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New Rules Proposed on Electronic Evidence
davidtspf writes "The committee that makes the rules of procedure for U.S. federal courts is now considering new rules governing electronic evidence, how much litigants need to produce at trial, and under what circumstances. Civil rights attorneys are arguing that the rules will make it harder to find smoking guns, while a number of corporations, including Microsoft have submitted comments arguing for further limits. LawMeme has an article with more background, comparing the process to debates over IP law that occur in a vacuum of empirical data, and encouraging techies to submit requests to extend the public comment period, which ended today."
Would stricter rules not force the RIAA (and their ilk) to produce stronger evidence against defendants in copyright violation lawsuits?
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
So wait this can be good or bad, either you will no longer be able submit digital pictures and financial records as evidence of XYZ Corp.'s illegal under the table dealings with Senator Cock-Nose allowing them to kill babies, dump nuclear waste and go tax free, or it can make it impossible for the RIAA/MPAA/DMCARCALSVPT to subpoena you with a print-out of your ISP's traffic log for stealing Britney Spears record sales or talking about breaking encryption schemes.
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If you beleive that electronic data can't be forged to fit what ever you want then I have a big bridge to sell you too.
Is a readable hard drive with incriminating data required for a conviction? If so, one could do whatever they want (illegally) in a vmware session with the virtual disk stored in a ramdisk. Then, when the police come and unplug the machine for evidence, all the evidence is erased.
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Dogs are annoying. Go ECFA.
I kind of mess around with 3d apps for work and play, also browse the net looking for ideas... Anyway, I have noticed a lot of these online galleries post things like car crashes of 'luxury sports cars' that are clearly fake - fake flames, fake shadows, fake... Totally obvious to me, though after showing examples to family and friends, they would swear they were 'real'...
I guess 'they' might consider hiring a few ex image analysts from the military or other government agencies.
I think what I'm trying to say is that while it's not 'impossible' to make a foolproof 'fake' - it is extremely difficult.
Of course all this only relates to digital photography...
Actually... I'm really not very sure what my point is or why I even posted this...
Thats an arguable statement. I can make paper forged documents a lot easier then i can electronic ones...in fact I don't know how to fake the message-id header.
I think that any document entered to court should be validated and proved 100% authentic before it is admissable.
I do agree that the laws for evidence should be the same. If you accidentally send that incriminating document to someone who was no the intended recipient, it doesn't disqualify your document and its intent.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
This is related to the Banes-Oxley act which mandated that all email conversations (as well as other electronic documentation) must be backed up regularly and for a fixed period of time.
IANAL but it appears that a side effect of this is that it elevates this form of business communication as more legally binding above and beyond normal paper document communications. IE Official business memos are legally required to be stored but simple interperonsal memo communication between officers is not. But if it IS kept and found, it's legally admissable.
The law change (to help prevent another Enron) elevates all communication to a stored status. From the consumer side this is "good" because smoking guns are easier to find. But from the business side this is "bad" because a lot of ideas get thrown around when trying to develop business plans. Ideas that may be quasi-legal to begin with, but not recognizable as such until they bounce the plan off one of the legal team and he quashes it. End of story right? Not if that communication is part of the official record because it was emailed. Now it becomes a smoking gun as part of a "pattern of intent to do illegal buisness practices".
My first reaction was to say that corporate e-mails should be PGP (or similar) encrypted, but private keys would be subject to subpoena, wouldn't they?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
>That would certainly work to the advantage of those not eager to be confronted with old memos :-)
And to the disadvantage of those who used to have evidence that could clear them, but who automatically threw it out.
Either way money is an issue. Electronic storage is dirt cheap (better than dirt cheap: have you priced dirt lately?) but paying lawyers to read all your old email is so expensive that entire companies exist to streamline the process.
In other words, even non-scummy defendants would benefit from the proposed rules.
Back in the past I did a lot of work as a computer forensic expert on behalf of most of the UK police forces, Crown Prosecution Service, etc.
Always there would be attempts by the defence to get some of the evidence struck off as inadmissable before the session got underway before the Jury.
I remember one case - the evidence was a print-out showing the log of an investigator connecting to a BBS and downloading something illegal (AT&T calling card numbers or similar).
The defence pointed to a line 2/3 down the page and said there's a letter missing from the start of one of the lines. It said 'ogin' instead of 'Login'. Therefore the printer wasn't working correctly, and if we couldn't trust that the evidence shouldn't be admitted.
So, I take the stand and pick up the evidence bundle, and point out to the judge, with no small amount of amusement, that the original page had been hole-punched (not obvious in the photocopies) and the L had been punched out. The judges are not stupid, they know when the defence are 'trying it on'. All the evidence in that trial was allowed to stand, and as soon as the trial got underway the defendent changed his plea to guilty!
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
It would be easy to fake any e-mail you want on a system you control.
seriously, laughably, easy.
Going back in time, as in inserting your faked e-mail into an offsite tape backup, would be a little harder.
On the other hand, the people looking for evidence are very unlikely to be able to properly access your offsite library; they are most likely going to order the company geeks to do it for them, unless you are talking about a government sponsored full-bore witchhunt, of course.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Hm. Most of your argument has to do with copies and backups.
What if a document were created on a computer that was not included in the backup schedule, or was somehow excluded from regular backup?
For instance, if someone wanted to forge a document, they could operate on a removable USB drive. I won't say that I'm familar with the average backup system of the industry at large, but I'd guess that such drives would be excluded from the backup schedule.
If that's the case, then the forged document would appear to be an "original" by the method of checking copies and backup tapes.
Thoughts?