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The Courts Government News

Regarding the Use of Digital Data in Court? 65

Posted by Cliff from the providing-an-ironclad-alibi dept.
iChuckles asks: "Is there a way to make electronic data admissible in court? Can electronic data be used as an alibi? I want to keep an electronic journal, on my work, that is date and time stamped. This journal could be used to prove I came up with an idea on a certain date based upon an entry. Is there a database, or method of recording this data, in electronic form, that will stand up in court? Is there a database that once a record is entered with an accompanying time and date stamp, cannot be altered?"
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Regarding the Use of Digital Data in Court? More

Regarding the Use of Digital Data in Court?

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  • the entries would have to be kept with a trusted 3rd party as there is no such system that guarantees the data will not be changed. I guess it could be sort of like security certificate companies, holding the data in trust for everyone and their sole duty is to ensure that it is correct.

    As far as I am concerned - nothing you manage locally or hold entirely on your own hardware would be acceptable, you cannot provide a strong enough guarantee of the integrity.
    • You can always print out hard-copy and punch the hard copy into the company's time clock so it gets a date/time stamp marked upon it's physical self. When our CAD (Computer Aided Dispatching) terminals go down, we fall back on note cards and a time-clock to document all our communications (BTW, the database built by our CAD system is admissable in court, and is often used in court to settle questions regarding the times at which events happend. Quite useful when a passenger said he bailed out of the car before the driver opened fire on our officers, when the passenger was, in reality, reloading the weapon for the driver to use.)
      • You can always print out hard-copy and punch the hard copy into the company's time clock so it gets a date/time stamp marked upon it's physical self.

        This won't work. I could time-stamp a blank sheet of paper and print whatever I wanted to on it at a later date. Same thing goes with those people who say "mail a registered letter to yourself". So I mailed myself an empty envelope and filled it later....
        • This won't work. I could time-stamp a blank sheet of paper and print whatever I wanted to on it at a later date.

          This sounds reasonable, but ...

          Same thing goes with those people who say "mail a registered letter to yourself". So I mailed myself an empty envelope and filled it later....

          The original seal on that envelope is what matters. You file the sealed document away in a safe until the time arises when you might require it, then open it in the presence of a Justice of the Peace and witness(es).

          I know a few people who still have a few sealed registered letters kicking around. Much of it is useless by now, but they keep it anyways.

          • Doesn't work.
            1. Envelope can be opened, contents replaced, re-sealed (steam kettle, anyone?)
            2. Post office isn't required to keep tracking info on registered letters into perpetuity
            3. If you're going to need a j.p. anyway, why not get them to witness and stamp the original sheets?
            4. A little sleight-of-hand and what seems like you removing the original contents, isn't. Ask any magician how they "seem" to get stuff out of sealed envelopes.
            5. The original seal can be faked.
            6. etc....
            Only documents that can be "testified to" as to their contents, by a witness, are admissable as evidence. This is why, for example, in drunk-driving cases or speeding cases, the police tech who did the breathalyzer test, or operated the radar gun, has to testify to the contents of his/her report. The report cannot speak for itself in a court of law.
            • 1. Envelope can be opened, contents replaced, re-sealed (steam kettle, anyone?)

              It's already been stated that the post office seals registered mail. (We're not talking about stock white Grand & Toy envelopes here)

              Post office isn't required to keep tracking info on registered letters into perpetuity

              Doesn't have to. Their seal and mark is a known trusted symbol.

              If you're going to need a j.p. anyway, why not get them to witness and stamp the original sheets?

              It becomes very expensive, time consuming, and aggravating to have someone authenticate potentially hundreds or thousands of sheets on a continuous basis.

              A little sleight-of-hand and what seems like you removing the original contents, isn't. Ask any magician how they "seem" to get stuff out of sealed envelopes.

              So hand it to the judge or bailiff or attourney or ...

              The original seal can be faked.

              If you're going to go to the lengths to fake a registered letter, you might as well fake testimony from a witness. Perjury is far easier than forgery.

              • Faking the original stamp is VERY easy. And, you can send registered mail in non-standard 'sealed' envelopes.

                Which doesn't answer the main point: All documents need to be testified to. If e 2 people testifyi one way, and you have an unsupported document stating the opposite, you lose.

                • Faking the original stamp is VERY easy. And, you can send registered mail in non-standard 'sealed' envelopes.

                  Post office. Seal. End of story.

                  Which doesn't answer the main point: All documents need to be testified to. If e 2 people testifyi one way, and you have an unsupported document stating the opposite, you lose.

                  While I'm not a lawyer, but atleast I have a rudimentary understanding of the law. Re-read my post and contact a professional.

                  Fin.

                    1. Re point 1: It's easy to fake the post office seal. Just as it's easy to fake certified cheques, holograms on credit cards, currency, etc. End of story. In addition, it's easy to open envelopes at other than the top 'seal' and re-seal them. Any 'Post Office Seal' remains intact.
                    2. Re: point 2: Rudimentary is right. Unsupported documents are heresay, and must be rejected, esp. when contradicted by sworn testimony.
                    People have been thinking that they can get some sort of pseudo-intellectual-property by sending themselves a copy of their idea in an envelope etc.... It's who files first who wins. Check out their web site for more details. [uspto.gov]
      • Excuse me,
        What the hell do you do for a living?
        Quite useful when a passenger said he bailed out of the car before the driver opened fire on our officers, when the passenger was, in reality, reloading the weapon for the driver to use.
        • I thought that @ first as well, but it doesnt stand for "computer Aided Design" it stands for "Computer Aided Dispatching"

          And thus, after re-reading, i determined they work for the 911 people or something like that, and they record what the police officer is saying over the radio

          For instance:
          Cop:they are shooting @ us
          Cop:the passenger jumped out of the car!
          the data is in order and timestamped

          @ least this is how i guessed it to be
    • Rather than keep the entire entry at the 3rd party, you'd encrypt it with your public key and allow the 3rd party to datestamp it and cryptographically sign it.

      Then you keep the signature and datestamp yourself and the 3rd party never actually knows what the plain text was that it's just datestamped.

  • External authorities (Score:2, Informative)

    by denubis ( 105145 )
    http://www.itconsult.co.uk/stamper.htm [itconsult.co.uk] -- really, there comes a point where a trusted authority is just required. I know scientists just keep hand-written logbooks, and date each entry and keep it in pen. Nice and old-fashioned, the courts like it. Alternativly, if we don't want to go old-fashioned, you could sign your mails with the above service (but how do you prove that service can be trusted?)

    Trust is a really nasty recursive problem. I'd just keep a paper logbook, and other records. It should work well enough.
  • Our government could provide this service.... and hopefully signed data would stand up in court.

    A public time-stamping service is what we need. How do we get this set up?

    I'd like to hear about the ones you know that are already in place, but something more universally trusted would be ideal. (Not that our government is universally trusted, but for in-court use, we'd need something not just a private person or corporation has set up.)

    • I posted a little futher down the page, but the US postal service provides time stamping for the cost of a stamp.
      Just mail yourself a copy of the disk and leave it sealed.
      You can't prove the dates on the disk are correct, but at least the court will know nothing was made later than the stamp on the envelope.

  • Systems DO exist (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ip_vjl ( 410654 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2002 @10:27AM (#4914852) Homepage
    Not to come off as a corporate shill, but the company I work for (IP.com) has products for just this sort of thing. The Prior Art Database is used by a lot of big name companies in releasing technical disclosures to prevent future patents. We also have Innovation Q, which protects data privately. Innovation Q is really designed for corporate users, though, as it is subscription based and also adds features like document search, conversion, and management.

    For an individual user like yourself, I'd suggest the following.

    • Save your file in a format that will be accessible years from now (like ASCII text).
    • MD5 the file (or substitute your favorite hashing algorythm)
    • Take out a classified ad in the newspaper each day (that you have a file to timestamp) with the filename and MD5 of the file (good luck getting the paper to print the MD5 correctly)
    • buy and keep a copy of the paper for your records (optional)


    This should allow you to prove you had a file that produced THIS signature on a certain date. You can then recalculate the MD5 of the file you have (and if you haven't modified it) it should produce the same hash - which would lead one to believe that this IS the same file. This should be fairly compelling evidence.

    Yes, it is *possible* to get another file to produce the same MD5, but it is unlikely.

    Another option would be to print out the journal entry and have it notarized. This would be much easier to fake than the MD5 method - but courts have accepted notarized documents for ages.

    - vin

    • Save your file. . .MD5 the file. . .[publish the digest]. . .
      You beat me to it. :-)
      This works, but the poster should bear in mind that at some point he may have to convince a judge and jury that it works. Make your lawyer aware that you're doing this, and make sure s/he's familiar enough with the method to be able to validate it in court.
    • Another option similar to this would be to burn all of your data onto a CD on a weekly basis, and send it to yourself by registered mail. Don't open the packages and store them in a safety-deposit box. Since you know what is on each CD, you can keep the mail sealed, and if needed, it would probably work as fairly convincing evidence.

      It would probably help to discuss all of this with a lawyer before deciding on anything.

    • Re:Systems DO exist (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 )
      Take out a classified ad in the newspaper each day (that you have a file to timestamp) with the filename and MD5 of the file (good luck getting the paper to print the MD5 correctly)

      Cheaper and more reliable is certified mail. Mail the hash to yourself, and you'll have a trusted timestamp that is tested and valid in court. Just don't open the envelope when it arrives. :)

      Better yet, mail a CD with all the data on it to yourself. Then you don't have to explain MD5 to the judge.
      • Not saying it hasn't been done, but I can't imagine why any jury would allow the mail trick to hold up in court.

        I can easily mail an unsealed empty envelope to myself (with enough postage to cover additional non-existent weight) ... then down the line, just drop something into the envelope and seal it.

        It'll have a postmark from 4 years ago - be sealed - but have content I created yesterday.

        Failing that, unless it is an envelope that cannot be opened without destroying it, either steaming it or freezing it will likely let me open it, change the contents, and re-seal it.

        --

        Since most individuals don't need protection granular to a single day, I'd suggest saving up a week/months worth at a time and doing the newspaper thing.

        Or, if you have that high of volume, and need daily granularity - I'd suggest a corporate solution. If you're that worried about your IP, it must be valuable enough to not play games with it.

        • Certified mail is thoroughly sealed with special tape at every envelope seam by the Post Office before it is accepted. Or at least my mail was.
        • I can easily mail an unsealed empty envelope to myself (with enough postage to cover additional non-existent weight) ... then down the line, just drop something into the envelope and seal it.

          That's why you use certified mail. It costs more, but it's sealed by the post office to provide proof of mailing. They also have a new service where you can e-mail them a document and they'll mail it for you. You don't even have to go to the post office.

          http://www.usps.com/netpost/certifiedmail_faq.htm [usps.com]

  • Is there a database, or method of recording this data, in electronic form, that will stand up in court?
    Or rather: Is there a reliable web service (a "trusted authority") that provides unique time stamps?

    Is there a database that once a record is entered with an accompanying time and date stamp, cannot be altered?
    And don't forget: Is there a way to prevent records being inserted in between older journals, at a later time?

    Or ...Maybe some of that infamous write only memory [ozemail.com.au] would solve your problems?

    --
    The human brain is a wonderful thing: It starts working the moment you are born, and never stops until you stand up to speak in public -- Sir George Jessel
  • The only way I can think of is to have someone sign it with their OpenPGP key.
    • There used to be a public PGP timestamp service on the internet. One of the PGP USENET groups would have daily (weekly?) summaries of the hashes posted from the server for further record (I assume).

      One would create a detached signature of the document and mail it to the server (or perhaps the whole signed/encrypted document). The server would sign whatever you sent, then send that back to you.

      You could then verify that you signed the document (possibly implying that you wrote it), and then verify the date in which you did so.

      I don't know what happend to the service, but there's a for-pay service which is similar. Check out this place [readnotify.com].

  • It's Heresay (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Isao ( 153092 )
    Computer data is considered heresay in court.
    If you are serious, record your notes in a written journal (in pen), and take the journal to a subject matter notary once a week (or month) to have them notarized (each page). You may wish to contract this service (it should be cheaper that way than one-offs). This is how intellectual property research can be protected.
    The do-it-yourself method (I don't know how this stands up in court) is to snail-mail copies of your journal pages (say weekly) in tamper-evident envelopes to yourself. Don't open them. They are post-marked by the USPS for date. I suppose you could put your data on a CD weekly or monthly and do the same thing, but the computer-data-as-heresay issue comes up again.

    • Re:It's Heresay (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Computer data is considered heresay in court.

      Not necessarily. Business records are specifically not considered hearsay, if they are generated in the "normal course of business" and not in anticipation of litigation. In the United States, anyway.
      • More precisely, they are hearsay, but admissible hearsay.

        Welcome to one of the 37 exceptions [cornell.edu] to the hearsay rule.

        Of course, that does not guarantee they are admissible; you need to worry about the Best Evidence Rule, for one thing, though I don't think that should be a problem.
    • Here is a good article that covers a lot of this
      The "Authenticity Crisis" In Real Evidence [lewisandroca.com]
      Scientific Evidence Review
      10.1.2001

      You might also be interested in the KODAK Picture Authentication Module [kodak.com] which uses PKI in a camera.
    • Why pen? Could you just have print-offs notarized?

      In the case of notaries, what kind of docs do they keep? That is, I could have a stack of paper with "My great of idea of this week is" and have it notarized, to later fill it in. Doesn't matter, pen or print.

      Too bad there's not an MD5-like hash for physical documents that could be stamped by the notary. :)
      • In the case of notaries, what kind of docs do they keep? That is, I could have a stack of paper with "My great of idea of this week is" and have it notarized, to later fill it in. Doesn't matter, pen or print.

        I'm not too familiar with how the notary public system works; but couldn't said notary be fired, fined, have their notary status revoked, etc. for such an act?

  • Mail! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2002 @12:10PM (#4915391) Homepage Journal
    Mail it to yourself, registered mail style.

    While you're at it, mail yourself some empty unsealed envelopes, "just in case"...
  • I learned in music school that the old fashioned trick of mailing yourself something and leaving it sealed does stand up in court.

    Take whatever it is you want to timestamp, put it in a sealed envelope, and mail it to yourself.

    If you ever have to go to court, have the judge open the postal service stamped envelope and examine the contents.

    It would take a damn good lawyer to make a jury think you are somehow in cahoots with the postal service and had them back date the stamp.
    • It is trivial to remove a piece of paper from an ordinary sealed envelope, modify it or replace it, and put it back in the envelope. Intelligence agencies have been doing it for centuries.
  • On the loganalysis mailing list.

    It's covered everything from requirements for logs to be admitted, to the validity of using checksums.

    It's also been archived on the log analysis website.

    even better, we've had several lawyers in on the conversation who site actual case law.

    for once the conversation doesn't need the standard IANAL.

    Here's a link to the start of the thread
    [Log] Log Archival [shmoo.com]

    or for those who prefer a top down view:

    Index of threads for december [shmoo.com]

    oh, and here's a website by the ever excellent Tina Bird of counterpayne, as well as Marcus Ranum

    Log Analysis [loganalysis.org]

    you can find all the info you need in the library off this site.
  • The same reasons why video is in-admissable in court apply here. And heck while were at it, its also the same reason why lie-detectors are not trsuted in court either. The reason is that technology is the devil's fiddle.
    • The same reasons why video is in-admissable in court apply here.

      You telling me that all those Caught On Tape shows on FOX are wrong when they end a clip by saying something along the lines of, "and the video evidence was enough to convince a judge to convict him"?

    • Actually there is a company called Pelco, who specializes in video surveillance equipmment. They make a line of digital video recorders which can digitally "watermark" captured images. From what I understand, their method has been accepted in several states as admissable in court.
  • If you can find your journal on one of the internet public archieves, that should be trusted enough.
  • Is there a database, or method of recording this data, in electronic form, that will stand up in court?

    Ask a lawyer!!!! The only way to know if something will stand up in court is if it alreay has stood up in court, and even then it's tricky. Unless you're up to researching the possible cases where these types of documentation were scrutinized by the court, then a lawyer is your only hope.

    For these reasons, use a regular notebook which will stand up in court. If you need to attach documenation, tape it in to the notebook. If it really has to stand up in court, use a notary public.

    Notary publics can also date/time stamp sealed envelopes, and under contract it can probably be less than registered mail. If you work in a large company (which you don't, otherwise you wouldn't be asking these questions) then they probably have one person on staff who is certified as a notary public.

    Print out your journal once a week (two copies, one in envelope, one out) and have the notary sign and seal the sealed copy, and notarize the external copy. Keep both together in another envelope (with good record keeping) and make notes in the journal database about whaty entries are in the envelope for future reference.

    The reality is that if you are defending a claim, you must prove that you came up with the idea first. They may well attack any sort of credibility you have if anything you make to track it can be modified in any way by you, such as an onsite database. You need to have third party impartial involvement.

    -Adam
  • The best you could hope for with digital data is to burn it to CD-R (not CD-RW) and mail it to yourself. Doing this once a month should be sufficient. leave the envelopes sealed, as that's the only timestamp you'll have that will stand up in court.

    The problem is that it's so easy to alter digital data. If it's stored on a medium that's writable, it can be changed. CD-R is in theory not writable, but you can alter the date that's burned on the CD fairly easily, making it quite simple to falsify, and therefore creating the need to verify the date the CD was burned. The USPS is the cheapest and easiest way to do this.

    If I were a judge, I would never accept a digital timestamp as proof. If I were a lawyer opposing you, the first thing I'd do is bring in someone to explain to the court all the reasons digital data can't be trusted.

    If this is actually important to you, you don't want to be the test case for this type of timestamp.

  • Email each journal entry to yourself. Use an email provider that isn't connected with your business if you feel that gives you an added level of trustability. Email is admissable.

  • I am currently involved with the development of a middleware system called Scientific Annotation Middleware [pnl.gov] - SAM. One of the services that we are in the process of implementing is a Notorization Service that can be used by a 3rd party for signing document hashes. We use the XML signiture spec./infrastructure.

    In particular we'll be developing Notebook services and a SAM electronic-notebook that will use the notorization service for exactly the purpose you seek.

    Unfortunately, it won't be viable/released for end-user use for at least a couple more years.

    There are other e-notebooks that have been developed (by us and other parties), but none of them have legally acceptable notorization capabilities to date.

  • VeriSign offers a timestamping product. Basically, you upload your doc, or a hash of it (can't remember exactly) and VeriSign signs it using their private key and appends a timestamp to it and stores the sig for later retrieval.

    If you want to verify a document existed at a certain time you can re-upload it, they can validate the signature and verify the doc existed at the time of the stamp.

    Since most of us already trust VeriSign for SSL certs, why not timestamping?
  • Burn Two Copies of a write-once disc. Seal one copy in an appropriately sized tamper-proof envelope and mail it to yourself. While not a complete solution, This is equivalent to having a Notary verify that the data did exist on the postmarked date as it is on the disc. The second disk is used as part of a reference catalog to see what you have legally dated. The dated, provably unmodified data in the envelope is kept in a safe place.
  • This was mentioned in one other post, but doesn't seem to have been noticed and modded up:

    PGP Digital Timestamping Service [itconsult.co.uk]

    Stamper is a free digital timestamping service which uses PGP and operates via Internet email. Launched in 1995, it remains my intention that this will be a reliable quality service which will remain in operation for a number of years.

    Signatures are available through the website, on a mailing list they run, and weekly to the usenet group comp.security.pgp.announce. Make sure any company you use does some sort of public announcement like this, or if they go out of business you're screwed.

  • Just get it copyrighted. The day the US Copyright office receives your work is when their protection starts, and is provable.

  • Only when it's used against you (Score:3, Informative)

    by Webmoth ( 75878 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2002 @04:38PM (#4917888) Homepage
    In drug or child pr0n cases, digital data is often used as evidence against the defendant(s).
  • Archive onto CD/DVD and mail that disk in a well sealed envelope to your self.

    The Postmark is a trusted 3rd party that verifies date and location for you.

  • There's a number of posts which claim that mailing yourself a sealed copy of whatever you want to timestamp is valid, will hold up in court, bla bla bla.

    Can anyone cite a court case in which such evidence was either accepted, rejected, or challenged?

    "Sounds good to me" is not the way courts work. They work first on law, secondly on precedent, and thirdly on whether or not the question is valid or can be compromised. If the law does not explicitly say that a sealed, postmarked envelope is a valid timestamp, then it is up to the courts to decide if it is or not; once decided, that decision stands until a higher court overturns it.

    Cite precedent or law and I'll believe it.

    P.S. -- You can probably mail yourself an UNSEALED envelope, then when you need to, you can "backdate" something. Anyone know how the USPS handles unsealed mail?
  • Thanks for the name check, Blaise. My favorite place to send people for information about how to make computer data admissable in court is a paper by Orin Kerr, former Dept. of Justice attorney and now a prof at George Washington, specializing in technology issues. He wrote a great summary of >>current>caselawevidencecould have been tampered with.

    This of course makes life a lot easier for your sys admin in the trenches, who doesn't have time to set up an encrypted write once file system...

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