Digital Evidence Changing the Paradigm of Human Rights Protection

The wide diffusion of cameras and videos that allows for the documentation of human rights abuses raises new needs, including the establishment of mechanisms to ensure the validity and reliability of newly acquired information. The chain that connects all the required steps in order to turn digital data into "digital legal evidence" relevant for the protection of human rights represents a challenge for human rights practitioners, individual activists, and organizations. Every single step in the collection of digital evidence is fundamental: collection, management, preservation, analysis, and security of data. Pictures and videos from social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube, even when considered too weak for a conviction to be founded on, can play an important role outside of a courtroom by establishing the grounds for prosecution indictments or, in general, creating awareness of human rights abuses. This book looks at digital evidence in the United States, at the international level, and in European courts. The US legal system leads in the regulation of the requirements for digital evidence to be admitted at trial; nonetheless, international courts, like ICC, ICTY, and ICTR follow rules and procedure for that purpose based on authenticity, protection of privacy, chain of possession, and reliability of the electronic evidence. At the European level, the lack of a common legislation relevant to the admissibility of digital evidence at trial requires a comparative study of the respective provisions contained in many Europeans countries' procedural law. Looking at these systems, special attention is given to the analysis of the life cycle of digital evidence, from the creation and use of digital human rights documentation for immediate purpose to its later admission as evidence in legal proceedings, as well as to the issue of authentication. A collection of the most relevant case law from the principal US courts and International courts is also provided. [Subject: Human Rights Law, Digital Evidence, Criminal Law, Technology & the Law, Comparative Law]