Practical Mobile Forensics - Third Edition

Rules of evidence

Courtrooms rely more and more on the information inside a mobile phone as vital evidence. Prevailing evidence in court requires a good understanding of the rules of evidence. Mobile forensics is a relatively new discipline and laws dictating the validity of evidence are not widely known and they also differ from country to country. However, there are five general rules of evidence that apply to digital forensics and need to be followed in order for evidence to be useful. Ignoring these rules makes evidence inadmissible, and your case could be thrown out. These five rules are: admissible, authentic, complete, reliable, and believable:

• Admissible: This is the most basic rule and a measure of evidence validity and importance. ...