KAILUA-KONA — The battle over the authenticity of emails that form part of a lawsuit against the Hawaii Island Humane Society will likely be resolved only by a forensic examination of the society’s servers.
KAILUA-KONA — The battle over the authenticity of emails that form part of a lawsuit against the Hawaii Island Humane Society will likely be resolved only by a forensic examination of the society’s servers.
That’s according to an expert in the field of electronic evidence as the Humane Society prepares to file a counter suit against Big Island Dog Rescue and disciplinary action against its attorneys for basing their case against HIHS on what HIHS classifies as fake emails.
“Anyone can put anything on a PDF or Word document and make it look like it has an email header, but you just don’t have any metadata to support that,” said Bruce Anderson, director of cyber intelligence and investigations for the Florida-based company Cyber Investigation Services.
The newspaper contacted Anderson to get his opinion on the case.
“If I were on the (Humane Society) side, I’d say ‘show me the metadata,’” Anderson said.
Big Island Dog Rescue filed a lawsuit last Friday alleging the Humane Society and others acting on its behalf engaged in a campaign to tarnish the rescue organization’s reputation with the public, the airlines with which BIDR ships dogs and other businesses.
The steps to take down BIDR and drag it through the mud are laid out in a series of PDF documents which appear to contain emails provided by a whistleblower who had access to HIHS computers.
The Humane Society, its attorney and others named in the suit say the emails are complete fakes and that lawyers for BIDR should have done a better job vetting the evidence before they filed the claim for damages.
The fact that the evidence is in PDF document form rather than actual forwarded emails poses a problem for anyone trying to determine their source, said Anderson, whose company investigates cyber threats and offers cyber security and digital forensic services.
Metadata is data stored within an email. It documents the path the email took, whom it was sent from and to, when, who received it and what servers it passed through along the way, among other information.
Anderson said if the emails came from where BIDR claims they did, there will be no hiding it.
“They could try to erase them, but a good forensic examiner would be able to see all that,” he said. “Did those emails actually come into the Humane Society servers? It’s easy to tell. If I were an attorney I’d be pushing for an investigation of their servers. If they’re guilty, they’ll put up a hell of a fight, saying it’s an invasion of privacy.”
The emails outline a need to prevent the euthanasia rate from dropping and unhinging the society’s animal control contract with the county. The emails appear to be brainstorming sessions for discrediting BIDR with background checks, for recruiting for a whisper campaign, turning the island’s various rescue organizations against BIDR and laying plans to scapegoat HIHS employees if necessary.
BIDR says they’ve drawn Humane Society ire by showing there is a better way to deal with unwanted animals than putting them down, and because they are competing directly with them for public sympathy and donation dollars. The Humane Society claims the lawsuit is just another example of underhanded tactics and an ongoing attack by the rescue group.
Those named in the suit emphatically deny writing the emails or knowing who did. Humane Society board member Elizabeth Jose and executive director Donna Whitaker have expressed outrage at the lawsuit through their attorney Shawn Nakoa, who has called the suit frivolous and bogus. Debbie Baker, also named in the suit, told the newspaper in an email that she is “offended, shocked, disgusted and mad as hell that a person or persons would knowingly attack my character and integrity with falsehoods.”
Kathy Kim Peters, also named, called the emails “completely fake.”
“Even the content of these fake emails are completely ludicrous,” she wrote to the newspaper. “As an example, the BIDR lawsuit produces an email it claims I sent to Debbie Baker saying: ‘Debbie, I have several ties with the County Council, courts, Mayor’s Office, and the police chief. We also have contacts at the state and federal level if need be. I also have a few girls I can exploit to do our bidding. Lol.’ The author of this fictitious email apparently thinks I have ‘ties’ with council members, the Mayor, and the police chief. I have zero ‘ties’ with anyone on the county council. I don’t know anyone who works in the Mayor’s office, and I don’t even know the name of our police chief.
“I have never written an email to, received an email from, made a phone call to, received a phone call from, or had any type of communication via words, hand signals, or body language with Debbie Baker regarding either the HIHS or BIDR.
“I find these fake emails to be defamatory and this lawsuit absolutely without merit. It appears this is part of BIDR’s ongoing campaign to smear the Hawaii Island Humane Society and its supporters.”
BIDR founder Tasi Autele and board chairman Thad Smith stood by their claims in interviews over the past two days. Smith said that more evidence will be coming out in the course of the legal battle ahead, and that much of the case is based not just on emails but on real actions by the society and those acting on its behalf.
“What else could they possibly say?” Smith said of the HIHS response to the suit.
While people are focusing on the emails, “they are only part of the case, the roadmap to the things they did do over the next year,” Smith said.
Autele said he could not reveal whether he knew the identity of the purported whistleblower who had sent him the PDFs of the emails until he conferred with his attorneys. Autele denied having the knowledge or inclination to fake the evidence.
“Unless I’m a CIA hacker, it didn’t happen,” he said.
Calls to Hilo attorney Damir Kouliev and Oregon animal law attorney Geordie Duckler — lawyers who are handling the case for BIDR — were not immediately returned. A follow-up call to Nakoa was also unreturned.
Big Island rescue organizations have been at odds with the Humane Society for years, saying the organization needs to do more to reduce euthanasia of the more than 3,000 dogs it puts to death each year. The society maintains it has taken steps to increase adoptions and has held the public responsible for becoming more engaged with good practices like spaying and neutering.
In February, the rescue groups held a town hall meeting with members of the County Council and the public. The gathering — which the Humane Society did not attend — agreed that the council should rework its $1.9 million annual animal control contract with the Humane Society. Under current and past contracts, the euthanasia of 14,000 animals a year is listed as a performance measure, along with responding to a certain number of calls and running a voluntary pet adoption program.
That language needs to be changed to place emphasis on spay and neuter and adoption rather than euthanasia, the group said.
BIDR formed last January and airlifted 81 dogs to mainland shelters in its first four months. Many of its transports were animals it had adopted from the Humane Society. But last summer, HIHS temporarily suspended dealings with BIDR and other rescue groups while it wrote up a legal contract that specified liability, reporting on adopted animals, treatment during transport and other legalities. BIDR and its supporters picketed the Kona shelter in July to protest the moratorium.