Your Old Office Copier As Jailhouse Snitch (Part 2)

I wasn't the only one who noted the CBS story on copiers holding much data this week. Steve Miller also blogged about it on The LawBill Blog

I note his conclusion:

• "Today we sent an email blast to each of our law firm clients recommending that they contact their copier leasing company and request a written copy of the procedures which will be followed to scrub the hard drives on their current copiers when the lease expires. If there is no procedure, we are recommending that they send a letter indicating that the firm will not release the copier at the end of the lease unless the internal hard drive is scrubbed, on-site, before it leaves the law office." id.

I like this approach, even those it may lead to a legal dispute with the copier leasing company. Looking at this like a lawyer, there may be a claim for a defective product lurking in there. A device that stores much confidential information, unknown to the user, even though there's no real business need to collect the data. Then when the unsuspecting user discovers confidential data has been stored, the copier company's response is to ask the user for a lot of extra money to fix the problem. And, of course, you have to look at the difference in potential liability for holding onto a leased copier too long vs the risk in compromising all of the firm's various clients' confidential information. Hmmm......