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Text Messages in the Courts
KennyG944 noted a story running on CNN which talks about Text Messages being used in the Kobe Bryant trial. This raises a host of issues about the phone company keeping these messages around and expectations of privacy.
In South Africa, they have an electronic communications act in place that states that all electronic documents are to be treated in the same way as physical documents - that they all have the same legal strength in a court of law. Included in the definition of 'electronic documents' are email messages and sms's/texts. Its wierd to think of people in all these 1st world countries complaining about it when us South Africans have been subject to this for years now - and have gotten used to it.
It must be noted that it is the accuser's text messages that are being retrieved.
This is not like a defendant is having his own messages used against him.
t
The idea that the courts determine whether or not someone ACTUALLY IS GUILTY is a stupid and common American fallacy. (I don't know what it's like elsewhere.)
I don't know about the US, but here in the UK, then if a court has found you guilty, then legally speaking you _are_ guilty, until and unless an higher court overturns that finding. It's called a "legal fiction" -- that is, it may not be true, but it is assumed to be for the purposes of running the legal system.
A similar thing is evident in civil procedures, where if you send a claim form to someone by first class post, it is assumed to arrive the next day. Even if it doesn't arrive until two weeks later, the counting of dates for procedure purposes still takes place from the day after it was sent. (Although in practice, the defendant can generally apply for an extension and will almost always get one).
Well, I don't know about that, but if you send text messages in the UK, you can bet that the Special Branch is reading them.
"The plural of anecdote is not data" -- Bruce Schneier
You typically don't need a warrant to exhonorate someone.
There is the possibility that these messages could be used to acquit Kobe, but then be inadmissable against her if some perjury charge was brought up.
You generally don't have a right to keep evidence private (someone else's right to life trumps your right to privacy). You have a right to not incriminate yourself (I just love to blatantly split infinitives).
t
Uhh... I think you have your terms mixed up. The defendant in this case is Bryant. The plaintiff is the girl.
This is not at all uncommon to see. I've seen children even younger than 12 with cell phones. Parents in latchkey homes use these as contact and emergency location tools for their kids.
What is interesting in my opinion is how when children start sending hateful messages on devices that record activity, suddenly schoolyard bickering becomes a fully punishable hate crime. This doesn't just apply to texting, it applies to email, web forums and the whole gamut. My local school tried to suspend some children for posting that another student was "ugly" on a web forum in which several students were participating actively on one of the student's personal websites. All of them were in the 12-14 year age range. If that happened in the schoolyard, the teacher wouldn't have the time or would use personal objectivity to mediate the situation. Not so online.
This case in Georgia is probably a bit more serious even if the term "sodomy" in Georgia probably covers everything not deemed strictly missionary, heterosexual, consensual and married intercourse. That's an entirely different kettle of fish though. The US Military has a similar definition of sodomy in the UCMJ.
From the Article: ATT didn't keep the messages, but they have a backup storage system which automatically backs up everything - including the text messages.
So it's not that they wanted to keep the messages - they just forgot to tell the backup program not to back them up, or delete them after a certain period of time.
Very interesting. I would be surprised if the other wireless companies (which immediately claimed they didn't keep messages around) didn't have the same problem.
Any professional company would have a backup system for their main servers. You really think they would go through the trouble and remove the text messages from that? What if the text message can't be delivered instantly and the server crashes? You would want to retrieve them from the backup system of course. This is not a trivial problem - you would really have to give this some thought.
Do i really think that the marketing-drones who were quick to repeat the official company line really thought this through? No.
That was a message sent to the wrong person who then called the police. It wasn't any kind of snooping.
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
It would be nice of this was a standard part of the phone's firmware. I suspect many police/security services would not like it. They've successfully suppressed digital end-to-end encryption in the USA for all but "authorized" users.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
In one instance, text was recovered from the SIM card in a GSM phone.
Erm...
Felching.
Coming from a low level employees view from AT&T Wireless, AFAWK the system didn't keep track of the message in question, it just kept a log of each sent and received, there wasn't a reason to actually keep a log of the messages.
"Do you suppose that's why God lives in the Heavens? Because he lives in fear of His creations?" - Steve Buscemi
That's why athletes will continue to get away with this shit; they're treated like they're better than everyone else, even when they act just as awfully and cowardly as the next rapist.
Let me see...
I compose a text message and hit send. It is sent to the network. There is now two copies on the message - the one on my phone and the one on the network. The network determines the closest access to the recepiant and forwards the message - there are now three copies of the message. If the recepiant is not available, the message is transfered to storage instead of to the access point closest to the recepiant - still three copies, but now when the recipiant is available, the network forwards the message to the closest access point (copy four, now) for delivery.
For those with per-message pricing, there is additional accounting and possibly copies for use in billing disputes (RTFA, this is mentioned).
The postcard CAN be read by anyone handling it in the system but there is no need for copies to be made (same for th eFedEx example) while the text message REQUIRES copies - multiple copies - for delivery.
Interesting article from just two days ago...
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.