In Internet-speak, the phrase "Pics or It Didn't Happen" means that the person listening to an unverified tale demands to see photos before they'll believe what they are being told. After all, everyone now walks around with a smartphone or camera phone of some kind, so if you really did just see Lady Gaga at the health club then where is the photo to prove it?

Indeed, we live in a world now where just about everything you do, everything you say, everywhere you go, everything you buy, and every photo you are in (or ever were in) is already teetering on the edge of the public domain. You deny dancing on the table with your necktie wrapped around your head at the office party last night? Well then why did I already see a photo of you doing just that tagged four times this morning on Facebook?

In August last year, Paris Hilton was charged with felony drug possession after she was allegedly found to be in possession of 0.8 grams of cocaine. Hilton claimed that the neither the drugs nor the Chanel purse in which it was found were hers, and that she was carrying the purse for a friend. This excuse was quickly undone by photos Hilton herself had posted to Twitter the month before of an identical looking purse about which she wrote, "Love My New Chanel Purse I got Today. :)"  Hilton reconsidered her story, and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession and obstruction of justice.

Which brings me to yesterday's development in the ever-expanding "Expert Network" insider trading probe. The criminal complaint brought by prosecutors in the SDNY shows that if they want to invest the time and money, prosecutors now have the ability to bring "pics" and a whole lot more to the table as evidence of insider trading. Using wiretaps, cooperating witnesses, phone records, seized laptops, Blackberry messages and even building surveillance video to build its case, the government laid out numerous details about specific conversations in which the defendants obtained inside information about upcoming earnings announcements.

Even more eye-opening were the details prosecutors presented (taken from recorded telephone calls) concerning one of the defendant's efforts to destroy evidence of the alleged fraud that was stored on a USB flash drive. In his own words, the defendant described how he "chopped it up, chopped up everything" by taking

two pairs of pliers, and then you rip it open. Pulled the external drives apart. … Put 'em into four separate little baggies, and then at 2 a.m. … 2 a.m. on a Friday night, I put this stuff inside my black North Face … jacket, … and leave the apartment and I go on like a 20 block walk around the city … and try to find a, a garbage truck … and threw the sh*t in the back of like random garbage trucks, different garbage trucks … four different garbage trucks.

On top of all that, prosecutors claim they also have video from the night in question from a surveillance camera in the apartment building in Manhattan in which the pliers-wielding defendant lived. The video allegedly shows the defendant leaving his apartment building with another person at approximately 1:52 a.m. on November 20, 2010, and returning at approximately 2:33 a.m. ... wearing the North Face jacket!

And so I ask:

Given the government's ability to generate this kind of evidence when it chooses to, how far are we from a time when hard, non-circumstantial evidence becomes expected and defendants adopt (and juries accept) the "Pics or It Didn't Happen" defense in insider trading cases? That is, if you allege that I committed insider trading, where is my tape-recorded confession? Where is the surveillance video? Where is the cooperating witness? Where is the mangled USB flash drive? Where is the Smoking Gun tweet?

In a world where people are beginning to realize that everything we do seems to be recorded and available somewhere, particularly to the government, I think the "Pics or It Didn't Happen" defense could become more and more prevalent and effective.

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