Data Logs

[mmotyka at lsil.com]

Jim,

The bloke with the extra ventilation notwithstanding, with an open OS
and open applications it seems easy to do pretty much whatever you want
with disk data and logs regardless of what the letter of the law says.
Electronic data is so malleable that its use as evidence seems
questionable to begin with. It's not like a gun or a car which has a
physical presence and cannot be duplicated or altered *quite* as readily
as bits. ( Though I would expect some coarse grit emery run down the
barrel and some random prick punch action on the bolt might do wonders
for ballistic analysis ). This whole mess of communications and data
privacy and copyright will be plaguing us for a long time and the most
likely outcome is authoritarian legislation. Unless some Bush SC
appointees are libertarians. Seem pretty likely?

Mike