New Sources of Discoverable Evidence

In last month's newsletter, we discussed some of the technologies people are using today, such as fitness trackers and intelligent personal assistants, and the e-discovery implications they entail. Like these, automotive “Black Boxes” and drones could yield important information for those seeking evidence in a legal action.

Automotive 'Black Boxes'

An automotive “black box,” or “event data recorder,” is a microcomputer chipset that can capture vehicle speed, throttle position, airbag deployment times, braking details, seatbelt status, engine speed and more. Black box data has been used in individual accident investigations, as well as product liability cases against auto manufacturers. As of 2014, it's estimated that over 90% of new vehicles sold in the U.S. have one installed.

Black-box data has been used in a few high-profile investigations. In 2011, Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray totaled a government car. Fortunately, he was not injured. After the accident, he claimed he was driving within the speed limit and wearing a seat belt. Investigators used black-box data from the vehicle to show he was actually driving 100 mph and not wearing a seatbelt at the time of the crash.

First-generation black boxes stored the data on the vehicle. Next-generation black boxes aspire to be the brain of the Internet-connected smart car. Autonomous (driverless) cars will use and analyze high volumes of data, both on the vehicle and in the cloud, and will present a number of legal, ethical and technical issues.

Drones

Drones, or UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), have cameras and sensors that collect information from construction site observation, crop monitoring, product delivery, and traffic and news filming. Some drones save data on an internal drive, but many save data in a cloud app or on a private server. By 2020, drones are expected to be a regular sighting, thanks to the efforts of Amazon, Walmart and others.

The use of drones is seeding concerns about the privacy and safety of those on the ground. There are already more than 400 drone operating companies in this nascent industry. In addition to following state laws on use, they are focusing efforts on compliant data collection, retention and review. Any of the estimated 460,000 registered hobbyist drones and about 8,400 registered commercial drones in the United States are future sources of evidence. Look for drone data to provide answers in insurance cases, accidents and civil cases of all kinds.

Conclusion

The traditional course of data collection for purposes of computer forensic investigations or electronic discovery is shifting to include not only computers, but cell phones, watches, drones, smart appliances and other Internet-connected devices. Data captured by these devices may be critically important to ascertaining the facts of a matter, and IoT will continue to shape e-discovery in the years to come.

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Michael Ciaramitaro is Senior Vice President of Forensic Discovery Services at FRONTEO, a global technology and services company. This article also appeared in Law Technology News Online, an ALM sibling publication of this newsletter.