[heavyset_go]

Chain of custody matters and if there's an untrustworthy link in that chain it calls into question the validity of the evidence itself.

[Kostchei]

sure, but if the phone company says there was an sms, when you open the phone it looks like there is an sms, and cellebrite extracts one, which you then present in a nice power point to the court... then your accusation as to tapering with the evidence and where in the chain of custody it occurred had better be good, or all you are going to do is annoy the court (as someone with dozens , maybe hundred+, of cellebrite reports in various court records) This is what armchair lawyers tend to forget, especially coders tend to forget. The law is not code. The judge is not a complier. When the law does not represent reality (this guys sells drugs and uses his phone to do it being a common reality) , then it becomes news-worthy.

But normally people just look at the reality and go "oh yes, this tool extracts the stuff on a phone and turns it into a pdf/html, how convenient". 99.99% of the time, the time a drug dealer alleging he has no knowledge of the 100's of deals on his phone is about as realistic as your 5 year old nephew with cake smeared on his face denying he ate the last bit of cake... and is treated as such. Should the act of selling drugs be a crime?- completely different topic.

[ClumsyPilot]

We have inprisoned 600 people in britain because electronic errors of transactions contained mistakes.

You cannot assume a random company's tech works reliably without any proof, if someone's life is at stake. If yhry have cloud upload shenanighans they could be mixing up records of different people.

Evidence from a network probider is a completely different matter, but if SMS records are enough you would not need this crap.