"The doctor also verbally consented to an engineer checking his hard drive."
Ok look at it this way.
When I copy off a set of images from one off the memory card my cameras, for any purpose, backup, archive, pass a set of wedding photos to the happy couple etc etc I generally test open a few files off the copy as a quick and dirty check that all went well.
It could be that these guys did just that - and for the purposes of not "snooping" personal data, and presuming innocence of the customer, would it not be better to open a random few images than say, .doc files?
And then they found something potentially nasty. So, did they then immediately call the authorities to report or open all the images they could to -er- look for evidence themselves?
From the article it would seem the former.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
