E-Discovery New Frontier: The Internet Of Things

Digital capture of information has moved into areas that were difficult to imagine a generation ago. Information such as how fast someone was driving, when a lawyer was called and by whom, what “Google assistant” overheard someone say in the bathroom, whether a person was really asleep when some event occurred, or even – as in a question that actually came up in a famous Arkansas murder case – how much water a suspect used shortly after a crime took place, allegedly to clean up the murder scene. Then there is the trove of information that is, or soon will be, captured by drones, not to mention various in-home devices and helpers. (As an article in Motherboard has it, “Amazon Wants to Put a Camera and Microphone in Your Bedroom.”) One estimate says that by the year 2020 there will be 24 billion IoT devices connected to the internet. The question arises: What will this mean for e-discovery? And how will it change what’s embraced by a “legal hold”?