{"id":3678,"date":"2015-10-07T12:01:45","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T16:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=3678"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:53:34","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:53:34","slug":"ephemeral-technology-and-the-potential-to-avoid-legal-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/ephemeral-technology-and-the-potential-to-avoid-legal-consequences\/","title":{"rendered":"Ephemeral Technology and the Potential to Avoid Legal Consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"

Generation Y knows Mark Cuban, whether by his courtside antics during Dallas Mavericks games (he owns the team) or by his appearances on ABC\u2019s Shark Tank.\u00a0However, millennials might be surprised to learn that Mark Cuban\u2019s latest venture is to help people reduce their digital footprint.\u00a0 In 2013, Cuban prevailed in an insider trading action<\/a> brought against him by the SEC, ending a five-year court battle. For years, Cuban watched government investigators pore through his business and personal information, including prying through both texts and emails.
\nAs a result, he has recently invested<\/a> in and is heavily promoting a relatively new mobile application called Cyber Dust<\/a>.\u00a0 Cyber Dust\u2019s website boasts that the app is \u201cthe most personal communication platform ever.\u201d It allows users to privately communicate by sending and receiving text messages, photos, links, and more with their contacts, much like other platforms.\u00a0 The draw of Cyber Dust is that the messages disappear within seconds of being read, purportedly forever.\u00a0 The website assures that messages are, \u201cGone Forever: Messages never hit a hard drive, so when they disappear, they disappear for good.\u201d
\nThese types of programs are more formally known as \u201cephemeral technology.\u201d\u00a0 The ephemeral industry\u2019s popularity is rapidly growing, mostly thanks to the overwhelming success of Snapchat<\/a>, an application (\u201capp\u201d) that allows users to send pictures, videos, and chat messages to other users, who can view the content for one to ten seconds before it disappears. \u00a0Ephemeral<\/a> mobile applications like Snapchat are capable of sending messages, pictures, videos, and other communications that self-destruct. \u00a0This feature is attractive to users who desire greater privacy in their electronic communication.\u00a0 In an interview earlier this year, Cuban explained<\/a> why undiscoverable messages can be useful by saying, \u201cwhen you send a text or email you lose ownership of that message, but you don’t lose responsibility.\u201d
\nText messages, messages sent through social media, and photographs and posts on social media can be \u201csmoking guns<\/a>\u201d in domestic cases, as they are easily accessible and can be authenticated.\u00a0 The Federal Rules of Evidence says an item of evidence can be authenticated or identified by a witness claiming he or she wrote the post or by Rule 901(b)(4),<\/a> which allows authentication through \u201cappearance, contents, substance, internal patterns, or other distinctive characteristics of the item, taken together with all the circumstances.\u201d \u00a0This Rule allows social media posts, texts messages, emails, and other electronically stored information to be used as evidence in legal proceedings.
\nBut what happens if, in the future, texts, emails, and messages simply disappear?\u00a0 Such is the goal of ephemeral apps like Snapchat and specifically Cyber Dust.\u00a0 In an interview<\/a> with Business<\/em> Insider<\/em>, Mark Cuban spoke about his latest project, Cyber Dust, saying, \u201cWhether it\u2019s business or personal, it\u2019s really become an effective communication platform.\u201d Cuban boasts about the fact that Cyber Dust is completely untraceable.\u00a0 The \u201cdusts,\u201d messages sent on the app, are never written to permanent storage; therefore, they exist only in memory.\u00a0 Dusts are also heavily encrypted, and are deleted from existence 100 or less seconds after being read or 24 hours after being sent if they are never opened. Cuban seems to believe that Cyber Dust is an absolute solution for private and secure communication and even mentions how the app can help users avoid legal consequences.\u00a0 He said, \u201cSomething goes wrong, you know you\u2019re going to have to do a deposition, you know you\u2019re going to have to produce everything; but with us, it\u2019s discovery free, there\u2019s nothing to discover.\u201d
\nThe concept sounds extraordinary and extremely convenient for many users, from the college student who wants to send information about an exclusive party to only his friends to co-workers wanting to talk privately about their boss or peers.<\/p>\n

But given the importance of social media and electronic communication like text messages in court cases, especially domestic hearings, should apps like Snapchat and Cyber Dust and other programs providing \u201cdisappearing messages\u201d and other types of ephemeral technology be required to have a way to preserve their information for important evidentiary purposes?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Generation Y knows Mark Cuban, whether by his courtside antics during Dallas Mavericks games (he owns the team) or by his appearances on ABC\u2019s Shark Tank.\u00a0However, millennials might be surprised to learn that Mark Cuban\u2019s latest venture is to help people reduce their digital footprint.\u00a0 In 2013, Cuban prevailed in an insider trading action brought …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3204,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3678"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7289,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3678\/revisions\/7289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}