muchmore, you can retake the stand. We are

going to get in 15 minutes of questioning, and I am going

to take a hard break at 4:20.

CROSS-EXAMINATION

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By Mr. Blankenship:

Q. Mr. Muchmore, hi.

A. Hello.

Q. Have you ever been in a situation like Blank Law,

where you basically were doing a forensic exam of a

computer, and the computer was the computer of someone

like Ms. Lindell, and you were dealing with their lawyers

to figure out which documents were privileged and work

product?

A. I believe so. I have been in a situation where I ran

searches, turned it over to one party for privilege

review, and then turned it over to another party, yes.

Q. It is pretty standard that that happens, even when you

are being hired and paid for by the other side, right?

A. These circumstances have not been standard in my

personal experience. Usually it has not been a neutral

third party. Usually I have been able to have access to

the computer, even if I am forwarding it to counsel for

privilege review.

Q. But it isn't uncommon, in fact it is quite typical,

that the person whose laptop is being examined, counsel

gets to assist with culling out privileged work product,

isn't it?

A. To conduct a privilege review?

Q. Yes.

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A. In some cases, yes. That has not been in every case I

have been in, or even most.

Q. About how many times have you done like a forensic

examination of a computer, where you went in and carved

out drive free space?

A. I would say I have done dozens of computers.

Q. Ms. Goodman found in the drive free space a document

that was created in 2009. You saw that, right?

A. I did.

Q. And if there had been a wipe of the free space, you

wouldn't be able to recover documents from 2009 from the

free space, would you? If they were in March, as they

alleged occurred, and August of 2010 (sic), you wouldn't

be able to go into the free space in 2009 and find

documents like the exhibit that she attached to her

declaration, would you?

A. Do you mean you go into the free space in 2011?

Q. Yes.

A. And find documents that had been created in 2009?

Q. Right.

A. Yes, I would expect that you could.

Q. Even if it is wiped?

A. Absolutely.

Q. What is your basis for that?

A. It is only wiping the free space. The time the

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document is created is irrelevant to whether it would have

been wiped in free space. The time it was deleted is the

most important information in that case.

Q. The time that it was deleted. In this case, though,

did you find that document in your review?

A. I found the document in the files that were produced

by Blank, yes.

Q. And those files -- those documents -- those free space

documents were produced January 20th, weren't they, the

first batch?

A. Correct. No. I think we got those February 20th.

Maybe they were January. But, yeah.

Q. If you need to check, that's what I have noticed, that

they were --

A. The first CD batch, yes.

THE COURT: Mr. Blankenship you have used the

term "free space documents." I want to make sure everyone

has a common definition, including me.

By Mr. Blankenship:

Q. The drive free space is where all data goes, even if

it is deleted, correct?

A. From my little diagram -- free space is items that

includes parts of the drive where no data has ever been

stored or parts of the drive that a file was stored and

then that file had been deleted. That's the free space,

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yes.

Q. If CCleaner was ran in March and in August, wouldn't

the document that was the exhibit have been -- if it had

been a temporary internet file, wouldn't it have been

deleted when CCleaner was ran, even without checking the

box for the drive free space?

A. Not necessarily in both cases. That's the point that

I was making about the temporary internet files only in

the profile in which the CCleaner was run. So if most of

this surfing, to use it colloquially, web browsing took

place under the Lindell profile, for example, and the

CCleaner was run under administrator, then at that time it

would not have deleted the temporary internet files from

the Lindell profile.

So, say, in March it was run and wiped the free space

at that time -- This would be one scenario. I can think

of several others in which that document would not have

been deleted in March. But the free space could have been

wiped in March. But since that document had not yet been

deleted until August, the wipe of free space would not

have removed that document. That's one scenario.

Q. Do you know whether or not there were separate

profiles on the computer that were set up by the Lindells?

A. Yes. That was my testimony in my PowerPoint slides.

There were several profiles set up. There were profiles

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for administrator, M. Kaser, others that were used before.

It appeared to me Ms. Lindell had been using the computer.

So it appeared to me that the Llindell profile had been

the one that had been used for most activity since she

received the computer, but in March, the CCleaner was run

against the administrator profile.

So, say, at that time the option to remove temporary

internet files and wiped free space was selected, in that

case it would have only removed temporary internet files

from the administrator account, thus leaving the one that

you found, wiped anything else that had been deleted at

that time. And then, say, in August, when it was run

under the Llindell account, then only at that time, in my

hypothetical, after the free space had been wiped, that

that particular file was deleted. Again, in that scenario

the file would not have been deleted, and thus that would

not have been free space when the computer was wiped in

March.

Q. But it was wiped twice according to you. Not wiped.

Let me back up. I will not concede that.

MS. MICHAEL: Objection, your Honor. Misstates

his testimony.

By Mr. Blankenship:

Q. Isn't it true, according to your review, you believe

that CCleaner was ran on two different occasions? Right?

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A. CCleaner was run on two different occasions, yes.

Q. Wouldn't that have been wiped -- Considering that was

the free space, and it was created in 2009, wouldn't the

wipe in August have wiped a document that was created in

2009?

A. Again, that is not what determines what is wiped. It

is not when the document is created that is important, it

is when it has been deleted that is important.

Q. But if I understand -- I mean, I will have to talk to

my expert about that. But my understanding -- You are a

little bit over my head here. But with respect -- You

are saying that even though something was in free space,

that was created in 2009, and even though you are

testifying it may have been wiped twice, that wouldn't be

dispositive of -- a preexisting document wouldn't be

dispositive of there being no wipe, as Ms. Goodman

declared under oath?

A. No. I think she overlooked a number of different

scenarios.

Q. Like what?

A. The first scenario is the one that I mentioned, say,

the free space was wiped the first time CCleaner was run,

but say the second time the removal of the shortcut files

and temporary internet files took place but it was not

wiped. A second scenario that seems possible is that the

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wipe might have been started, but then interrupted at some

point during its operation.

Looking at the information from the declaration of the

person at PC Doctor, that sort of seems to reinforce that

scenario in my mind. He mentioned that he typically does

not wipe the information. It wasn't clear to me exactly

why he would not once, but twice, click on the option and

then unclick on the option. But say he went through and

clicked on all those options, including wipe free space,

clicked on the run cleaner button, and then turned and

looked at something else and expected after one minute all

the CCleaner would have been completed. Say at that point

he realized that he had selected the option, and then

failed to unselect the option, and then hit the cancel

button, that is one scenario in which, even after a few

minutes, thousands of documents would have been wiped, but

not necessarily every document on the machine. That is

the second scenario that occurred to me.

THE COURT: All right. We are going to take a

break at this time, because I have a couple of questions.

When we resume, you are going to resume your examination

having had the opportunity to talk to your expert, which

probably makes better sense than us lawyers.

Is it going to be easier to determine the impact

of the CCleaner program if you are looking at the mirrored

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hard drive that exists in this case or looking at the

three CDs?

THE WITNESS: I think it would definitely be

easier. Whether that makes it easy is hard to say. I

think, again, in most instances in which I suspect a

computer had been wiped, and then it had been continued to

be used for several weeks or months, you can't necessarily

tell anything for sure. But I think it is certainly

possible, by looking at the complete image of it, I could

make a determination. It would definitely give both

myself or Ms. Goodman more information to work from.

There would be fewer hypotheticals, fewer possibilities.

THE COURT: If I asked you and Ms. Goodman the

question of are there people in Seattle who are

technically competent to do that, how would you answer

that?

THE WITNESS: Technically competent to make a

determination about wiping?

THE COURT: Yes.

THE WITNESS: I think the wiping question can

be -- I think the answer is yes. I think the wiping

question can be much more of a -- By looking at the free

space itself -- It can be hard to have an objective

question that has an objective answer. It would be based

to a certain extent on hunches or what the person had seen

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before.

THE COURT: Let me ask you in a different way.

Who is your competition?

THE WITNESS: In the --

THE COURT: In Seattle. Are there other people

that do this besides the two of you?

THE WITNESS: Yes.

THE COURT: How long would it take?

THE WITNESS: I would think that several days

would be enough time. Probably less than that.

THE COURT: Counsel, we will be in recess in this

particular matter until 10:00 a.m. on Monday the 28th. At

that time Mr. Blankenship will resume his

cross-examination, having had ample time to get ready,

which hopefully means that we will be going faster.

Counsel, anything further the court can do today

to be of assistance?

MR. BLANKENSHIP: I guess, your Honor, it would

be helpful to know -- Are you saying you don't think it

is likely we will go forward on April 4th? Should I be

preparing witnesses all next week? Since we go first, it

is important to know the answer to that question.

THE COURT: Sitting here today, I will tell you

that if I am where I am right now, you are not going to

have a trial because I think there is a prima facie case

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put forward that something happened to the computer. I

don't think you are denying the fact that something

happened to the computer. I am not comfortable that I

understand what it is. I can't rule on the motions and I

can't have the trial until I am comfortable with what

happened.

The last two questions I asked the witness may

suggest one alternative that I am considering, which is to

find someone who can have access to the mirrored hard

drive and conduct an independent examination on behalf of

the court. As Mr. Muchmore just said, that may just give

me one more opinion as opposed to an answer. But that

would be helpful. The answer is, I don't think you are

going.

MR. BLANKENSHIP: We have a pretrial lodging date

of Wednesday. We all spoke about moving that until

Friday, just because --

THE COURT: Why don't you not do anything on it.

I am going to relieve you of that obligation at this time.

You can't do a pretrial order until I rule on these

motions. And you can't -- We are back to the same loop,

I can't rule on these motions until I have an answer to

this question.

Counsel, out of fairness, I am not blaming anyone

for putting us in this situation. I understand, not

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withstanding protestations in the briefing, this stuff got

delivered late. It appears that everyone was diligent in

both attacking the problem and responding to the attack

since that time. It is just that we have a limited number

of hours between when this all started and the very

important upcoming dates, including the pretrial

conference. We will be in recess. Thank you, counsel.

(Adjourned)

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109

CERTIFICATE

I, Barry L. Fanning, Official Court Reporter, do herebycertify that the foregoing transcript is true and correct.

S/Barry L. Fanning

____________________________Barry L. Fanning