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Proposed amendment to legal presumption about the reliability of computers
Houses of Parliament, taken on 26 Nov 2024 I am grateful to the journalist Tom Webb, who specialises in data protection, for alerting me to an amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Bill, currently…
Mason has won some influential supporters along the way, including Lord (James) Arbuthnot who has also spent longer than a decade campaigning on behalf of Subpostmasters affected by the Post Office scandal. Although the “mechanical instruments” presumption has never, to the best of my knowledge, been quoted in any civil or criminal proceedings involving a Subpostmaster, it has been said to effectively reverse the burden of proof on anyone who might be convicted using digital evidence. Member’s explanatory statement This amendment overturns the current legal assumption that evidence from computers is always reliable which has contributed to miscarriages of justice including the Horizon Scandal.
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