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Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:05:07 -0400
To: TSCM-L <TSCM-..._at_googlegroups.com>
From: "James M. Atkinson" <jm..._at_tscm.com>
Subject: More Blackberry Mischief
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http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/03/america/NA-GEN-US-Clinton-Pollster-Sued.php
Hillary Rodham Clinton's pollster sued for e-mail eavesdropping
The Associated Press
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
NEW YORK: Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief strategist is being accused
of illegal eavesdropping in a civil lawsuit that alleges he and his
polling firm monitored the personal e-mails of a former associate who
started a rival company.
Mitchell E. Markel, a former vice president at polling firm Penn,
Schoen & Berland, claims in the suit that the firm began monitoring
all messages sent from his personal Blackberry device nearly a month
after he had resigned and become president of his new business. The
suit claims that the founder of the firm, Mark Penn, who is Clinton's
strategist and pollster, knew about and approved of the monitoring,
which the suit says violates federal wiretapping laws.
Penn, Schoen & Berland, a world-renowned firm that has helped elect
clients like former President Clinton and New York Mayor Michael
Bloomberg, is accused of hacking into Markel's Blackberry and rigging
his e-mail accounts to send blind carbon copies of his e-mails to
another account that it had set up. The suit says the Blackberry that
Markel used was always his own, never the property of his former employer.
"Through this unlawful interception scheme, defendants clandestinely
received confidential and proprietary information of Markel's company
... including pricing, strategy and work product, and proprietary
information of other companies whose e-mails were also intercepted,"
the suit says.
Howard Rubin, an attorney for Penn, Schoen & Berland, disputed the
claim that the e-mails were private or that the firm engaged in
unauthorized monitoring.
"The company hasn't done anything improper and the e-mails came in on
our own e-mail account," he said. He declined to elaborate.
The suit filed last Friday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan is the
latest twist in the saga of the high-profile polling firm, which not
only advises on political strategy but also does brand building and
corporate messaging for clients like Microsoft and Time Warner.
A week earlier, the firm had filed its own lawsuit against Markel and
another former partner, Michael J. Berland, accusing them of breach
of contract because Markel's new company was soliciting Penn, Schoen
& Berland clients, with Berland's help.
Markel, Berland and other employees of Penn, Schoen & Berland signed
agreements that prohibited them from competing with the firm or
soliciting and servicing its clients for a certain period of time if
they were to leave the company, according to the suit.
Some observers have wondered whether that first suit against Berland
and Markel was a warning shot from the Clinton campaign to Bloomberg,
who is said to be contemplating his own independent presidential run.
Associates of the mayor, who insists he is not running, say that if
he did decide to get into the race he would likely want to hire
pollsters he knows and trusts; Berland worked on both of his mayoral campaigns.
Berland left Penn, Schoen & Berland in December, and Markel left this
year to run a new company that he has formed called Global Insights &
Strategies, LLC.
It was also from that first suit that Markel initially learned his
e-mail was being monitored, because the suit quotes e-mails between
him, Markel and others that show conversations they were having about
doing business with clients of their former firm. The clients
described in the suit were not political candidates but corporate
accounts like the National Hockey League, Estee Lauder and Qwest.
The first suit, also filed in State Supreme Court, claims that
Berland and Markel violated the non-competition agreement by pursuing
those clients, among other things, on behalf of Markel's new company.
It was filed to stop Berland, Markel and two other former employees
"from engaging in an orchestrated and illegal plot to sabotage PSB's
business in New York by soliciting PSB's most significant clients and
servicing them through a new and competing company" that had
"assistance and funding from Berland," the complaint says.
Berland's attorney did not return a call seeking comment about that suit.
Markel's suit seeks monetary damages and asks the court to restrain
Penn, Schoen from disclosing or using any of the intercepted
electronic communications, including for competitive use or in any
trial or court proceeding, and asks that they be ordered to destroy
everything they intercepted.
The previous suit also sought unspecified damages and asked the court
to stop Berland, Markel and other former employees from soliciting
their clients and engaging in other competitive business practices.
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Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 E-mail: mailto:jm..._at_tscm.com
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