Since when it is the duty of the defence to prove they were tampered with? Surely it is up to the prosecution to prove they were NOT tampered with. A tall order considering:
1. SA Force had access to green's account ( and depending on policy probably had sudo access which can be used to alter any system file or property
2. SA Force was a Law officer, now currently under indictment for theft and passing information to criminals.
If the government is the proponent of the evidence, and they elicit testimony demonstrating that they found these files on Ulbricht's machines, and they were appropriately preserved, that would seem to me to be the end of the matter. The government has elicited no testimony and has no evidence that anyone but Ulbricht wrote those files, and indeed it appears to contain information about SR that only DPR (and not the government) would know.
So if the defense wants to bring up that somehow, they believe these agents tampered with the files, they need to have witnesses who will testify to the fact that these files were tampered with. They do not have these witnesses, because they don't exist. The notion that the DEA and USSS agents tampered with the files appears to me at least, to me entirely speculative. Yes, these agents did bad things, and yes they had access to a Silk Road forum admin account (though not the server-side account, and not Ulbricht's laptop, and I don't believe there was any evidence that the admin on the SR forums had any kind of server access), but there does not seem to me to be any evidence at all that anyone tampered with these files. Whom would the defense call who would testiyf to anything like that?
Seems to me that 2 crocked DEA agents were at the steering wheel for large periods of time while these crimes were being perpetrated. They should have offered Ross a plea, secured a conviction on lesser charges and then concentrated on nailing these agents. Seems they did it the other way round.
My understanding is that the DEA agent had the one admin account for only a few days.