Criminal offenses with the most different modi operandi and levels of complexity can generate digital evidence, whether or not the actual crime is committed by using information and communication... Show moreCriminal offenses with the most different modi operandi and levels of complexity can generate digital evidence, whether or not the actual crime is committed by using information and communication technology (ICT). The digital data that could be used as evidence in a later criminal prosecution is mostly in the hands of private companies who provide services on the Internet. These companies often store their customers’ data on cloud servers that are not necessarily located in the same jurisdiction as the company. Law enforcement and prosecution authorities then need to take two steps that are not exclusive for evidence of a digital nature. First, they need to discover where the data is located—with which company and in which jurisdiction. Second, they need to obtain the data. In considering digital evidence, the last step, however, is complicated by new issues that form the focus of this paper. The first concern is the practice by companies to dynamically distribute data over globally spread data centers in the blink of an eye. This is a practical concern as well as a legal concern. The second issue is the slowness of the currently applicable international legal framework that has not yet been updated to a fast-paced society where increasingly more evidence is of a digital nature. The slowness of traditional mutual legal assistance may be no news. The lack of a suitable legal framework for competent authorities that need to obtain digital evidence in a cross-border manner, nonetheless, creates a landscape of diverse initiatives by individual states that try to remedy this situation. A third issue is the position that companies are put in by the new EU proposal to build a legal framework governing production orders for digital evidence. With companies in the driver’s seat of a cross-border evidence gathering operation, guarantees of the traditional mutual legal assistance framework seem to be dropped. A fourth issue is the position of data protection safeguards. US based companies make for significant data suppliers for criminal investigations conducted by EU based authorities. Conflicting legal regimes affect the efficiency of data transfers as well as the protection of personal data to citizens. Show less
Any crime could generate digital evidence. That is a reality law enforcement authorities across the world need to face. The volatile and “unterritorial” nature of the evidence means that... Show moreAny crime could generate digital evidence. That is a reality law enforcement authorities across the world need to face. The volatile and “unterritorial” nature of the evidence means that international cooperation in criminal matters is confronted with new questions. One of these questions is whether the traditional cooperation mechanism, mutual legal assistance, is a viable way of working. Due to its time-consuming and cumbersome functioning combined with the lack of a faster alternative, countries have developed unilateral and extraterritorial methods of evidence gathering. This paper zooms in on this development and the risks it entails. Show less