In support of this, someone forwarded me a very interesting article written by someone who creates forensic software for a living. The legal requirements surrounding the creation of a software tool for forensic purposes, which this proposed effort requested by the government might fall under, are nothing less than herculean in scope.

http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=5645

Zdziarski's arguments are very illuminating on how this is not a simple or one-off request. Excellent read.

I'm sure defense counsel would want to be able to verify that it isn't modifying file access times, or deleting data, or planting data, or otherwise disturbing evidence when the update is put in.