Electronic Discovery – Can Contents of My Electronic Communications Be Used As Evidence in Court?

Online communications: “Meet me online so we can talk privately for all to read.”

The use of electronic internet devices such as computers, laptops, cell-phones and smart phones, has led to an explosion of readily available information. The web has become a literal smorgasbord of data – facts galore, sports stats heaven, and the latest teenage nonsense can all be accessed at the touch of a button, or the touch of a screen. The sheer amount of “stuff” can seem at times more like a virus outbreak than an explosion, or like a tidal wave that wipes out the casual web surfer.

Even more accessible than before are our communications. Social networking sites have put the very corners of our private life on blast for all to see and read. The latest posts and status updates let everyone know where we’ve been, what we ate, what we think about the latest movie, what we’re going to wear tomorrow – the list is as endless as our observations of the minutest details of our minute-to-minute existence.

And our conversations are getting memorialized in the form of comments and instant messages, sometimes allowing random intruders to interject in our sophisticated discussions of the most recent happenings. “Who is this person again?” is not an uncommon question when chatting with an online “friend”.

As these internet devices are used more and more for “private” communications, the question begs to be asked, “Can my electronic communications be used as evidence in court against me?” In general, the answer to this is “yes” – this information can be used, subject to various limitations, during what is known as the discovery process of a trial. What follows is a discussion of the basic applications of discovery to electronic information.