Notes on digital evidence.
Preservation, verification, chain of custody — and what it takes for online content to hold up under scrutiny.
Ata notarial and technical capture — allies, not rivals
Brazil's notarial act carries public faith no private tool can match. Technical capture carries cryptographic verifiability no narrative can match. Treating them as competitors misses how each covers the other's blind side.
Read → August 26, 2026Deepfakes and the new burden of authenticity
Generative AI created two problems for evidence - fakes that look real, and a cheap new attack on everything real. Courts and rule-makers are responding — and the answer points in one direction, provenance built at capture.
Read → August 24, 2026FRE 902(13) and 902(14) — self-authenticating digital evidence, read carefully
Since 2017, US federal rules let electronic records authenticate themselves through certification instead of live testimony. What the rules actually say, where "hash" really lives in them, and what they pointedly do not resolve.
Read → August 22, 2026Digital evidence under Brazil's CPC — the freedom and the burden
Article 369 of Brazil's Code of Civil Procedure admits any legally obtained means of proof, including atypical ones. That freedom is real — and it comes with a burden the article does not remove - convincing the judge the record deserves belief.
Read → August 20, 2026Preserving WhatsApp conversations as evidence
Chat evidence decides labor disputes, consumer claims, harassment cases, and contract fights — and it is routinely presented in its weakest possible form. What courts have said about chat screenshots, and how to preserve a conversation properly.
Read → August 18, 2026External proofs — evidence that outlives the vendor
If your evidence can only be verified while one company exists and cooperates, you have a dependency, not a proof. Why independent time references — timestamp authorities and public networks — are what separate the two.
Read → August 16, 2026What a hash actually proves — and what it doesn't
Cryptographic fingerprints are the backbone of digital evidence, and also the most misexplained part of it. A plain-language guide to what hashing establishes, what it cannot establish, and why the honest version is more persuasive.
Read → August 14, 2026Chain of custody, translated for digital evidence
Chain of custody is as old as evidence itself — a documented answer to "who touched this, when, and what did they do?" Here is what the digital version looks like when it is done in mathematics instead of signatures on an envelope.
Read → August 12, 2026Why a screenshot is not evidence
A screenshot is a claim about what a page said — not proof of it. Here is exactly where screenshots break under scrutiny, what opposing counsel will ask, and what a defensible capture does differently.
Read → August 10, 2026What digital evidence needs to hold up
The internet forgets, edits, and disputes. Here is what separates online content that survives scrutiny from a screenshot that doesn't — integrity, chronology, provenance, and the ability to be checked by someone who doesn't trust you.
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