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Comment by marak830 | Hacker News Reader

Somehow id always figured this would be fairly easy. Would something like this be considered proof?

Now ive never tried it myself, but i cant imagine theres much(if any), security on a history?

It's trivial to convince the judge and jury that the history is real. Who are they more likely to believe, the investigators or the guy in the orange jumpsuit that swears it was planted? After all, the "it was planted!" excuse is the oldest one in the book.

Id have honestly thought it would be inadmissable as its (assumably), not difficult to fake.

At that point it will be the victim the one that should prove his/her innocence.

And I think this will remain true in many countries.

In US criminal cases, defendants are presumed innocent, and prosecutors must prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt". So defendants don't need to prove anything. They just need to invalidate prosecutors' evidence. But defendants are often toast if they lose the expert witness credibility contest.

On the other hand, the prosecution might overlook history because it's in Firefox instead of IE[1]. It's kind of tangential to this subthread, but to tie it back somewhat, that article notes that some browser history entries came up in court, and this bungling doesn't reflect well on the competence and credibility of computer expert witnesses.

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/25/casey-a...

Heh, as soon as you mentioned looking at the wrong browser's history, I thought of the Casey Anthony trial. Oops!

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