A judge has ordered Yahoo to explain how it was able to recover emails used as evidence in a drug case that were supposedly deleted.
These emails were responsible, in part, for convicting drug trafficker Russell Knaggs but his defense team claims that the recovery shouldn't have been possible. As such, the evidence may have been gathered instead through a different means, like an NSA surveillance program or real-time interception. The defense launched an appeal because of this and U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James granted the request that Yahoo detail how the recovery was made.
Yahoo provided "snapshots" of the email account "slimjim25@ymail.com" after receiving requests from the FBI and the UK police in September 2009 and April 2010. The snapshots preserved the contents of the account, revealing the messages that transpired in the email which led to Knaggs conviction.
At the time, Knaggs was already in prison serving a 16-year sentence for another drug crime when he orchestrated the importation of more than 11,000 pounds of cocaine from South America. Communication for the operation was coursed through the email account, where an accomplice in Colombia would log into the account and draft an email and another from Europe would write their own after reading the previous message and deleting it from the "draft" and "trash" folders.
According to Yahoo, the emails were recovered as copies made by its "auto-save" feature that saves data in case of connectivity loss, for instance. The company has provided witnesses before to attest to the feature, but the defense claims that some of the witnesses' statements contradict each other.
In its appeal, the defense requested documents from Yahoo, including instruction manuals for peripheral equipment used in retrieving the emails. Yahoo said the request is "unreasonably intrusive" and James agreed. However, she only whittled down the number of documents to be presented, but said a protective order can be filed for them, if necessary.
Yahoo is also to provide a witness to discuss topics relating to the email account in question. The company has until Aug. 31 to come up with the necessary documents and prepare a witness for the half-day deposition.
Knaggs never actually used the email account, but was incriminated in the snapshots Yahoo sent to law enforcement so he was convicted of drug trafficking conspiracy. If his appeal falls through, he'll be spending another 20 years in prison on top of the sentence he's already serving.
Photo: Matt Wilson | Flickr
