Sender: •••@••.•••
Just a thought on why the police confiscate the entire system. The Federal
Rules of Evidence make it extremely difficult to bring evidence based uponnce
new technology. There are ways to do this (business records, for example),
but most law enforcement people have been burned on technicalities a little
too often. They feel that rather than have to prove to the court that the
evidence on disk or tape is what was on the hard drive of a particular
computer, they will simply present the entire computer system. This way
there are fewer problems in proof.
I wonder, though, since European countries are generally on a civil law
system, why it would be necessary to confiscate the entire system. But
I just remembered that in the Netherlands, they simply took down the serial
number of the computer, am I right? This would lead me to believe the
problem may be in our Federal Rules of Evidence. Perhaps new rules should
be promulgated for computers, so that justice may be better served.
Thanks for listening.
Connie Page
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Posted by -- Andrew Oram -- •••@••.••• -- Cambridge, Mass., USA
Moderator: CYBER-RIGHTS (CPSR)
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