How Do You Take Information Into Custody?

from the just-wondering dept

Someone has been arrested for hacking into the computers of one of the largest consumer database companies out there. That, itself, isn't much of a story, to me. The quotes from the company, though, bring up two questions. First, the company's "Chief Privacy Officer" is quoted saying: "both the hacker and the information taken are in police custody." Well, that's good... but just how do you take "information" into custody? You could take a computer or a hard disk into custody, but there's no guarantee that it hasn't been copied, or posted to the internet and spread around the world. Second, she claims, that this is the first time the company has been hacked, though, earlier in the article she admits that the company had no idea it had been hacked until police contacted them last week, telling them they had caught this guy with their info. So, if they didn't even know about this hacker, how can they be so sure that this is the "first time" they've been hacked?