PART OF The Expert Witness practice
ADMISSIBILITY · FLA. STAT. 90.702
Daubert Challenges and the Admissibility of Digital Evidence
Most digital evidence that gets excluded is not excluded because the science was wrong. It is excluded because nobody wrote down what was done.
Daubert is the standard a Florida court uses to decide whether expert testimony is reliable enough to be heard. Florida adopted it in 2019 under Statute 90.702. Enetsec documents tools, versions, hash values and every examination step so a digital forensics method can be tested and reviewed.
That is the uncomfortable part of a Daubert motion. The challenge is aimed at method and documentation, and both of those are decided months before anyone files anything. An examination performed carefully but recorded loosely is very hard to defend after the fact.
This page explains a legal standard in general terms. It is technical background for counsel, not legal advice, and nothing here predicts how any court will rule in any matter.
What the Daubert standard is
Daubert comes from Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals (U.S. Supreme Court, 1993). It assigns the trial judge a gatekeeping role over expert testimony under Federal Rule of Evidence 702.
The Supreme Court listed factors a court may consider when assessing reliability:
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Whether the theory or technique can be tested, and has been tested.
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Whether it has been subjected to peer review and publication.
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The known or potential rate of error, and the existence of standards controlling the technique’s operation.
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Whether it has attained general acceptance within the relevant scientific community.
These factors are non-exclusive and flexible. A court is not required to apply all four, and may weigh others. Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael (1999) extended the gatekeeping function to technical and other specialized knowledge, which is the category most digital forensics testimony falls into.
Rule 702 was amended effective December 1, 2023. The amendment made explicit that the proponent must show admissibility by a preponderance of the evidence, and that the opinion must reflect a reliable application of the expert’s principles and methods to the facts of the case.
Florida specifically
Florida is a Daubert jurisdiction. The Florida Supreme Court adopted the Daubert standard in 2019, and it is codified at Florida Statute 90.702. Practitioners who last handled a Florida evidence question under the older Frye general-acceptance test should treat the analysis as changed.
The methodology questions a court asks about a digital examination
Translated out of legal language, a Daubert inquiry into a forensic examination usually reduces to a handful of concrete questions.
Can another examiner repeat what you did and get the same result? That is testability. It requires that the tool, the version, the settings and the source image are all recorded.
Is the method published and used outside your own office? Forensic acquisition, hash verification and standard mobile extraction workflows are documented in vendor procedures, in the professional literature and in the training programs behind the CCE, Cellebrite and AccessData certifications.
What can go wrong, and how often? Every tool has documented limitations and failure modes. Parsing errors in third-party application databases are a real and known category. An examiner who names them is describing an error rate. An examiner who claims none exists is describing a problem.
Is the data you examined the same data that was seized? That is chain of custody, and it is where digital matters fail most often.
How we document an examination so it can be challenged
We work backwards from the motion.
Every device or account that arrives is logged with condition, identifiers and the person who delivered it. Custody transfers are signed and timestamped. Acquisition is performed with write protection, and hash values are recorded at acquisition and re-verified before analysis so any later alteration is detectable.
The examination log records tool name, tool version, date, operator and each action taken. When we examine a phone, the first thing we record is the extraction type and its known limits, because that single line answers half the questions a Daubert motion will raise.
Reports separate three things that examiners often blur together: what the data shows, what the data supports as an inference, and what the data cannot address. In the 6,000+ cases we have analysed since 1999 (Source: Enetsec case records, 2026), the conclusions that draw challenges are almost always the ones that quietly crossed from the first category into the second.
What we will not tell you
THE LIMIT
We will not tell you that evidence will be admitted. Admissibility is decided by the court, on the record, in your specific matter, and any examiner who promises an outcome has handed opposing counsel a free impeachment.
What we will tell you, honestly and early, is whether the underlying method is defensible and whether the documentation exists to support it. If it does not, you should know that before you disclose, not after.
Elsewhere in the Expert Witness practice
Frequently Asked Questions
NO. 1 Are your forensic reports court-admissible?
Our reports are prepared to the standards courts apply to expert evidence, including documented methodology, recorded chain of custody, hash verification and stated limitations. Admissibility itself is always decided by the presiding court in the specific matter, and no examiner can promise it in advance. What we control is that the method is reproducible, the documentation is complete, and the examiner who wrote the report is available to explain and defend it.
NO. 2 Are the forensic tools you use vetted and accepted by courts?
We work with the mainstream forensic platforms that have long track records in litigation, including Cellebrite and AccessData products, and our founder holds vendor certification on both plus the Certified Computer Examiner credential. Tool acceptance is evaluated case by case, so we record tool name, version and configuration for every step. Where a finding is significant, we verify it with a second tool or a manual review of the underlying artifact.
NO. 3 What are your evidence handling procedures?
Devices are logged on receipt with make, model, serial number, physical condition and the identity of the person delivering them. Acquisition uses write protection so the original media is not altered. Hash values are recorded at acquisition and verified before analysis. Working copies are used for examination while the original image is preserved. Every action is entered in a dated examination log naming the tool, version and operator.
NO. 4 How do you maintain chain of custody?
With a signed, timestamped custody record that begins at the moment we take possession and continues through return or destruction. Every transfer between people or storage locations is recorded. Evidence is held in controlled storage in our Boca Raton laboratory with access limited to assigned examiners, and digital evidence is stored encrypted at rest. The custody record is produced with the report so it can be reviewed alongside the findings.
NO. 5 Will an examination damage my device or alter my data?
Forensic acquisition is designed to be non-destructive, and we use write protection so the original data is not modified. We verify this with hash comparison. Some situations carry real risk and we say so before we start: physically damaged media, devices that require disassembly, and certain locked or encrypted devices where the acquisition method itself is invasive. You will be told the risk in writing before we proceed.
Have the methodology conversation before the motion
If admissibility is going to be contested in your matter, the documentation either exists or it does not, and that is decided at acquisition. Talk to the examiner early.
Call (561) 846-9010 or reach us through /contact-us/. See the full digital forensics expert witness practice, or read how we perform rebuttal and report review of an opposing examiner’s work.
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