Alistair Kelman

My Personal Website

Introduction

WELCOME to my personal website. It has been some time in the making, but at last it is here. If you already know me and how I work and live then you will then know that you are welcome here; welcome to browse, read and connect with me. The site is intended to be the best place to contact me and seek my views. You can also follow me on BSky (see my "skeets" because since Twitter was renamed "X" I rarely tweet). So this is the Ali Kelman Site and I am best known as Ali Kelman

What did I do?

Today this site records the work I did as a barrister in private practice from 1979 until 2000, as an independent Forensic Computing expert witness in the years thereafter and as a consultant in all aspect of computers and law. I am also an engineer and an inventor - I have five granted UK patents and two granted US patents to my name. On this site there is information on how I helped people sort out any problem they had with the reliability of computer evidence. Today you may be having unreliable computer evidence cited against you in the courtroom. Or you may be wishing to bring proceedings and want to know how to prepare your digital evidence for use in the courtroom . My first book, written with Richard Sizer of the British Computer Society in 1981, was called "The Computer in Court" and you can get it free today on this site. Just click on the relevant menu item in the sidebar.

At the time, my co-author, Richard Sizer CEng FIEE FBCS CITP worked at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough. Together we formulated some of the background to what was to become the ethics and best practice of the computer industry in this new century - a topic on which Richard independently wrote and spoke about during the 1990s. Richard Sizer passed away in 2019 and all changes to "The Computer in Court" after that date have been written exclusively by me.

Forty five years on - What followed on from our work in "The Computer in Court"

In September 2023 the Digital Evidence and Electronic Signature Law Review published a peer reviewed article which considered some of the deeper issues surrounding our work and found that in 1995 the Law Commission had misrepresented our analysis and conclusions to enable it to reform the law of evidence without the inclusion of adequate safeguards - changes which have since been shown to have led to the Post Office Horizon scandal. "Although the subject matter of the book was directly relevant to the Law Commission’s consideration of the treatment of computer evidence, the authors, Kelman and Sizer, made a completely different, and powerful, argument, which directly contradicted the Law Commission’s conclusion and its resulting recommendation to Parliament. The authors were writing before PACE 1984 was enacted, and they argued for more effective safeguards than PACE section 69 eventually provided. It is remarkable that the Law Commission chose not to explain that the book it cited was so clearly at odds with its recommendation that section 69 should be repealed with no replacement."

Neither Richard Sizer nor I were approached by the Law Commission at any time to contribute to their consideration of computers and complex systems. Our book, The Computer in Court, had been written by us to be a book which could highlight the real risks with computer systems in a way which could be understood by everyone - not just by a legal priesthood or a technologist. We wanted the book to be cheap and easily accessible but our legal publisher, Gower, insisted that our little book sold for £30 to a rarefied market of lawyers “who would know what to do”. In truth the Law Commission at the time had no idea what they were dealing with and failed to address, or even understand, the issue of reliability of computer evidence because they did not have the basic knowledge of management of risk through engineering. The Law Commission focused on admissibility which was a subject for lawyers rather than make inquiries of engineers who were skilled in the design of safe systems. In doing so they misrepresented our positions as engineers which was never in support of their recommendations. Click on The Computer in Court to go to a page to download it today.

You can find my recent thoughts about computer evidence and preserving justice (with links) in my page How to solve the Computer Evidence Problem in the sidebar.

SafeCast Limited - Protecting Children from being harmed by content on television and the internet

A few years ago I moved outside of the legal arena to develop a business in the field of protecting the television watershed and additionally protecting children from inappropriate content and pornography on television and the internet. This business is called SafeCast. If the protection of children from being harmed by material on television and the internet are matters which concern you then please visit the SafeCast website. We hope to revise and update the SafeCast website soon. In the interim elsewhere on this Home Page is a link to the video evidence my wife and I presented to the UK Government in November 2017 as a submission to their consultation on child protection. This was the first time that a video response to a Government Green Paper had ever been submitted to the UK Government.

Forensic Computing Analysis work

Forensic Computing is the application of investigation and analysis techniques to gather and preserve evidence from a particular computing device in a way that is suitable for presentation in a court of law. I worked in this field from 2000 onwards after I left private practice at the Bar.

After I left private practice and became engaged in various consultancy roles, I worked closely with solicitors and barristers - but I always have been independent of them. There are very interesting funding propositions arising around the world in civil actions arising out of complex frauds - see, for example, this Wired article about the work done by MKS Law which was previous known as Martin Kenney and Company. There are new ways of funding litigation using third party litigation funders who are able to take up to forty-five percent of the damages awarded under UK Supreme Court approved litigation funding agreements. Funding litigation by this means can enable justice to prevail even if the claimant is not wealthy.

If you are wanting to bring a civil case, or defend a criminal case, then I have good working relationships with highly experienced and trusted forensic experts who know how to image computing (and mobile phone) data, prepare reports and give truthful and reliable testimony in all courts. Feel free to email me via my Contact Me form to start a discussion.

1358795765_magicfields_pdf_file_upload_1_1.pdf

For an example of the kind of things that I used to do when I worked as a Forensic Computing Expert Witness then take a look at this judgement of the High Court in Antigua. I was instructed by the firm which is now MKS Law to be their independent expert in the action against the UK firm Vantis, the UK's 12th largest accountancy firm at this time, who had been appointed as liquidators in the collapse of the Stanford Investment Bank (SIB) . My evidence, as referred to in the judgment, was preferred by the court and, as a consequence, Vantis were dismissed as liquidators.

As a direct consequence Vantis lost the $100 Million liquidation contract, went into administration and new liquidators were appointed. Then as a result of appointing new liquidators, in January 2021 following years of concerted work on SIB by MKS Law , a three month trial of their $4 billion (+) negligence/recklessness action against TD Bank in Toronto began.

The Ontario Superior Court dismissed the claim in June 2024, ruling that the joint liquidators (represented by MKS Law) failed to establish that TD Bank was reckless or wilfully blind to the fraud by Mr. Stanford. The court found no basis to conclude TD Bank knew or suspected Mr. Stanford's breach of fiduciary duty or that TD Bank breached a duty of care to SIB. Hence, TD Bank was not negligent under the standard of care for a reasonable banker.

Separately, TD Bank has faced very significant fines and penalties exceeding $3 billion related to anti-money laundering failures and criminal pleas in the US, but these are distinct from the MKS Law negligence action in Canada.

“You can’t run a Ponzi scheme without a bank.”

For a thoughtful analysis of what might be termed the "behavioral psychology' behind Ponzi schemes involving financial institutions see 'Ponzi Banking: the Law and Psychology of Banks that service Financial Misconduct'. published in August 2025 by the Journal of International Banking and Regulation (Sweet & Maxwell).

Brexit

In 2016 I was one of a small minority of technology start-ups which supported the UK leaving the European Union under the Referendum. I spoke in debates and gave a short speech at the Excel Centre for Business for Britain on why TechCity and employment would be better post Brexit. The speech remains my view on the opportunities presented to global Britain which we should advance. You can read it here.

Subsequently I wrote a piece for a website called GlobalVisionUK (website no longer available) on the prospects of a UK-US Digital Free Trade Agreement by the end of 2020. You can read that article as it was submitted to GlobalVisionUK here. At the time it was published by me Google had announced that it was eliminating "cookies". That cookie statement was made "inoperative" (to use a Watergate term) when on July 22, 2024, that it would no longer phase out third-party cookies in its Chrome browser as previously announced.

Featured video

The video my wife and I made for the DCMS as evidence

Patent infringement proceedings

I have compared the bringing of enforcement proceedings for infringement of patents in the UK and in the USA - you can read my views on that topic here.

Page updated

Report abuse