Electronic Discovery and Evidence

Judge says defendant must decrypt files, Fifth Amendment not at issue

"A federal case that may have helped define constitutional law in the digital age turns not on the defendant’s rights in regard to her encryption password, but on the fact that evidence clearly showed she owned a laptop in question and had access to its contents.

In what was thought to be a precedent setting case in the digital age, a federal judge ruled Monday that a woman arrested in a mortgage scam must give authorities access to her encrypted hard drive.

The defendant, Ramona Fricosu, argued that exposing the contents of the hard drive by entering her password and decrypting the files would violate her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. . . . (read more)

Tablet and E-book reader Ownership Nearly Double Over the Holiday Gift-Giving Period

Pew Research - "Between mid-December and early January, the number of owners of each device rose from 10% to 19%. Overall, 29% of adults own at least one of them. . . " (read more).

Another important source of ediscovery data. Many of these "E-book readers" have e-mail, web browsing capacities and other digital features. They will eventually replace the laptop computer.

Justices Say GPS Tracker Violated Privacy Rights

 "The Supreme Court on Monday ruled unanimously that the police violated the Constitution when they placed a Global Positioning System tracking device on a suspect’s car and monitored its movements for 28 days . . . . But five justices also discussed their discomfort with the government’s use of or access to various modern technologies, including video surveillance in public places, automatic toll collection systems on highways, devices that allow motorists to signal for roadside assistance, location data from cellphone towers and records kept by online merchants." (Read more).