I don't know if this is actually the reason, but if I had to guess it would be that it has nothing to do with credibility, because illegal evidence can be perfectly credible: instead, the issue is that if you allow evidence that was obtained illegally you implicitly justify those methods by rewarding them with success. The idea of making it inadmissible is to deter people from doing it because then it won't help them as much, forcing them to use legal methods if they want to get justice achieved. You could argue that people should simply be allowed to take the knocks for their illegal methods and count the evidence anyway but that seems like a really risky way of going about things since then entities rich enough to afford the penalties could do all sorts of nasty like bugging their employees or whatever.

Fain might be able to give you more of the details though (or just tell me I'm completely wrong.)

P.S try extra hard not to turn this into a politics thread, should be fine for now though.

http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd=x-347-566663

Of course, suing a law firm is a bit iffy on the chances there... but hey, if you're (mis)identifying and harassing them, you deserve all you can get.

The English position on illegally obtained evidence is summed up v. well here. The general rule is that it will usually be admissible, but that doesn't mean that you won't get sued or prosecuted for getting hold of the stuff in the first place - e.g. Imerman and Tschenguiz.




Privacy international hasn't suffered any loss, so it isn't immediately clear to me what legal action they could take. But it's a good publicity opportunity, I suppose.