Wayback HAS been used in criminal trials and even in a murder case

by **Tony Bennett** 24.06.15 10:25

Nuala wrote:Can you give us an example of an occasion when someone has been convicted of a crime based on data from Wayback?

@ Nuala Futher to my previous answer, a watchful member who rarely posts here has sent me information that not only has Wayback featured in criminal trials but also in a murder case.

I am posting what details I have so far about this particular trial, pending a deeper look into the case later:

QUOTE

The “Jonathan Murder Trial” (Ref. 73)

In February 2005, a Canadian criminal court declared a mistrial in the murder trial of a 12-year-old Toronto boy, because the prosecution’s star witness had posted comments on a web site which the judge said damaged the witness’s credibility. (Ref. 74). A reporter for Canada’s National Post discovered the comments using Google Cache and the Wayback Machine. (Ref. 75).

Without these tools, the trial would have progressed, as the defense attorneys were unaware of the existence of the archives and had only researched the witness with Yahoo!’s primary search engine. (Ref. 76)

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by Joss 24.06.15 10:26

Guest Lord wrote:Something i have just noticed. I dont know if its relevant but my screengrabs of April 30th and May 13th have urls that end in mccann.html BUT the two calender pages (with an * before the time-stamped folder) i grabbed end in McCann.html - notice the upper case M and C - these are in BOTH the url and the link above the saved 11 times...I havent got the source code for May 13th - anyone have it ?

According computerhope.com

"An Internet address is only case sensitive for everything after the domain name. For example, it does not matter if you use uppercaseor lowercase with "computerhope.com," it still reaches the same page.
However, when typing the name of the page, file, or directory in the URL it is case sensitive.

With regards warc files, i am re-reading the entire thread, there is no mention of warc or arc within the April 30th source code sent by Mr B to IM. I know nothing about CDX,warc or arc files and hadnt even heard of them until a few minutes ago.

The Wayback Machine data is stored in WARC or ARC files[0] which are written at web crawl time by the Heritrix crawler[1] (or other crawlers) and stored as regular files in the archive.org storage cluster.

Playback is accomplished by binary searching a 2-level index of pointers into the WARC data. The second level of this index is a 20TB compressed sorted list of (url, date, pointer) tuples called CDX records[2]. The first level fits in core, and is a 13GB sorted list of every 3000th entry in the CDX index, with a pointer to larger CDX block.
Index lookup works by binary searching the first level list stored in core, then HTTP range-request loading the appropriate second-level blocks from the CDX index. Finally, web page data is loaded by range-requesting WARC data pointed to by the CDX records. Before final output, link re-writing and other transforms are applied to make playback work correctly in the browser.
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by Joss 24.06.15 10:35

Cora wrote:
Tony Bennett wrote:In another place, 'Resistor' continues to resist:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I still believe, 100%, that the WB machine was correct all along and that a mccann page was correctly captured and indexed on 30 April 2007 at 11:58:03.

I also believe that WB are reluctant to publicly admit that there was no error, because now they understand the consequences that this would have on the biggest, most notorious missing child case in history.

Those consequences are big and scary and now they must realise that they are sitting on absolute dynamite. It would scare the hell out of me. Last week, I hosted an event for the BCS and when somebody turned up to film it, I was absolutely horrified, because I don't like being the focus of any sort of attention. I can't even begin to imagine how the WB people must feel right now.

ETA this reminds me of a post I made on another forum - many, many years ago. A hypothetical situation.

Suppose you knew - for certain - you found absolutely irrefutable evidence of what happened to Madeleine - 100% definitive proof, and nobody else knew about it, just you.

Where would you go with it? Who would you give it to? Who could you actually trust to do the right thing with it? And with you?

UNQUOTE

Very good hypothesis. I would give it to Snr Amaral and Richard D. Hall. Certainly not the British police and I never thought that one day I would say that.

I think there are British police that don't believe the McC's are innocent either. Didn't they donate $1000 to Goncalo Amaral's fund?

by lj 24.06.15 17:09

Tony Bennett wrote:
Nuala wrote:Can you give us an example of an occasion when someone has been convicted of a crime based on data from Wayback?
@ Nuala Futher to my previous answer, a watchful member who rarely posts here has sent me information that not only has Wayback featured in criminal trials but also in a murder case.

I am posting what details I have so far about this particular trial, pending a deeper look into the case later:

QUOTE

The “Jonathan Murder Trial” (Ref. 73)

In February 2005, a Canadian criminal court declared a mistrial in the murder trial of a 12-year-old Toronto boy, because the prosecution’s star witness had posted comments on a web site which the judge said damaged the witness’s credibility. (Ref. 74). A reporter for Canada’s National Post discovered the comments using Google Cache and the Wayback Machine. (Ref. 75).

Without these tools, the trial would have progressed, as the defense attorneys were unaware of the existence of the archives and had only researched the witness with Yahoo!’s primary search engine. (Ref. 76)

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Very interesting!

by Nuala 24.06.15 17:23

@ Tony Bennett

Thank you for the replies.

The case you've quoted there, the Jonathan Murder Trial, was rather dramatic by all accounts. The trial had reached the stage of the jury deliberating on a verdict when the evidence that a key witness had made postings on a website was presented to the judge, who ruled that the new evidence (of said postings) undermined the witness's credibility and ruled a mistrial.

So the trial had to be held again, starting from scratch as you might say, and the perpetrators of the crime were convicted.

Of course, this doesn't constitute someone being convicted of a crime based on data from Wayback, neither does it mean that someone guilty got off scott free because of data from Wayback; the integrity of the trial in question was undermined and so there had to be a retrial.

Also note that it was data from both Wayback and Google's cache. The reliabilty of Wayback's data might be in question here but Google's cache is certainly accurate, and my understanding is that there was no question, once the cache was found, that the witness had made the postings.

So whilst rather dramatic, not exactly a case of Wayback "saving the day".

The reason I questioned this BTW, was because your email to Mr Kahle sounded rather accusatory, which of course you're entitled to do if that's how you feel, but when one is being confrontational in that way, it's usually a good idea to have one's facts straight at the same time.

If I was Mr Kahle and someone said to me:

Any errors must be fully explained: people have even been convicted of crimes on the apparent robustness of your data.

Honestly, I wouldn't reply, because an organisation like Wayback isn't accountable to you in any way, and the second half of the sentence is incorrect so I would ignore it.

Had you said "Could you please explain any errors, as I understand Wayback's data has been used in court cases and is therefore generally considered to be reliable" then I would have replied.

But that's just me smilie

by marxman 24.06.15 17:44

Have been absolutely in awe of the intellectual knowledge and contributions on this topic, the majority of it has gone above my head. However, can I ask out of interest? and excuse me if its a dumb question, but is this Wayback machine the only historical collating computer device in existence or invented? Thankyou

by plebgate 24.06.15 18:37

Nuala wrote:@ Tony Bennett

Thank you for the replies.

The case you've quoted there, the Jonathan Murder Trial, was rather dramatic by all accounts. The trial had reached the stage of the jury deliberating on a verdict when the evidence that a key witness had made postings on a website was presented to the judge, who ruled that the new evidence (of said postings) undermined the witness's credibility and ruled a mistrial.

So the trial had to be held again, starting from scratch as you might say, and the perpetrators of the crime were convicted.

Of course, this doesn't constitute someone being convicted of a crime based on data from Wayback, neither does it mean that someone guilty got off scott free because of data from Wayback; the integrity of the trial in question was undermined and so there had to be a retrial.

Also note that it was data from both Wayback and Google's cache. The reliabilty of Wayback's data might be in question here but Google's cache is certainly accurate, and my understanding is that there was no question, once the cache was found, that the witness had made the postings.

So whilst rather dramatic, not exactly a case of Wayback "saving the day".

The reason I questioned this BTW, was because your email to Mr Kahle sounded rather accusatory, which of course you're entitled to do if that's how you feel, but when one is being confrontational in that way, it's usually a good idea to have one's facts straight at the same time.

If I was Mr Kahle and someone said to me:

Any errors must be fully explained: people have even been convicted of crimes on the apparent robustness of your data.

Honestly, I wouldn't reply, because an organisation like Wayback isn't accountable to you in any way, and the second half of the sentence is incorrect so I would ignore it.

Had you said "Could you please explain any errors, as I understand Wayback's data has been used in court cases and is therefore generally considered to be reliable" then I would have replied.

But that's just me

Is there anything stopping you doing just that?

You do seem very keen(as are we all) to get to the bottom of all of this, so maybe correspondence to the CEO with your wording might produce a reply.

I wont be holding my breath though.

by Joss 24.06.15 18:50

Perhaps staff at WBM since being alerted to the discrepency of a date in question of some information into an ongoing police investigation into a case of a child's disappearance are not going to reveal any further information to we the public since they may be legally bound not to reveal anything further about it?

by plebgate 24.06.15 18:52

I am not sure whether this company would need to adhere to any request from SY?

Edited to add - of course there's nothing stopping the Company from replying stating that they are not allowed to answer at the request of any police force - is there?

by Joss 24.06.15 18:56

plebgate wrote:I am not sure whether this company would need to adhere to any request from SY?

Probably not. But they probably have their own legal policies on information if it pertains to a criminal case, and i don't know if they have ever had such a type of discrepency with their information before, and are just being careful in this case after the sh*tstorm it has caused on the internet.

by plebgate 24.06.15 18:59

Joss wrote:
plebgate wrote:I am not sure whether this company would need to adhere to any request from SY?
Probably not. But they probably have their own legal policies on information if it pertains to a criminal case, and i don't know if they have ever had such a type of discrepency with their information before, and are just being careful in this case after the sh*tstorm it has caused on the internet.

If that is the case then I think it would be easier for them to state that in an email than to remain silent and let the current suspicions continue.

by Joss 24.06.15 19:05

plebgate wrote:
Joss wrote:
plebgate wrote:I am not sure whether this company would need to adhere to any request from SY?
Probably not. But they probably have their own legal policies on information if it pertains to a criminal case, and i don't know if they have ever had such a type of discrepency with their information before, and are just being careful in this case after the sh*tstorm it has caused on the internet.
If that is the case then I think it would be easier for them to state that in an email than to remain silent and let the current suspicions continue.

But as i mentioned earlier in my post, they are not accountable to any of us, as it doesn't involve us personally.
I think even in a case of obtaining evidence from their staff concerning data from WBM, they can be requested by an attorney to sign an affidavit that the info. is legit, before it can possibly be admitted as evidence in court, and it is then up to the magistrate to allow it as evidence. Thats my take on what i have read about it anyway.

by marxman 24.06.15 19:07

apparently there are other machines similar to the Wayback model, so would it be possible that other archiving machines crawled and stored the same information as on the time/date as Wayback did or did not? Thanks

by HKP 24.06.15 19:15

@Joss. Did you come across the stats which showed that archive.org have never given out any 'demanded' info. to foreign law enforcement agencies? (I can't remember the link) therefore SY or PJ don't have a chance. I need to go find it to refresh my memory

by plebgate 24.06.15 19:19

Joss wrote:
plebgate wrote:
Joss wrote:
plebgate wrote:I am not sure whether this company would need to adhere to any request from SY?
Probably not. But they probably have their own legal policies on information if it pertains to a criminal case, and i don't know if they have ever had such a type of discrepency with their information before, and are just being careful in this case after the sh*tstorm it has caused on the internet.
If that is the case then I think it would be easier for them to state that in an email than to remain silent and let the current suspicions continue.
But as i mentioned earlier in my post, they are not accountable to any of us, as it doesn't involve us personally.
I think even in a case of obtaining evidence from their staff concerning data from WBM, they can be requested by an attorney to sign an affidavit that the info. is legit, before it can possibly be admitted as evidence in court, and it is then up to the magistrate to allow it as evidence. Thats my take on what i have read about it anyway.

As the company is not based in Britain I do not see how this would apply to a request for info. about a case being investigated by European police or European solicitors.

IIRC JoanaM received a request from solicitors in Britain about a post she made about a British citizen not to print his name.

I think she wrote back saying that as she was based in Pt. she did not need legally need to comply with the request.

I am happy to be told this is not correct.

by whodunnit 24.06.15 19:23

Frankly, and this is only my opinion so take it fwiw, I do not believe the evidence would be used by law enforcement in the UK or Portugal even if WBM flat out admitted it was factual and accurate and left it up for the world to see. Jim Gamble et al would still proclaim it an error and if the msm got hold of the story they would back him up and call doubters 'sick trolls' for believing their lying eyes.

I mean, take a look at the pristine single [Warren Commission Exhibit 399] bullet that supposedly caused seven wounds in two men and left behind more fragments inside the thigh of the second man than was actually missing from the missile. STILL they insist this bullet was magic and proves a lone nut gunman.

by Joss 24.06.15 19:25

HKP wrote:@Joss. Did you come across the stats which showed that archive.org have never given out any 'demanded' info. to foreign law enforcement agencies? (I can't remember the link) therefore SY or PJ don't have a chance. I need to go find it to refresh my memory

Sorry HKP i don't recall about those stats. but maybe someone else might be aware of them?

by Joss 24.06.15 19:28

plebgate wrote:
Joss wrote:
plebgate wrote:
Joss wrote:
plebgate wrote:I am not sure whether this company would need to adhere to any request from SY?
Probably not. But they probably have their own legal policies on information if it pertains to a criminal case, and i don't know if they have ever had such a type of discrepency with their information before, and are just being careful in this case after the sh*tstorm it has caused on the internet.
If that is the case then I think it would be easier for them to state that in an email than to remain silent and let the current suspicions continue.
But as i mentioned earlier in my post, they are not accountable to any of us, as it doesn't involve us personally.
I think even in a case of obtaining evidence from their staff concerning data from WBM, they can be requested by an attorney to sign an affidavit that the info. is legit, before it can possibly be admitted as evidence in court, and it is then up to the magistrate to allow it as evidence. Thats my take on what i have read about it anyway.
As the company is not based in Britain I do not see how this would apply to a request for info. about a case being investigated by European police or European solicitors.

IIRC JoanaM received a request from solicitors in Britain about a post she made about a British citizen not to print his name.

I think she wrote back saying that as she was based in Pt. she did not need legally need to comply with the request.

I am happy to be told this is not correct.

I have no idea how WBM's data pertains internationally to legal cases, but that could be right from what HKP just posted before.

by Joss 24.06.15 19:30

whodunnit wrote:Frankly, and this is only my opinion so take it fwiw, I do not believe the evidence would be used by law enforcement in the UK or Portugal even if WBM flat out admitted it was factual and accurate and left it up for the world to see. Jim Gamble et al would still proclaim it an error and if the msm got hold of the story they would back him up and call doubters 'sick trolls' for believing their lying eyes.

I mean, take a look at the pristine single [Warren Commission Exhibit 399] bullet that supposedly caused seven wounds in two men and left behind more fragments inside the thigh of the second man than was actually missing from the missile. STILL they insist this bullet was magic and proves a lone nut gunman.

whodunnit, I agree, i don't think it would either.

by HKP 24.06.15 19:33

From archive.com:-
[size=31]If a website is designed with "frames," the date assigned by the Internet Archive applies to the frameset as a whole, and not the individual pages within each frame.[/size]
Are all the pages associated with a site archived on the same date?
[size=31]Probably not. Some users get confused about the temporal browsing that the Wayback Machine allows. If a user enters a URL into the Wayback Machine and clicks on a date, that date is only for that page. If a user then clicks on a link on an archived page to continue browsing, the Wayback Machine will grab the closest date to the one originally requested a display it. If the requested page has not been archived, but still available on the live web, the Wayback Machine will grab the live page and it will be displayed with today's date in the date code.[/size]
[size=31]Not sure if this helps us any[/size]

by HKP 24.06.15 19:42

There's been some questions on the one photo, two photos appearing of Maddie maybe this will help

How can I tell what date a particular image was archived?
[size=31]The date assigned by the Internet Archive applies to the HTML file but not to image files linked therein. Thus images that appear on the printed page may not have been archived on the same date as the HTML file. If you would like to find out when a particular image was archived right click (control click from Mac users) and select "open image in new tab [or window]". You can also select "copy image location", open up a new tab or browser window and paste in the url. Once the image opens look at the url in your browser's address window to determine the date the image was captured. Please note that using Microsoft's Internet Explorer's "properties" option can be misleading as it displays the same date code as the url's HTML file when looking at an image. Its best to open the image in its own window to determine the exact capture date.[/size]

by whodunnit 24.06.15 19:54

To me, the usefulness of the capture is to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt [in my own mind, your mileage may vary], along with a plethora of other compelling evidence, an event prior to May 3. Whether the implications of the capture seeps into the consciousness of the wider public remains to be seen.

by Guest 24.06.15 21:22

Wow... I think we have our own Madeleine "no planes".

I've contained myself for a few days but enough is enough, I can't let this ride.

It is a FACT the WBM was in error over an October 2007 page appearing under April 30th 2007.

Don't ask me ask Steve Marsden.

FACT.

F.. A.. C.. T...

Check his Facebook thread.

F.. A.. C.. T...

WBM was IN ERROR.

No one can possibly argue that the WBM is not on error, it's was there for all to see from the horses mouth.

No one.

And that absolutely puts the other data with the same time stamp in doubt.

Absolutely without a shadow of a doubt.. it is doubtful data.. more.. it is almost certainly in error for the same reason.

If you want to carry on making this forum look irrational and illogical then carry on, someone somewhere will use it against us I'm sure.

Any BS about comparing "apples" and "oranges" is just that.

This is apples and apples off the same 20070430 115803 tree.

I feel really strongly about this because I am probably the most experienced IT person on this forum.

Anyone been programming and working as an IT consultant since 1981?

I am a java programming expert (among many other branches of IT expertise) and I don't say that lightly.

by Nuala 24.06.15 21:30

@ Plebgate

Is there anything stopping you doing just that?

I'm not interested in trying to start any correspondence with Mr Kahle. I don't believe it would be productive.

Whilst this case is important to those of us interested it in, it means nothing to Wayback, and as others have said Wayback isn't accountable to us. I imagine they would be rather confused as to why anyone would think they are.

by SixMillionQuid 24.06.15 21:32

So Wayback did not archive the result of webcrawl of the CEOP website on 30 April 2007 with mccann.html as the filename?

If all mccann related web pages were created after this date then I'm struggling to understand how the Wayback machine 'invented' the 30 April 2007 archive date.

by plebgate 24.06.15 21:36

Nuala wrote:@ Plebgate

Is there anything stopping you doing just that?

I'm not interested in trying to start any correspondence with Mr Kahle. I don't believe it would be productive.

Whilst this case is important to those of us interested it in, it means nothing to Wayback, and as others have said Wayback isn't accountable to us. I imagine they would be rather confused as to why anyone would think they are.

Oh okay only in your last post you seemed to think that your wording (as opposed) to Tony's would have more of a chance of a response. Seems that you wont even try so I can't really see the point of your post to Tony.

The case may not be of interest to Wayback, but I would have thought that with the amount of discussion on the internet about the company, their CEO might want to try and respond in order to try and ease any doubts the gen. public might have about the accuracy of their site.

IMO, it was well worth Tony writing and trying to get some feedback from him.

by Nuala 24.06.15 21:42

@ Whodunnit

To me, the usefulness of the capture is to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt [in my own mind, your mileage may vary], along with a plethora of other compelling evidence, an event prior to May 3.

If the capture is correct i.e. there was a live CEOP web page concerning Maddie McCann on the Internet on 30th April 2007, it doesn't necessarily mean there was an event prior to 3rd May. The event could still have taken place on 3rd May. What the CEOP page would show is that the event (whatever date that event took place) was premeditated and preplanned.

They're actually two different issues.

I don't believe in any premeditation or preplanning for one very simple reason, had the event been premeditated and preplanned the shutters would have been jemmied.

by Doug D 24.06.15 21:44

BlueBag:

‘It is a FACT the WBM was in error over an October 2007 page appearing under April 30th 2007.

Don't ask me ask Steve Marsden.

FACT.

F.. A.. C.. T...

Check his Facebook thread.’

This is what he posted yesterday:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] I've been using the wayback machine for years. It's rock solid. Going back in to tweak this data is like fiddling the books. You're right [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. There is too much data in the wayback machine to corroborate this find. If you look at all the news channels on 9/11 there is every website but also every video covering the entire day. Going back to tweak things is like falsifying evidence.

Where is his fb thread agreeing that it’s all a cock-up?

by Richard IV 24.06.15 21:44

marxman wrote:apparently there are other machines similar to the Wayback model, so would it be possible that other archiving machines crawled and stored the same information as on the time/date as Wayback did or did not? Thanks

Glad you brought that up - I had wondered that myself.

by Doug D 24.06.15 21:52

Nuala:

‘I don't believe in any premeditation or preplanning for one very simple reason, had the event been premeditated and preplanned the shutters would have been jemmied.’

I have always had the opinion that they were supposed to have been jemmied, but for some reason (Jez appearing maybe?) it did not happen.

The script that was relayed back to the folks at home accounted for the ‘jemmying’ (wasn’t it Phil. who wasn’t even sure what the word was and even meant?) and once their stories were out it was too late to change the story.