Member

Amendment 207 does not speak to the reliability of computers but concentrates entirely on the question of computer evidence put in front of the court, so that the presumption cannot be a cause for further injustice. Proposed new subsection (1) says that computer evidence should be “admissible”—that is, allowed to be relied on by a party in court proceedings—if, first, the other party does not object to the evidence being relied on; secondly, the court considers that no sensible or reasonable objection can be taken to the evidence being relied on, which is to say it being admitted; and, thirdly, there is evidence that the source of the evidence, such as the computer system that produced it, is reliable. Later subsections simply offer guidance for the courts in evaluating what a reliable computer system is.