Via BeSpacific, comes this article from the National Law Journal: Digital Data Integrity: Crucial in Duke Case. The media frenzy surrounding the rape allegations against the Duke lacrosse team has lawyers demonstrating their ignorance about data authentication on TV talks shows.
According to the article, some of the evidence includes a time-stamped digital photo and an email (with header), both of which the authors contend, could have been tampered with. This possibility never enters the discussion when the case is tried in the media.
The authors say that in the legal profession, which is grounded in the printed word, “it is difficult to alter documents or images, and forged documents are easily detected.†Even though that's not the case in electronic world, old assumptions die hard.
Just about every great corporate meltdown of the past five years has contained a tale or two about document mismanagement, tampering, forgery or destruction. The anecdotes have shed much-needed light on an open secret long known to those in the information technology field: The integrity of all electronic documentation is remarkably easy to corrupt, intentionally or unintentionally, without notice.
There are solutions to this legal dilemma. There are various services, policies and products that can protect parties from unwanted records manipulation and certify the authenticity of electronic information. Technologies such as third-party trusted timestamps are able to prove that an electronic record existed at a specific point in time and has not been altered since. Without a records management system in place by which digital data may be authenticated, it is very difficult for litigants or disputing parties to prove the integrity of timestamps and associated metadata.
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