Context-Aware Technology Goes to Court

In court cases involving corporations, lawyers for plaintiffs often struggle to determine which employees knew that fraud or some other illegal activity was happening. Reconstructing the context surrounding the event can be painstaking as investigators wade through thousands or even millions of e-mail messages. The task has become even more challenging in recent years as new forms of communication—instant messaging, text messages, or social media postings—have become more pervasive. That means it's less likely for investigators to find a single "smoking gun" e-mail message or memo. Cataphora's software overcomes this challenge by correlating and analyzing different types of communications to try to create context. "In the time we've been in business, the average size of e-mail text has shrunk about 50%," says Elizabeth Charnock, CEO of Cataphora, a maker of software that helps organizations understand complex employee behavior patterns by analyzing electronic communications. Using software to track the larger context around employee relationships can be used to incriminate—or acquit—defendants.