22 September 2007

Hacker suspect walks free | Australian IT

Hacker suspect walks free | Australian IT

A shop had a lot of customers' credit cards misused; there were unauthorised connections from the home IP address belonging to an employee of the financial systems support vendor...

This news article discusses an apparently bungled court case (it's not clear if it was civil or criminal) in the USA where important forensic evidence wasn't admitted or possibly even tendered. The interviewee blames the court, but I suspect that some blame must lie on the prosecuting attorneys in not having admissible evidence.

The article describes a situation which suggests that the police would have had little difficulty in obtaining a warrant and imaging the employee's PC. That would have been the critical evidence for both the prosecution and defence - yet it didn't make it into evidence.

The moral of the story for lawyers? Don't get involved in matters outside your area of expertise. Even using expert witnesses won't help you unless you ask the right questions, and without the requisite skills your expert witness will be worthless.

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