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From: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.legal
Subject: Re: Evidence from computers
Summary: how about some case references?
Message-ID: <4052@sbcs.sunysb.edu>
Date: 27 Nov 89 14:42:07 GMT
References: <3990@sbcs.sunysb.edu> <628@ncis.tis.llnl.gov>
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Reply-To: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
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In article <628@ncis.tis.llnl.gov> mcb@ncis.tis.llnl.gov (Michael C. Berch) writes:
> Huh?  I don't think there is any court in the country that *doesn't*
> accept evidence from computers.

I've seen several cases where printouts were not accepted in court. For
example, if a money machine messes up, you have absolutely no recourse.
The receipts are worthless. (This may not be true in states other than
New York. And I'm not a lawyer.)

> Considering that the vast majority of
> accounting data in the U.S. is kept on computers, inability to accept
> computer data as evidence would, shall we say, throw quite a cramp
> into business litigation.

Of course. A business happens to store information on a computer; it
prints it out, looks at the result, says happily ``yes, these are our
accounting records,'' and submits the evidence. Here the evidence is
the printout; the information in the evidence has nothing to do with
the computer.

In other words: The business is saying ``these sheets of paper contain
our records.'' What does that have to do with computers?

In contrast, New York courts consider money machine transactions to
have a lot to do with computers. Say I submit a receipt as evidence;
what do I say about it? ``This receipt details my interaction with
the money machine.'' The computer here is not just a medium; it's the
actual entity, the machine, that the evidence has to do with.

> Computer data -- reduced to printouts,
> graphics, or other tangible form -- is as admissible as any other kind
> of documentary evidence, so long as it is properly identified and
> authenticated via an offer of proof, *just like any other documentary
> exhibit*.

That's the tricky part. The courts (quite sensibly) consider it very
difficult to authenticate evidence *that has to do with computers*.

> I also do not know of any support for the assertion that "computer
> mail is taken as speech."

Case law.

> I do not know of any cases
> involving UUCP or Internet mail, but other e-mail (e.g., PROFS, PC
> mail programs, Telex) has been used as proof in litigation.

Sure, just as a taped conversation can. The problem is connecting what
was supposedly said with who said it; and computer mail poses very
similar difficulties to speech in this respect. It simply isn't taken
as writing.

> Michael C. Berch  
> Member of the California Bar

California's a strange place.

---Dan