[LINK] Date stamping copies of web pages

[andrew clarke]

On Wed, Feb 21, 2007 at 08:48:09AM +1000, Mike Shearer wrote:

> Is there any way of making a copy of a web page and date stamping it 
> such that the copy would be accepted in a court as evidence that the 
> page was as shown on that date?

I believe if you make a hard copy of a web page, both Internet Explorer
and Firefox (and probably most other browsers) will add the current date
and time to the header/footer of each printed page, along with the URL
of the page.

Of course, you can easily falsify the date/time by setting your PC's
internal clock to report whatever date/time you choose, eg. pretend the
Web existed in 1985.

You can also falsify the web site's contents by using a
modified/poisoned HOSTS file, a modified/poisoned DNS server or a
modified/poisoned HTTP proxy.

Also note that some web pages can be configured to appear differently
(or not at all), depending on certain factors (eg. browser version,
network location, malware infection, user login credentials, etc).

I think a hard copy of a web page would need to be witnessed by an
unbiased third party (or similar) as being accurate as per time of
printing before it had any hope of being used as evidence in court.  I
think you would need to speak with a lawyer about what is acceptable,
under which circumstances.

Regards
Andrew