Post by vancouverpd on Dec 21, 2008 22:52:00 GMT -5
2 Blue For U,
There was a time that I'd have agreed but it's amazing how much the Internet has changed law enforcement. We've got a thing in Canada know as the Best Evidence Rule which is over 100 years old and essentially says that a court is entitled to insist on seeing the 'Best Evidence' meaning for example, the Master Tape as opposed to a Slave in a wiretap or the Original document as opposed to a Zerox copy.
About 6 years ago I got a call from a friend with the Homicide Squad in Montreal. He was working a case in which some e-mails were believed to contain crucial evidence and said that a cooperating witness had told him the e-mails were held on a server here in Vancouver. He'd already spoken to the people who ran the server and they were quite happy to hand the e-mails over but wanted a court order just to cover themselves.
He got a Search Warrant from a Judge in Montreal and Fed-Ex'd it to me. I got it endorsed by a Judge here and executed it that afternoon. The place itself was an old rooming house converted into a couple of large offices with a bunch of 18 - 20 year old kids clicking away at their laptops.
The guy in charge said "no sweat, we'll e-mail it to you tomorrow". I asked him if he'd print off a copy of everything connected with the case, explaining my need for originals. He looked at me like I had two heads and told me the whole system is paperless and there just are no copies.
The next day I came in to the Squad, opened my laptop, and good as gold, there it was. All I did was hit the Forward Key, type in my buddy's address, hit Send and this guy's on his way to jail for murder. Worst of all, I didn't even have to go there to testify.
It's a whole new world.
There was a time that I'd have agreed but it's amazing how much the Internet has changed law enforcement. We've got a thing in Canada know as the Best Evidence Rule which is over 100 years old and essentially says that a court is entitled to insist on seeing the 'Best Evidence' meaning for example, the Master Tape as opposed to a Slave in a wiretap or the Original document as opposed to a Zerox copy.
About 6 years ago I got a call from a friend with the Homicide Squad in Montreal. He was working a case in which some e-mails were believed to contain crucial evidence and said that a cooperating witness had told him the e-mails were held on a server here in Vancouver. He'd already spoken to the people who ran the server and they were quite happy to hand the e-mails over but wanted a court order just to cover themselves.
He got a Search Warrant from a Judge in Montreal and Fed-Ex'd it to me. I got it endorsed by a Judge here and executed it that afternoon. The place itself was an old rooming house converted into a couple of large offices with a bunch of 18 - 20 year old kids clicking away at their laptops.
The guy in charge said "no sweat, we'll e-mail it to you tomorrow". I asked him if he'd print off a copy of everything connected with the case, explaining my need for originals. He looked at me like I had two heads and told me the whole system is paperless and there just are no copies.
The next day I came in to the Squad, opened my laptop, and good as gold, there it was. All I did was hit the Forward Key, type in my buddy's address, hit Send and this guy's on his way to jail for murder. Worst of all, I didn't even have to go there to testify.
It's a whole new world.