E-Mails Nail Wrongdoers

Take a poll among tech gurus past and present, and I predictyou'll find that despite our high-minded intentions and stationsthere are few things more viscerally satisfying to us than beingable to say: “I told you so.”

Last March, I tried to impress upon readers of my column thatthe idea of privacy on the Internet particularly when it comes toe-mail is a joke. We are blissfully unaware of how easy it is foranyone with some gumption or a complete lack of morals to see ourmost intimate or inane e-correspondence. If you trust that yourelectronic communications are private, I warned, you might just aswell walk down the streets of your hometown naked.

Now some highly-placed executives from Marsh & McLennan andtheir insurance company partners are seeing e-mail used as evidencein a fraud and collusion investigation by New York Attorney GeneralEliot Spitzer. If Internet privacy is a joke, be sure that no oneat the firms being probed is laughing.

It?s simply incredible that supposedly educated, well-readindividuals continue to believe that “delete” means “destroy” whenit comes to electronic communications. E-mail can hang around onservers (both in-house and virtually anywhere on the Internet) foryears. Even where it has been deleted from a hard drive or a drivehas been wiped clean, e-mail can be recovered with the righttechnology.

Readers of my column already know these facts, and I'm certainlynot the first to trumpet this message. That's what makes it all themore mind-boggling that these individuals would brazenly twist armsto solicit a contingent commission agreement or coerce a carrier toparticipate in a bid-rigging scheme via e-mail.

What is in the minds of these individuals who not only paradearound the cyber-universe naked, but seem to do so unashamedly? Arewe dealing with a subculture of technology dimwits? Actually, Idon't think so.

In another column dealing with a survey that showed that eventop-level employees of some British carriers had accessedconfidential data that was off-limits, New Jersey psychologistRonald Westrate commented: “They do it because they can. There's acertain sense of omnipotence It's a very arrogrant gesture.”

I think that kind of arrogrance is also what is at work whenshady deals are conducted via e-mail. I don't think the individualswho do such things believe for a second they will get caught, orthat anyone would even take notice. They're caught up in a powertrip that allows them to wield control over multimillion-dollarcompanies with the click of a mouse. They're playing God. What dothey care if some mere mortal hears their discourse?

So I take great delight in pointing out that I was right aboutthe dangers of trusting the privacy of e-mail not because itaffirms me, but because wrongdoers in our industry will be broughtdown, and their downfall will result from their arrogant ignoranceof the technological facts of life.

Just recently, we've seen the collapse of what Boston Red Soxowners termed “the evil empire,” when the swaggering New YorkYankees went down in humiliating defeat at the hands of theBeantown bunch in the American League championship. With Mr.Spitzer promising many more fraud cases to come, perhaps we can nowlook forward to the toppling of the “empire of arrogance” in ourown industry.

Ara C. Trembly

Senior Editor

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, October 28, 2004.Copyright 2004 by The National Underwriter Company in the serialpublication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as anindependent work may be held by the author.