From the ever vigilant The Register comes a story of a man who was detained by authorities for 50 days due to an error on the part of his ISP in identifying who had used a particular IP address to upload satirical images of a revered Indian (as in sub-continent, not Native American) leader of the 17th Century.

Details of the story can be found here

This is, to my mind, an IQ trainwreck as it caused a man to be deprived of his liberty for 50 days.

Also, the exact same information from ISPs is being used by law enforcement and Recording Rights groups to find terrorists and filesharers, so problems with the accuracy of the information will lead to wasted law enforcement efforts (terrorism) or defamation (Recording Rights groups accusing you of downloading when you didn’t).

Once the legal system becomes an ‘information consumer’ for this type of data then the standard of care and expectation of quality and accuracy must increase.