5 Canadian soldiers suspended after Nazi salute video emerges

[MilEME09]

Likely from defense counsel/friend of the accused

Ah the barracks lawyers

 

[Cloud Cover]

.

Digital evidence is a constantly changing world, sometimes even varying by provincial jurisdiction. It’s highly dependent on the individual case and circumstances.

And the competency of the justice system.

My take on that story is that CBC is relying on evidence obtained by a hacker. If the police are relying on the same, then good luck to them. Even I would take up that case despite the nature of the accused. The website was situated in the USA and it appears to have been taken offline by after the hack. I doubt the company running it would have ever responded to any type of order even an MLAT order to produce anything to Canadian authorities. There will be miles and miles of runway here for a deep and prolonged trial if these guys fight.
And because it was hacked- how does the chain if evidence become certified or at the very least not challenged without producing the hacker as witness.
We could go on and on but the best outcome is for these guys to just plead guilty. They probably won’t though…

 

[dapaterson]

And the competency of the justice system.

My take on that story is that CBC is relying on evidence obtained by a hacker. If the police are relying on the same, then good luck to them. Even I would take up that case despite the nature of the accused. The website was situated in the USA and it appears to have been taken offline by after the hack. I doubt the company running it would have ever responded to any type of order even an MLAT order to produce anything to Canadian authorities. There will be miles and miles of runway here for a deep and prolonged trial if these guys fight.
And because it was hacked- how does the chain if evidence become certified or at the very least not challenged without producing the hacker as witness.
We could go on and on but the best outcome is for these guys to just plead guilty. They probably won’t though…

Admin action instead of disciplinary action for the win!

 

[brihard]

And the competency of the justice system.

My take on that story is that CBC is relying on evidence obtained by a hacker. If the police are relying on the same, then good luck to them. Even I would take up that case despite the nature of the accused. The website was situated in the USA and it appears to have been taken offline by after the hack. I doubt the company running it would have ever responded to any type of order even an MLAT order to produce anything to Canadian authorities. There will be miles and miles of runway here for a deep and prolonged trial if these guys fight.
And because it was hacked- how does the chain if evidence become certified or at the very least not challenged without producing the hacker as witness.
We could go on and on but the best outcome is for these guys to just plead guilty. They probably won’t though…

Which is why I said I don’t see anything criminal coming out of participating on that website, not even CSD.

There may be a path or paths to prosecuting other activity, such as the Twitter posts quoted in the article. I know how I’d do the first half of such an investigation, and could make a well educated guess on the second half.

 

[Cloud Cover]

I know what you’re saying but the charges have been laid. We’ll see how it goes.

 

[Remius]

I know what you’re saying but the charges have been laid. We’ll see how it goes.

Where does it say that?

 

[Cloud Cover]

Where does it say that?

Ahh you’re right!
I thought there was a ref to some charges under the NDA and criminal code.

 

[brihard]

Ahh you’re right!
I thought there was a ref to some charges under the NDA and criminal code.

I was saying conceivably there might be CSD/CC criminal charges for the Twitter stuff. Not for the dating/hating website.

 

[Maxman1]

It’s not a grey/gray area. That type of evidence is hearsay.

 

[Navy_Pete]

It’s not a grey/gray area. That type of evidence is hearsay.

Under the principled approach, internet postings are not always excluded as evidence if it’s deemed as reliable and necessary. But generally there must be a lot of other evidence lawfully collected by the police using police powers. This particular evidence alone as described by CBC wouldn’t likely be sufficient to obtain a conviction especially since it was obtained by illegal means already contrary to the criminal code. (Unauthorized access to data). Further, if CBC accessed private communications as seems to be the case here there’s a good civil tort waiting for them.

In point of fact, actual admissions of guilt to indictable offences - made online - have been excluded as evidence just as often as such evidence is admitted. For example, in one case in Ontario the kidnap and murder if a young girl the BBM messages (and images) between accused admitting their involvement were captured and stored by an internet provider, and then produced to police under a search warrant, and then subsequently excluded by the trial court. Conviction was obtained using other evidence. It was found the provider had no lawful authority to collect and store the content of messages.

Sorry, what private communications do you see them accessing? They seem to have looked at the data dump that's on the internet, and compared it to other open source, publically available information using some tools to trace things like emails used for account creation and social media. They didn't hack anything themselves or pay the hacker to do it (like the British tabloids).

Unless it's actually false reporting though can't see how they would be liable for tort, and a lawsuit like that would just open the person up to discovery.

There are a couple of free sites run by white hat groups you can actually register your email against and get notificiations whenever it's in a hacker data dump set; it's shockingly frequent.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Ahh you’re right!
I thought there was a ref to some charges under the NDA and criminal code.

And I was just being a smart ass about who would come up with a "but it wasn't really him, Your Honour" defence

Although there HAVE been worse last-ditch defences