3 ms·

The concern seems to be more of a legal one than a technical one. Law enforcement in theory should always disclose how they collect evidence.

• jascii 7y ago
  Should they? I know of no such law or theory. They have a burden of proof regarding the correctness of evidence and the defence can question the legality of collection methods if the evidence gets used in court. As far as I know, that's about it.
  • bredren 7y ago
    Does chain of custody have anything to do with this? I know in some computer forensics work it is important to be able to prove evidence has not been tampered with. So for example, cracking hashes instead of working with encrypted data can create safe space for non-leo to work without undermining an investigation. For example, a case of illegal doping, the accused Pearson’s samples must be able to be shown to not have been tampered with. It seems being able to prove the source of evidence would be the first step of this process.
    • jascii 7y ago
      Chain of custody is one tool used to satisfy part of the burden of proof regarding correctness of the evidence. There are others like sworn testimony or corroborating evidence. This only is meaningful in a courtroom situation, a lot of "evidence" never sees the courtroom and is merely used as information to help the investigation.
  • AlexCoventry 7y ago
    It's crucial to prevent the police from using illegal means to gather evidence. There's a rather famous legal doctrine about it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree