hankyoreh

Nov. 12. (News1)

By Hong Yong-deok, south Gyeonggi correspondent

On Nov 14, in the second hearing in the trial in which Lee Seok-ki and other lawmakers with the Unified Progressive Party (UPP) are facing charges of plotting an anti-government insurrection, it was disclosed that the original recordings of meetings the defendants attended were deleted in nine of the 44 recordings that the prosecutors submitted as key evidence.

The revelation has triggered a sharp counterattack about the admissibility of the recordings as evidence. The defendants’ attorneys argued that there is Supreme Court precedent showing that digital copies of originals are not admissible as evidence.

The prosecutors countered that the original file exists for the recording of the May meeting when the defendants plotted insurrection and incited others to do the same.

A National Intelligence Service (NIS) agent surnamed Moon testified for the prosecution in a hearing at the Suwon regional criminal court (district 12, justice Kim Jeong-un presiding).

“The informant, who is surnamed Lee, gave us 44 recording files containing statements from the participants from January 2011 to September 2013, including the meeting in May 2013,” Moon said. “We made 12 transcripts from these.”

In response to a question by the prosecution, Moon testified that Lee had given 11 of the recordings to them for temporary keeping, and that they had requested the remaining 36 files from Lee after receiving a gag order from the court.

When the prosecutor noted that a digital recorder had been used and asked if the original files had been stored, Moon answered that they had deleted the recordings that the informer had given them temporarily.

“Since there was no separate memory card for the digital recorder, we moved the audio files to computers and external hard drives at the NIS,” Lee testified. “We deleted the original files on the recorder because there wasn’t a lot of space.”

The defendants’ attorneys argued that the original copy of digital evidence must be submitted and that evidence which is not the original is not admissible.

In a 2012 Supreme Court case, the prosecution offered the testimony of someone who had made a recording and a CD copy of that recording without submitting as evidence the original tape recording that was used for compiling the transcript. But the Supreme Court ruled in the case that this was not enough to use the transcript as evidence of the defendant’s guilt.

In a redirect by the prosecution, Moon testified that the NIS had submitted the original files for the recording of the so-called May 12 meeting. The hash value of the recordings that constitute the key evidence in the case also became a point of contention.

The hash value, which reflects the degree of loss or compression in a particular file, can show whether an electronic document has been tampered with. It is sometimes called the “electronic fingerprint.”

It is possible to use file information, bandwidth of recording, and the hash value of a digital file to determine if it is identical with the original file.

Moon testified that, when the recording file was copied, an expert at the NIS set the hash value. Through additional questioning, Moon answered, “when a copy was being made of the recording file, we added the hash value with the informant in attendance.”

“Even if the National Intelligence Service informant was present when the hash value was set, it still does not count as objective evidence,” an attorney for the defendants argued.

Moon also answered questions about suspicions that the NIS forged or falsified the recording during the transcription process.

“For parts that we could not hear, we added parentheses or question marks. There was no falsification,” Moon said.

Earlier, the defense counsel had expressed suspicions that the transcript had been tampered with. They suggested that “carrying out promotion” had been changed to “carrying out a holy war”. The two expressions have similar pronunciation in Korean.

Previously, the NIS had sent investigators to raid 18 places, including the CNP Group (the company of which Lee is the president), the office of Sharing Environment, and the homes of people who took part in the May meeting. The NIS was hoping to find the source of funds for the RO, or “revolutionary organization”.

An attorney for the defense shot back that “searching the property of important witnesses when a trial is underway is the same as looking at the content of witnesses’ questioning in advance.”

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]