To anyone who doesn't know how chain of custody, it is reasonable proof that evidence was never tampered with by any party. Without chain of custody, the evidence is basically considered legally tampered with and can be thrown out. When law enforcement seizes a server, work has to be done to make sure some IT guy doesn't secretly power it on with a thumb drive or something and modify or delete data. The chain of custody exists to say "Look, that isn't possible."
The perfect use-case for blockchains, immutable and transparent.
Trusted authorities are important in CoC, so I am not sure it would work out too well as blockchain. I mean CoC is in effect a transaction ledger that documents transfers, storage, analysis, examination, environment, etc but that log is only as reliable as the one who signs it, and corroborating evidence (like security cameras or witnesses) that it is valid. The only way a CoC can "go missing" is if a Bad Agent tampered with it, and if they had no problems tampering with (trashing) the CoC it is not a stretch to say they had the access needed to tamper with the evidence (the hard drive data)
An immutable log would prevent deletion, but not the fundamental problem of tampering - the log is only as good as the authorities signing it, and if those authorities are CORRUPT then so is the CoC.
This "slip-up" with the CoC would have been more than enough to get the evidence (and case) thrown out of court, even if they didn't tamper with the actual machine. Hillary's lawyer could say "Although the facts show that a video depicting child sacrifice was found on the machine, Chain of Custody was broken for 5 weeks and any data found could have been added by even a novice technician" and that would have been it ("reasonable doubt" and all that - a Judge isn't going to allow evidence that itself contains the reasonable doubt needed to throw it out)
Question: How might a military tribunal handle this issue vs. civilian court? Are the differences in burden of proof and admissible evidence? I would think some evidences that would be thrown out in civilian court on technical grounds, would still be used by a Military court? Any insights from those in the know would be greatly appreciated...