Is email good enough in a court of law?

[TechRider]

Originally Posted by GeorgiaTransplant

I buy it if there is a digital signature, using asymmetric cryptography, allowing nonrepudiation that is extremely difficult (or, in a practical sense, impossible) to fake.

I don't buy it if you're trusting some_generic_email with no, or weak, cryptographic signature techniques as an "e-signature" to prove much of anything. I don't think that will hold up long-term in the courts, any more than me scrawling your name and claiming you signed the document holds up. I can pretty easily spoof a sending IP address and header. Records at an ISP might be a possible way to get around that; I have no idea how long they hold messages, though. Probably not forever.

I totally agree with you. I recently watched a show, not sure if it was discovery or National geo or something else, where a professor says, if can hack "one" you can hack anything on the planet. Someone who knows system internals, can actually going on a hacking spree..that was creepy.

Also, there was news that hackers stole cryptography keys and brought down Seimens(??) industrial control systems. So even cryptographic sign are not safe if they cannot be safely kept. What a world we live in..duh

[Rangers94]

The thing is, you don't even need to be able to "hack" to send an e-mail and spoof the "From" address to make it look like it came from someone else. It's about as easy as putting a snailmail letter in a mailbox and putting someone elses return address on it.