SEBBI.PRO · The Rule · The Test · Check a proof
A PROPOSED CHANGE IN THE LAWCourts, regulators and insurers still accept audit logs that the organisation relying on them could have edited at any time, with nobody able to tell. There was no practical alternative when that habit formed. There is one now, it is published, and checking it is free. So the question is simple: now this exists, why is the other still accepted?
Test your own log in one minuteRead the rule
The rule is about whether a record was changed after it was made. Whether the system that made the record was working correctly is a separate question, and the rule leaves the court's time free for it.
Sealed 2026-11-10 15:39:56 UTC in block 37723. Fingerprint 60fc822c780630eee5c627a1e23369fca300c68506132c8d57e74da289667611
In criminal cases in England and Wales a computer is presumed to have been working correctly unless the contrary is shown. The safeguard in section 69 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 was repealed in 1999.
The Ministry of Justice called for evidence on the presumption in January 2025. Peers moved amendments to remove it in February and March 2026. No replacement has been settled.
EU law already gives a qualified electronic time stamp a presumption of the integrity of the data it is bound to: eIDAS, Article 41(2). Security law already measures conduct against the state of the art.
Article 12 of the EU AI Act requires automatic logs for high-risk AI systems. The standards that will say what a sufficient log is are being written now.
Methods that let a person outside an organisation detect any alteration, deletion or back-dating of that organisation's logs and records are published, are free to check, and are in production use. From the sealed date of this notice, no one relying on a self-attested log can say that an independent check was unavailable, unproven or unaffordable.
| SINCE | METHOD | PUBLISHED AS |
|---|---|---|
| 1991 | Linked time-stamping of digital documents | Haber and Stornetta, 'How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document', Journal of Cryptology 3(2) |
| 2001 | Trusted time-stamp protocol | IETF RFC 3161 |
| 2013 | Append-only public logs with inclusion and consistency proofs (Certificate Transparency) | IETF RFC 6962; RFC 9162 (2021) |
| 2014 | Qualified electronic time stamps with a legal presumption of the integrity of the data | Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 (eIDAS), Article 41(2) |
| 2016 | Timestamps committed to the Bitcoin blockchain, checkable by anyone | OpenTimestamps (opentimestamps.org), open source |
| 2021 | Public transparency logs for software signing | Sigstore Rekor, open source |
| 2026 | Sealed, Bitcoin-timestamped records of AI decisions with a free offline verifier | sebbi.pro, https://sebbi.pro/forever |
Checking is free under every method listed. Timestamping a fingerprint through the public notary at https://sebbi.pro/bitcoin is free. Continuous sealing with sebbi.pro is 50p per device per month. What leaves the organisation: a fingerprint, never the record.
Sealed 2026-11-10 15:39:56 UTC in block 37722 and timestamped into Bitcoin, so the date of this notice cannot be disputed. Fingerprint e17d13ed797e4162747782e69d0bdb4da1c31daced0577702996db89a02e81f5. Machine-readable: https://sebbi.pro/.well-known/state-of-the-art-logging.json
For a lawyer in disclosure, an insurer handling a claim, an auditor, a regulator, or a board about to rely on its own records.
For supply contracts, AI service terms and policy wordings.
Independently checkable records. The Supplier shall keep the Records in a form in which a person with no access to the Supplier's systems, and no need to trust the Supplier, can detect any alteration, deletion or back-dating of a Record after it is made, using a published method. The Supplier shall give the Customer, on request and without charge, everything needed to carry out that check. A Record that cannot be checked in this way shall not be relied on by the Supplier as evidence of the matters it records.
Published in full, and filed with the people who decide.
In criminal proceedings in England and Wales a computer is presumed to have been working correctly unless the contrary is shown. Section 69 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, which put the burden the other way, was repealed by section 60 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. The Ministry of Justice called for evidence on the presumption in January 2025. In February and March 2026 peers moved amendments to the Victims and Courts Bill to remove it. The difficulty on every side has been the same: nobody wants trials slowed by proof that every device works, and nobody has offered a test a court can apply quickly.
Two different questions are bundled into 'is this computer evidence reliable'. The first is whether the system that produced the record was working correctly. The second is whether the record has been changed since it was made. The second question no longer needs argument or expert evidence. A record can be kept so that any change, deletion or back-dating is detectable by a person outside the organisation, at no cost to check.
Adopt the Independent Check Rule (ICR-1) for records produced by software: no presumption of integrity for a self-attested record, and a presumption of integrity for a record that passes an independent check. The rule is neutral as to method and names no product. It keeps uncontroversial evidence moving, because an independently checkable record is confirmed in seconds, and it ends reliance on records that only their owner can vouch for.
Article 41(2) of Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 (eIDAS) gives a qualified electronic time stamp a presumption of the accuracy of the date and time and of the integrity of the data it is bound to. Security law already measures conduct against the state of the art: Article 32 of the GDPR and UK GDPR requires appropriate measures having regard to the state of the art and the cost of implementation. Article 12 of the EU AI Act requires automatic logs for high-risk AI systems; the standards that will say what a sufficient log is are being written now.
The State of the Art Notice published with this submission lists the methods, from 1991 to today, and is itself timestamped so its date cannot be disputed. The Editable Log Test lets any person change one line of a log on their own phone and see that nothing outside the organisation records the change, then see the same change caught to the line. Both are free and public.
That the Independent Check Rule be considered in the Ministry of Justice's work on evidence generated by software, in rules of court on the reliability of computer evidence, and in guidance on the weight to be given to logs in regulatory and civil proceedings. We will give evidence, in writing or in person, and will demonstrate the test.
sebbi.pro (Monop Content). This page proposes a change in the law; it is not legal advice. Sealed 2026-11-10 15:39:56 UTC in block 37726.
End the legal presumption for computer records only their owner can verify
Change the law so that a computer record is presumed unaltered only if someone independent of its owner can check it. Records that only their owner can vouch for should carry no presumption, and the owner should have to show they were not changed.
Courts in England and Wales presume a computer was working correctly unless the contrary is shown. The Post Office Horizon scandal showed where that leads. Published methods now let anyone detect a change, deletion or back-dating in a record without trusting its owner, and checking is free. EU law already gives qualified time stamps a presumption of integrity. The same principle should apply to logs used as evidence: independently checkable, or no presumption.
Load any log on your phone, change one line, and see who could tell. Nothing is uploaded.
Run the Editable Log TestTimestamp a fingerprint freeSeal every record: get a keyCan an audit log be edited without anyone knowing? · What is a self-attested log? · What is the Independent Check Rule?