Expanded Use of the New eWarrant Standard
It seems a fortuitous coincidence with the publication now occurring of the eWarrant Technical Standard ETSI TS103120, that a kind of legal landmark is occurring on December 1st in the U.S.
The ETSI Technical Standard, which was proposed and shepherded over several years by Yaana Technologies, notes in its introduction that
“The general view is that the HI-1 concept can also be used for other legal actions than LI. For that reason, this document could, besides LI, also be applied for retained data requests, seized data requests, data preservation orders and other similar legal requests.”
U.S. legal circles are buzzing over a the new evidence discovery rule known as Rule 37(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In fact, the effect is so significant that some blogs are suggesting that the courts have shifted “from eDiscovery to discovery.” It creates a kind of “safe harbor” for when organizations should preserve information that is potentially subject to civil litigation. One blog that contains the new text can be found at:
http://www.rpb-law.com/images/pdf%20folder/RPB_Rule37(e)_WhitePaper.pdf
So going forward, it is worth entertaining how the TS103120 can be further adjusted to support those “other similar legal requests.” In civil discovery actions, the needs for discovery of elusive metadata is similar to that in criminal cases, so at least one obvious addition is the ability to specify elusive, signature based searches and metadata analysis.