On December 11 China's State Information Center formally put in place its electro-digital judicial identification service. The system includes data on hard, floppy or mobile disks, CD, MP3 and other memory media. It's Beijing's first civil body to be awarded such powers.
In modern business traditional paper contracts, insurance certificates and invoices have been replaced by electronic documents which can also be used in a court of law as evidence.
As e-mails, MSN discussion notes and information in general can easily be destroyed, distorted or deleted it can still be adopted but must firstly be identified as authentic by the appropriate authorities.
And many legal cases on the subjects of privacy, network security, internet Intellectual Property Rights and administration management also depend on electronic evidence to be presented and proved.
(China.org.cn by Wang Ke December 12, 2006)
