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“Reliable System” as a legal term and as a technical term
Documents are increasingly being created and used in electronic form. Trade documents with legal import are no exception. The UK Electronic Trade Documents Act 2023 defines what such a document is, and requires it be produced by a “reliable system”. But “reliable system” is a concept of engineering, and has been for decades (I have…
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Horizon articles in the DEESLR journal and relevant handbook material
Retired barrister Stephen Mason has been writing, editing and maintaining a legal practitioner’s handbook on electronic evidence since 2007. The latest edition, Stephen Mason and Daniel Seng (eds.), Electronic Evidence and Electronic Signatures, University of London Press, 2021, is available open-access at https://uolpress.co.uk/book/electronic-evidence-and-electronic-signatures/ Stephen was also editor until 2024 of the open-access journal Digital Evidence…
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Addressing the common law Presumption of computer reliability is a separate issue from addressing failure of disclosure
The Post Office Horizon scandal has highlighted two issues in the law of England and Wales. The first is that there is a common law Presumption (I use a capital “P” henceforth) that devices, including computer systems, are operating correctly unless there is evidence to rebut this assumption. The second is that evidence that would…