New Video Tech, Same Old Rules

My colleagues and predecessors here at the School of Government have written about video evidence many times over the years, summarizing the basic rules and significant cases in posts available here, here, here, here, and here. Recently, though, I've been getting questions about a relatively new but increasingly common type of video evidence: high-tech, app-controlled, and remotely stored videos taken by automated devices ranging from doorbell cameras to wifi-enabled, cloud-connected, teddy bear spy cams. Do the old rules still work the same way for these new video tools? Is it substantive or illustrative evidence? If it's substantive, how is it authenticated? Is a lay witness qualified to testify about how these cameras work? Does the proponent need the original video? Come to think of it, what is the "original" of a video that exists only as bits of data floating somewhere in the cloud...? The Good Old Days Once upon a time, there were only a few kinds of video that ever saw much use in criminal trials -- dash cam videos and recorded interviews verified by the officer who observed the event, or commercial surveillance videos authenticated by a knowledgeable store employee. Laying the foundation for one of those videos was pretty straightforward. The officer or employee would pull the disc (or "tape" - go ask your parents) out of the camera, put a sticker on it, make a copy for discovery, place the original into an evidence locker, and then bring it to court for trial. In this post [...]