Electronic Discovery. This is a new legal concept that has arrived from America and that some people say will create headaches even more severe than those caused by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for Public Company Accounting, that even I with minimal interest in accounting have heard people complaining about.
According to the Economist article Electronic discovery: of bytes and briefs, E-discovery is both more intrusive and more burdensome than the traditional discovery process, and the courts are struggling.
In the E-discovery process it is not just that not very discreet email that you thought you had deleted but that still leaves a digital trace somewhere on your hard disc that may be under investigation, but also possibly your firm’s entire document management system.
Glasgow University runs a postgraduate course on Computer Forensics and E-discovery, and this course will teach, amongst other things, cyberinvestigation skills.
The Wikipedia article on E-discovery examines the differences in nature (and the implications of these differences) of electronic information and paper-based information, including the frequent use of meta-data (data about data) in the former.
I foresee chaos in the future. By its very nature all digital data is alterable. Meaning itself depends on mutually understood protocols, categories and rules, but that mutual undertanding takes time to establish, and meanwhile time’s winged juggernaut flies rapidly on creating new technologies, new databases, new document management systems, new image file formats, new metatags, new meanings. Hey ho! Plenty jobs for the boys – and the girls too. Tell your kids to take up law!
ETYM
E – A prefix meaning Electronic. This has become a very frequently used prefix, sometimes with a hyphen and sometimes without, as in email, ecommerce, ebusiness, ebanking, ebook.
Discovery – A legal term in which both parties involved in a dispute disclose documents and other evidence.
