Xref: utzoo news.admin:7831 misc.legal:12478
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!mintaka!think!ames!rex!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!dogie.macc.wisc.edu!uwvax!puff!cat9!schaut
From: schaut@cat9.CS.WISC.EDU (Richard Schaut)
Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.legal
Subject: Re: Evidence from computers
Message-ID: <3894@puff.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 29 Nov 89 05:17:23 GMT
References: <3990@sbcs.sunysb.edu> <628@ncis.tis.llnl.gov> <4052@sbcs.sunysb.edu>
Sender: news@puff.cs.wisc.edu
Reply-To: schaut@cat9.CS.WISC.EDU (Richard Schaut)
Distribution: usa
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 33

In article <4052@sbcs.sunysb.edu> brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
| 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.

I think you're both right.  Accounting data is different than most data
that is found on computers in that there is an established audit trail
for the accounting data.  A court will accept that data from the computer
because the trail from the numbers in the printouts to the original
transaction documents can be traced.  Very few computer printouts,
including automatic teller receipts, have that kind of control behind
them.


Rick

"Any questions?  Any answers?  Anyone care for a mint?" -- Rita Rudner


Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com