New in Ethics report (3): there are no tapes (the recordings were digital)

From the Ethics Commissioner's report:

Mr. Grewal testified that earlier that day, he decided to purchase a new digital tape recorder to record his conversations.

I assume that 'digital tape recorder' means not a recorder of digital audio tape (DAT, a now obsolete technical standard that is only used in the recording industry (see here)), but a digital recorder.

This is interesting. Especially since the 'suicide note' (the Conservative press release that admitted that there were problems with the Grewal 'tapes') calls them 'tapes' repeatedly.

The warning sign should have been that Randy Dash, the audio expert whom the Conservatives hired to examine the tapes and vouch for their authenticity, spoke only of 'clips', not tapes (see his letter, which was released by the Conservatives here).

This may require the revision of several views. For example, it renders meaningless the argument that one heard from Conservative quarters that Randy Dash was the only audio expert who had examined the 'originals'. Since there was no literal, physical tape to be examined, and his copy was no different from the one that anyone could get downloading the MP3 from Gurmant's site.