Below are observations.
The document is only a draft so understandable the consultation document (metaphorically) speaks in a language at times undesirable to the technical specifics of the field of science or forensics it is referring. Always difficult to create a concept using language that if too widely ranged waters down the concept to mushy nothing-ness or too tight and it can narrow the scope making the concept unreasobale to produce any observed possible outcomes.
I must say I do like the fact the document language strives to make sure those producing evidence having recorded test results after an event has happened (e.g. cell site analysis) the respondent's report should avoid old evidential cliches e.g. 'the evidence is consistent with the defendant's mobile phone being at ....' and similar types of opinionated.
It would have been helpful to have identified those people involved in submitting the content as opposed to only knowing the collated content submitted in the draft was produced by the FSR. This would have been helpful to know to see whether the document has a swing in favour of public sector bias for their aims and ambitions or a free, undominated market where no one particular, or no handful of, orgainsation(s) or private company(ies) are influencing production line (bang it on, bang it out) evidence.
The document could have usefully stated that "accuracy of original evidence" is paramount and thus those producing the original evidence would themselves be subject to standards for compliance. The politics of the matters (but I could be wrong on this) suggests avoid historic references or inferring to e.g. repealed S69 PACE (the computer working properly at the material time) removing obligations on the network operators etc (a presumption of everything is ok) - thus no fornsic standard imposed - but requiring a similar approach to the old repealed s69 PACE for the examiner's equipment producing results using information from the original source to prove it is working properly at the material. I am not against the latter, but a forensic standard produce requires a quality in an unbroken (end-to-end) chain of evidence. It is hoped that the FSR defines the importance of the accuracy of information from original sources and underpins the important that those producing original evidence should meet that standard. I mentioned politics because s69 PACE was bemoaned as causing too high a standard on those producing evidence and too expensive for corporate or private companies.
There was at one time a principle operated in English law that e.g. an [SIC]operator could not profit from crime. The analogy of the millions of calls made by drug dealers and other crimes who paid the full profit price of those calls to the operator. The principle suggests the operator could only deducted that amount for the cost of running the calls and not keep the profit. The trade-off used to be provision of call records etc and a standard applied in their production as evidence. That was blown out of the water by repelaing at least one attempt at a safety net (the repealed S69 PACE). Things change in life, we all understand this. Until the Forensics arena gets to grips with quality in an unbroken chain of evidence there will a guarded approach to over-commit to new standards as the Forensic person or groups will not want to be savaged by unrecoverable running costs. To not take a stance can play into the hands of a Forensic oligarchy controlling the arena and that dreaded political utopia we are told about of 'living of the crumbs falling from the oligarchy's table'.
A well intentioned document and lots of positives, but it would benefit from the Forensics arena en masse setting out known pitfuls where the quality in the evidence is poor at the outset yet the examiner's report implies the original source material was accurate at the outset.
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