My take was that the FBI used a very secretive tool that is not readily available. I recall Zell using the analogy that if the technology was released that child *advertiser censored* folks could use it to delete/change/alter their own files. I also recall that Zell argued that it had never been available in any other court cases so why should the FBI make it available to this one, or something along those lines. Don't know if I understood it all or not.
I just [inexplicably] watched that episode. 20 minutes of my life that I'll never get back. But, anyway, the points that Kurtz and Zell were making were intentionally different and the judge didn't understand the technology enough to appreciate the difference.
Basically, you have:
thinkpad_disk -> software_magic -> human_readable_info
Now, Kurtz was arguing that it was actually:
thinkpad_disk -> state's_software_magic -> state's_human_readable_info
and
thinkpad_disk -> defense's_software_magic -> defense's_human_readable_info
And that
state's_human_readable_info and
defense's_human_readable_info were different and that he hadn't had an opportunity to see
states's_human_readable_info and therefore he didn't know how to cross examine the witness on it. So he wanted that witness's testimony and anything related to
thinkpad_disk thrown out.
When he lost that battle, he switched to asking for them to at least give him either
state's_software_magic or
state's_human_readable_info now.
Zell's argument was, we gave them
thinkpad_disk so they can get any info that they like from it. We can't give them
state's_software_magic because it is top-secret and could have national security implications.
Zell did a good job of kind of muddying the waters so as to not really have to answer the question: if they can't give them
state's_software_magic , why can't they at least give them the output of that magic, which is
state's_human_readable_info.
