Documents can be easily written on computers – its one of the benefits of the information age. But this also means that they can be altered. How can you be sure that the documents in your possession have not been changed? Computer forensics.
The problem
Our client’s legal advisors provided us with electronic copies of a number of documents. These had been handed over by the counterparties in a legal case. Our client believed they were not all they claimed to be.
The solution
We performed a “metadata analysis” of the documents. Most modern electronic documents contain a large amount of buried information about their creation, modification and editing history. This “metadata” is not normally visible to the user, but can be interpreted if the documents are analysed using specialised software.
In the case in question, we found out that while the documents in question were created at the time the events underlying the legal case had occurred, they had been last edited two days before they were handed to our client. We also found that they had been edited by someone other than the document’s original author. In other words, the documents were completely untrustworthy as evidence.
We were, however, also able to identify the storage location of the original unaltered documents on the counterparty’s computer network (information that was also stored in the documents’ hidden metadata.) Our client’s legal advisors were able to send a letter to the opposing party politely requesting unaltered originals, specifying exactly were these originals could be found.
With the unaltered originals in our client’s hands, they were able to settle the case with very satisfactory terms.