Re: Are Email communications the same with mail correspondence?
 

OK, this is pinging back and forth and getting mired in opinion and urban legend. This is one of my areas of expertise, I'm a corporate records manager, this is my bread and butter.

Any form of record or communication is admissable in court; any. It is not it's format, but it's custody and authenticity of the document. This defines the document's Evidential Weight. All copies of the document need to be available for inspection by a court (both civil and criminal). This is the same reason why the Police have to book and log all evidence, to show it's chain of custody, however, in civil cases, the chain of custoday and authenticity tests are lower, as a ruling is based on the balance of probability rather than beyond a reasonable doubt.

Digital signatures and secure, auditable custody in document management systems give higher evidential weight and show secure custody. In the main, when you get to litigation, the argument is more around principal and interpretation of instructions and communications rather than claiming one side has faked evidence (remembering that even in court, that is potentially slanderous and a criminal offence). Both parties normally agree evidence beforehand, it's the interpretation that invariably gets argued in court

Try telling that to the former Directors of Enron. They were primarily prosecuted on the basis of electronic communications, which upgraded their bad business practices to criminal fraud charges.

Re: Are Email communications the same with mail correspondence?
 

Excellent post and a great clarification.

Did the Enron directors claim in court that the electronics communications were faked or that they were inadmisable due to their lack of authenticity? That's really the point I was getting at.

- CDM

Re: Are Email communications the same with mail correspondence?
 

Not relly because the main players had topped themselves before the court dates.

In 12 years of doing this I have never been involved in discovery where the authenticity has been questioned. People have this idea that it's rather like CSI or Law & Order where once side will have an 'Aha! Caught you out' moment and it really is far more civilised and boring than that.

Headers are very important to mail, hence all my corporate email records are kept in their original file formats. This allows third party verification via the ISP or opposite sides IT Department Mail Server records, hence you have a level of authenticity. For a private individual, keeping your mail on a web based mail system like Gmail, Hotmail etc. gives a good level of custody as it's being looked after for you by a secure and reputable third party which would take a high level of technical acumen to amend surreptitiously.

In the context of the original question from BARDI, any case involving a Real Estate agent would normally be heard by the local magistrate to resolve, the law normally looks and the participants and gives some tolerance to experience levels. You turn up with a solicitor and he needs to be much more polished than, if in this case, you are presenting/responding to a rental dispute. Hnce your evidence doesn't need to be up to the same standard of organisation that someone like myself has to compile for a criminal or civil case involving millions of dollars.

More arguments are had over the stuff you don't have evidence for (phone calls, conversations etc.) and the interpretation of the content of what you do have than whether what you have is authentic and untampered.