So, an organization sends a document to another without deleting the doc’s metadata. And then it complains about that data being acessed!
"When Florida Bar president-elect Henry Coxe III brought up metadata mining to the Bar’s board of governors, some board members conceded they had never heard of the practice.
"Coxe himself had only recently become aware that electronic documents could be mined for information about their history when it happened to a partner at this firm. At the board of governors meeting in December, he recounted the first time he became aware of metadata mining and its consequences.
"The partner at Coxe’s firm had sent a brief to a lawyer at another firm who was working on a similar case. Based on the brief, which was sent electronically, the other firm was able to reconstruct every change that had been made to the document, including e-mails between Coxe’s partner and his client — a potential violation of attorney client privilege.
"Alarmed by the experience, Coxe urged the board to declare unethical the practice of culling through electronic documents to find hidden data about the history of the document.
[snip]
"Metadata and the law [PDF link] has also been cropping up in the news in recent years, as more lawyers and journalists become aware of metadata’s existence. In 2004, SCO Group, based in Santa Cruz, Calif., filed lawsuits against DaimlerChrysler and AutoZone. However, metadata remained in the lawsuit revealing that it had initially intended to sue Bank of America, but switched defendants. The revelation, which was made by the media, not opposing counsel, amounted to a gift-wrapped argument for the defense."