Digital Evidence and Electronic Signature Law Review

General Editors and Editorial Board

Volume 20 Credits — 2023-10-18

Set one

Document Supplement Set One — 2023-10-18

Set two

Document Supplement Set Two — 2023-10-18

Set three

Document Supplement Set Three — 2023-10-18

Table of Electronic Signature Legislation

World Electronic Signature Legislation — 2023-10-18

Industry Contribution: Digital signature as a method to strengthen enterprise risk management practices across the US government

David Santiago — 2023-04-03

US government agencies employ a variety of techniques to manage risk, but often struggle with maintaining appropriate documentation about their risk-based decision-making processes. Many of the most important decisions made in government agencies are done through manual and paper-based processes that complicate the way decisions are documented, stored, and reported on, and inadvertently add risk to the enterprise. This is where workflow-driven digital signatures can add value, by helping to streamline and automate the way that decisions are documented for transparency and accountability purposes.

Index words: United States of America; government agencies; risk; management; digital signatures

Book Reports

Book Reports — 2023-10-18

Authenticating the administrative contract in electronic form and its legal force in Jordanian law

Nayel AlOmran — 2023-02-28

The administrative contract is one of the transactions that may be concluded electronically. For this reason, it is important that it is legally regulated. The electronic contract is created by special procedures via electronic certification bodies. This article considers the authentication of the electronic administrative contract in Jordan. It also examines the legal value of the contract before the Jordanian judiciary.

Index words: Jordan; Electronic Transactions Law No 15 of 2015; Jordanian Evidence Law; electronic administrative contract; electronic journals; electronic signature; electronic certification

An analysis of the judicial and legislative attitude to hearsay electronic data in South Africa

Rilwan Mahmoud — 2023-02-28

This article analyses the judicial and legislative attitude in relation to electronically stored information presented as evidence in South Africa. The article also evaluates the adequacy of the regulation of admissibility and weight ascription to electronic information particularly the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (ECTA) 2002. The paper suggests that electronically stored information might not sufficiently be analysed and assessed using the rules of documentary evidence and recommends some amendments including clearer definitions of electronic information which are statements, electronic information that is contained in documents, and electronic information that are created wholly by electronic algorithms and software.

Index words: South Africa; electronically stored information; admissibility; hearsay; Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 2002

Electronic evidence in arbitration proceedings

Daniel B. Ferreira — 2023-05-30

This paper addresses electronic evidence focusing on arbitration rules of the leading ADR providers. It also narrows the topic to an empirical assessment using six categories of electronic evidence in a sample of 92 arbitration proceedings. The paper aims to offer the concept of electronic evidence in international arbitration, its admissibility and relevance criteria, and reach conclusions from an empirical analysis of a large sample of arbitration proceedings gathered from the Centro Brasileiro de Mediação e Arbitragem (Brazilian Center for Mediation and Arbitration). We conclude that electronic evidence is regularly used in arbitration and is relevant to the arbitrators’ reasoning. We propose a revision on the 2016 Draft Convention on Electronic Evidence to include arbitration.

Index words: alternative dispute resolution; arbitration; electronic evidence; admissibility; relevance; weight; empirical analysis

Involving LLMs in legal processes is risky

Peter Bernard Ladkin — 2023-06-08

The availability of large language models (LLM), a form of AI correspondence agent, on the Internet raises questions about their possible use in legal processes. For they seem often to introduce into their output arbitrary assertions which are untrue. This is ‘new’ behaviour (a Google search, for example, returns correct information on a semantically similar query). I give examples in which use of an LLM is both tempting and could subvert a legal process.

Index words: large language model; LLM; artificial intelligence; AI; ChatGPT; law; legal processes; lying; r-lying

Electronic title certificate as legal evidence

Iwan Permadi — 2023-07-27

This paper analyzes the increasing use of electronic title certificates in the land administration system. On 12 January 2021, the Minister of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/Head of the National Land Agency issued Regulation No. 1 of 2021 on Electronic Certificate. This Regulation marks a turning point in the reformation of the system of land governance and security of tenure in Indonesia. By streamlining the land registration and dispute-resolution procedures, the use of the digital land title could increase the legal certainty of the Indonesian system of land tenure. It is possible that the digital certificate might transform the present method of a negative publication system with positive elements – the present mechanism for demonstrating ownership of land rights – into a positive publication system.

Index words: Indonesia, electronic title certificate, land tenure, land registration system, systems theory, girik rights, garapan rights

The Law Commission and section 69 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984

James Christie — 2023-09-22

In 2000 section 69 of the Police and Criminal Act 1984 was repealed. The result was that a common law presumption came into effect that computer evidence was considered reliable unless there was evidence to the contrary. The Law Commission had recommended repeal of section 69 without any replacement. This article demonstrates that the Law Commission either misunderstood, or misrepresented, the sources it cited to justify its recommendation that computer evidence should be considered reliable. Two of the three main experts whose work was cited have confirmed that they were misrepresented. The recommendation and the resulting presumption therefore lack any factual or evidential basis.

Index words: Law Commission; England & Wales; Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984; section 69; repeal; presumption computers are reliable; misunderstood; misrepresented

Independent Review, Miscarriages of Justice, and Computer Evidence

Richard Moorhead — 2023-09-22

Brian Altman KC reviewed unreliable expert evidence on the Horizon software system. The Post Office denied, including to Parliament, that there was any evidence of miscarriages of justice revealed before the Court of Appeal in 2021. In his review, Brian Altman KC indicated the prosecutions was fundamentally sound; this paper looks at the quality of the judgments arrived at to come to that conclusion.

Index words: Altman General review; Post Office Limited; Horizon IT system; unreliable evidence; Clarke Advice; Swift Review; Bates litigation; Hamilton appeals

Cumulative Index 2004 - 2023

Cumulative Index — 2023-10-18

Editorial

Stephen Mason — 2023-10-18

PhD Completed

PhD Research — 2023-10-18