COMMUNICATION: Ease of forgery undermines evidence

Printed versions of e-mails cannot be used as reliable evidence in court as they are all too easily forged, experts warned this week.

The announcement is likely to become a major issue as more and more cases start using Internet and e-mail-based electronic documents as evidence.

Forensic analysts Datasec claim to be the first to have demonstrated how simple it is to forge an e-mail in court.

In the case R v Rowe and Bhatt at Canterbury Crown Court earlier this year, a Datasec expert witness forged an e-mail in real time that looked like it had been sent to someone when in fact it was a fake.

This showed that printed, paper versions of e-mails allegedly sent by Mr Bhatt used by the prosecution as evidence did not prove beyond reasonable doubt that they had been sent by that person or at that time, it said.

A report published by Datasec this week in collaboration with Mr Bhatt's solicitor, Simon Belfield of Staffordshire firm Frisby & Co and barrister John Cooper of 25 Bedford Row stressed that 'headers' - an audit trail of the servers e-mails travel through on their way to their destination and the times they did so - are vital to proving an e-mail's validity.

'Any forensic computer evidence offered by either side must take full account of the implications of e-mail validity, its true source, destination and the myriad pathways between the two,' the report concluded.

Audit trails can be retrieved but the evidential value of the e-mail will be virtually nil if the prosecution do not offer them, it said.

Mr Belfield said: 'If anyone has the nous to do so, they can put an e-mail in your inbox and say it's from somebody else.'

'It's going to be a major issue because a lot of cases are being brought on the basis of e-mail evidence and this completely undermines that evidence,' he predicted.

'The main issue is that we should never take an e-mail at face value.'

LINKS: www.datasec.co.uk

Chris Baker