Since anyone can put anything they want on their servers, it seems like a lot of evidence could be thrown out in court cases if access to that information is not strictly monitored and audited to make sure the owners aren’t removing or adding data.
Does anyone know of industry-standard practices to ensure that data on servers is not being manipulated in a way to protect or harm users?
That’s why most law enforcement agencies have chain of custody procedures. If they didn’t then defense lawyers could easily argue that any evidence was tampered with. Once the evidence enters their custody it is meticulously tracked and any interactions with it are logged. There are also forensic specialists who can be called on by defense attorneys to analyze that digital evidence for changes and tampering that may have occured during law enforcement custody or even prior to it.
It’s a quite advanced field and is way more legitimate than forensic “sciences” like ballistics, hair and fiber, or dental impressions. It involves real data and not someone’s interpretations that amount to little more than tea leaf reading.