This will get messy. Everyone will start pulling at this database. Can they send men to prison on account the information needed to exonerate them is classified, even if the person requesting the data is the same person under surveillance?
It seems like the situation is notable because the court case in the article is much less clear-cut than most cases, where the defense attorneys wouldn't need to go to such lengths.
The phrase "confirm or deny" is used when someone knows the truth of a matter but might be inclined to lie about it (deny it). In the case of data that might indicate the truth of an allegation, the phrase you are looking for is "prove or disprove" or perhaps "validate or invalidate" or "support or discredit". Data itself cannot "deny" anything.
In legal terminology to "prove" something doesn't "indicate the truth" about something? sorry, maybe I'm confused, I guess I don't know legal lingo or am misunderstanding.
Is it not considered evidence acquired illegally and unusable in court? Considering most people think that most of this information does not qualify as probable cause per the Fourth Amendment...
The exclusionary rule is there to protect the defendant, and the defendant can ignore/waive its application.
Even if it could be applied without regard to whether the defendant objected, it has been gutted in recent decades by our radical right-wing Supreme Court, who think illegally-obtained evidence is just dandy so long as excluding it from court proceedings wouldn't actually change the government's behavior in collecting it.
My understanding is that such evidence is only thrown out of court when challenged by opposing counsel. For example, a prosecutor puts forth some evidence, then the defence lawyer objects, and the judge rules on if it is admissible. If the defence doesn't object...
