Cell Phones and Digital Evidence in Court
Cell Phones have become essential to people’s lives. Forgetting a cell phone has been compared to leaving the house undressed. We keep our cell phones turned on so we can receive calls, emails, and messages. As a result, our digital footprints can reveal a lot about our lives. A skilled expert can learn a lot about our lives by examining our phones which can be used in evidence in civil and criminal cases. There may be ways to use this evidence in divorce cases, custody cases, criminal cases, and any other case where a person’s location or personal information may be relevant to the issues in the case.
Here are a few of types of digital evidence and how opposing parties can use them:
Location Tagging
Location tagging, often enabled by default on smartphones and social media apps, can provide a detailed account of one’s whereabouts. This is obviously an issue if there are concerns on one side about infidelity, as location tracking can easily build a picture of the people you interact with. It may even be available if a cell phone is turned off. Location tagging can say as much about where you aren’t as where you are. Location tagging may be used to contradict or impeach your testimony in a civil case or provide an alibi in a criminal case. It may also place you at the scene of a crime in a criminal case.
Photos
Photos, especially those shared on social media, can be a treasure trove of information in divorce cases. They can provide context, timelines, and sometimes even evidence of undisclosed assets or relationships. Most cameras in cell phones add metadata to photos when they are created. These can show date, time, and location of the photo.
App Usage
There is a huge variety of cell phone applications available. There is an app for everything. These apps create all sorts of information from location data to messages to information on how you spend money and where you bank. To the right digital expert, anything accessible is findable.
Be careful of what you share.
Posting information in a public online forum such as social media makes that posting instantly available to the world. Even if you use privacy settings to limit who can see this information, an opposing party in a court case may be able to find that information.
Jokes can be taken the wrong way and can turn ugly quickly. You should assume that all online postings will be taken out of context and in the worst way possible.
You should remember that the Internet stores information forever. Even if you think a posting is deleted it is probably still stored on the internet someplace. The companies that run the internet make multiple copies of everything to protect against accidental loss by equipment failure. We don’t know how available this information will be in the future or what technological changes will make the information available to internet searches.
Think before you post.
It is important to never bad mouth your spouse, no matter how much you may want to. Anything you say and do may be used against you during litigation. This includes ligation that has not yet been filed. If you are getting divorced years after you posted something bad about your spouse, don’t be surprised if that negative posting surfaces during a divorce.
If you are facing a divorce or other litigation you should talk to an experienced attorney. An attorney should be able to give you guidelines for using computers, cell phones, and social media during your litigation.
