Sharing digital evidence is vital for successful prosecutions, but it's a minefield of potential security pitfalls. This blog will guide you through the process of secure evidence sharing with prosecutors and other agencies, ensuring the integrity of your case.
It’s too easy to convict an innocent person or acquit a guilty one. A wrongful conviction is one of the gravest injustices in the criminal justice system. These errors often stem from mishandled, lost, and tampered evidence, which leads to the wrongful interpretation of crucial facts. Yet, many of these errors can be prevented with secure evidence sharing and storage practices.
The National Registry of Exonerations report showed that 2% to 10% of convicted individuals are actually innocent in the USA. The truth of their guilt or innocence might actually be hidden within the gaps of the compromised evidence trail.
Digital evidence is undeniably vital in solving criminal cases. However, it is inherently fragile and susceptible to tampering and unauthorized access unless strict security measures are implemented.
Secure evidence sharing and proper evidence handling are of paramount importance. They can easily make or break the case. This was tragically illustrated by the case of David Camm, where years of legal battles were fought to overturn his conviction.
The stakes are incredibly high for digital evidence. Considering the increasing use of cameras, recording devices, and electronic communication, it shouldn't be surprising that about 90% of criminal cases nowadays involve digital evidence.
However, it's important to consider transparency and reliability in the evidence sharing process. Without it, the entire justice system risks losing credibility. That's why it's important first to learn the best practices for evidence sharing to minimize concerns over digital evidence tampering, unathorized access, or misplacement.
To that end, this blog explores the critical importance of digital evidence security and offers best practices for safely sharing it between prosecutors, law enforcement professionals, and other agencies.
It comes as no surprise that digital evidence has become a cornerstone in the pursuit of justice, and its importance continues to grow rapidly. Different agencies in the criminal justice and public safety sectors (including law enforcement, prosecutors, defenders, courts, and correctional institutions) are interconnected through the act of sharing digital evidence.
Secure evidence sharing plays a crucial role in streamlining the entire justice process. It ensures the integrity, admissibility, and overall success of a case, establishing a seamless flow from the initial incident to the courtroom.
Transparency in handling and sharing evidence also ensures that all parties involved can have confidence in the process. Without this trust and confidence, investigations can be jeopardized, privacy laws may be violated, wrongful convictions may occur, and public trust will inevitably erode!
In the past, and still today, law enforcement and legal personnel have to burn countless DVDs or transfer data to external hard drives or flash drives. It is a time-consuming and error-prone process. It's like trying to transfer a library of books by hand, one page at a time.
Once these physical copies are created, the real challenge is sharing them. These packages of data, containing confidential information, must be hand-delivered to the district attorney's office. This process is inefficient and carries significant risks to digital evidence security. What if something happens on the way? What if the evidence is misplaced or, worse, tampered with?
Today, law enforcement and legal professionals face immense pressure to close cases quickly, all while managing an ever-growing volume of digital evidence. From body-worn cameras and in-car videos to CCTV footage, interview recordings, and mobile phones; everything must be accounted for.
During a trial, both the prosecutor and defense attorney share evidence through discovery. This process ensures that both parties have the information needed to prepare their cases to promote a fair trial.
The discovery process remains inefficient as outdated methods of sharing digital evidence persist. The defense and prosecution often exchange information via physical media, which must be picked up, hand-delivered, or mailed to defense counsel.
All in all, there’s little to no standardization in the prosecutor’s office receiving digital evidence. That’s because different law enforcement agencies manage and share it in various ways, like DVDs, USBs, hard drives, or paper reports. All of this needs to be uploaded, copied, and scanned into different systems, slowing down cases.
You can read more about this in our blog about cloud vs. physical evidence storage.
Secure evidence sharing presents challenges that differ significantly from those of securely storing it. When evidence is shared, it becomes vulnerable to major risks like the ones outlined below:
The digital realm is always exposed to cybersecurity threats and data breaches. The Target data breach was one of the largest security breaches in history. Cybercriminals stole 40 million customer credit and debit records with this breach. While not directly related to law enforcement, this case highlights a data breach's severity and potential consequences.
When digital evidence is shared without proper security measures, it becomes a prime target for hackers or malicious actors. These individuals may bypass the unprotected system easily and gain unauthorized access. Once inside, they have the potential to bring down the entire operation and compromise the integrity of the case.
A data breach can expose sensitive information, including confidential investigative details and personal information about suspects, victims, and witnesses. This exposure also puts individuals at risk of identity theft, harassment, and other forms of harm.
The dangers of evidence tampering are not unique to digital evidence. A recent study reported that digital evidence is easier to tamper with than physical evidence due to its intangible and highly volatile nature. The study also warns that evidence tampering is so dangerous that depending on the manipulator’s intentions, the alternation can be entirely undetectable, regardless of the expertise or competence of digital forensic experts.
Once digital evidence is at the grasp of unauthorized users, they can interfere with the investigation process by altering, falsifying or concealing the evidence. Threats can come from within the agency, such as insiders with access to the agency’s system who use it to delete or replace important case files. On the other hand, external malicious actors may alter digital evidence by illegally accessing the evidence storage to tamper with classified files.
Comparing digital evidence with its copies to detect tampering is both time-consuming and resource-intensive. It often requires additional security infrastructure and personnel. Even then, it can be difficult to definitively determine if evidence has been tampered with. Perpetrators can make subtle alterations that, while minor, can still significantly influence the verdict of the case.
Who collected the evidence? Who handled it? When was the evidence last accessed, and who accessed it? When was it transferred to another investigator for examination? What specific actions were taken with the evidence during each transfer?
These questions might seem difficult to track. However, if you don’t have the answer, the evidence might be worthless. These questions relate to the evidence lifecycle collectively, and their answer lies in the chain of custody. This is a sequential documentation of the series of events happening to the digital evidence. Everything has to be recorded under the chain of custody from the time of evidence collection to its storage, transfer, analysis, and disposal.
Digital evidence can always be challenged in court. If the chain is broken at some point, the evidence presented will be ruled inadmissible!
The court considers the relevance, authenticity, integrity, and reliability of digital evidence in its admissibility. It carefully examines the evidence collection, storage, and transfer processes to meet strict legal and regulatory standards. If the chain of custody is broken at some point, that means the evidence was accessed by unauthorized personnel or tampered with—this makes it inadmissible.
Since the evidence cannot be presented in the court now, it will profoundly impact the dynamics of the trial and limit the scope of arguments. The burden of proof lies with the prosecution who is responsible for proving the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
If key evidence is dismissed at the court, it will undermine the prosecution’s ability to win the case. In the worst-case scenario, it can even lead to termination of the case in favor of the defense.
Now that we have discussed the importance of securely sharing evidence and the significant risks of neglecting it, here are the evidence sharing best practices and measures to ensure secure evidence sharing with prosecutors and other agencies:
The most obvious and most effective solution to protect digital evidence is to encrypt it. Encryption scrambles data so it is unreadable except only to the intended recipient. Only someone with the correct key (cipher key) can decrypt it, turning the coded message back into plain text. This ensures that even if the data is intercepted, it remains secure and inaccessible to unauthorized users.
Every day, 7 million unencrypted data records are compromised. To date, the US has seen 6 billion stolen records to date. This underscores the critical importance of encryption in preventing data theft. Specifically, end-to-end encryption is important for secure communication. It protects data both at-rest (stored on your device or database) and in transit (as it travels to its recipient against tampering by the Internet Service Provider (ISP), hacker, perpetrators or other entities.
So, what’s the gold standard of encryption? The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256 is the top choice. It’s a military-grade and future-proof encryption layer. With AES-256, the likelihood of a security breach turning into a data breach is significantly reduced. For a hacker to gain access to data secured with AES-256, they would need to attempt 2^256 combinations – a number so immense it’s greater than the total number of atoms in the observable universe.
U.S. government entities such as the National Security Agency (NSA), the military, and other large organizations rely on AES encryption for secure communication. The best part about AES 256 is that it is not limited to them; it’s public software anyone can use. However, AES encryption is only as strong as its environment and the security infrastructure surrounding it. Therefore, it is essential to implement additional measures to achieve foolproof security.
The integrity of evidence must be preserved at every stage of its transfer between agencies. Any alterations could render the evidence inadmissible in court.
To maintain evidence credibility, simply use tamper detection. This checks the digital evidence file to confirm that it is the same as the one originally uploaded. If the file has been altered and does not match its original state, it is marked as tampered.
Tamper detection uses cryptographic hashes or digital signatures to identify unauthorized modifications. Each evidence file is assigned a unique digital value, known as a hash value, for future comparison. If even the slightest alteration is made to the file once shared with someone, the hash value changes, indicating that tampering has occurred.
Evidence tamper detection can be done manually, too, but it’s highly impractical given the volume of digital evidence in modern cases.s. Manually verifying each file would require days and extra resources. Separately storing copies of the digital evidence file to compare with the original file is not ideal at all. Automated tamper detection, on the other hand, ensures accuracy and scalability in handling digital evidence, saving precious time and storage.
Digital evidence security can easily be compromised if it falls into the wrong hands. Due to the sensitive nature of these files, a law enforcement professional would, for example, only want the prosecutor to have access. If the perpetrator gains access instead, it could drastically alter the outcome of the case.
Specific roles can be assigned to manage permissions and control access to evidence files, known as Role-Based Access Control. For instance, the chief of police may have full access to all evidence in a case file, while a police officer might have only limited access. With end-to-end encryption, evidence also remains secure as it will only decrypt for authorized personnel after being authenticated upon request.
Moreover, setting a time frame for automatic log-out can be a crucial safeguard against unauthorized access. If a user forgets to log out or leaves their device unattended, the system will automatically end the session after a set period of inactivity. This minimizes the risk of unauthorized individuals gaining access to sensitive information by exploiting an active session.
Prosecutors and legal defendants must prove the integrity of evidence before it can be accepted in court. This is achievable through a comprehensive chain of custody, also known as an audit trial. If this chain is broken, the evidence will be declared inadmissible and called tainted evidence.
As we have previously discussed, the consequences of losing track of digital evidence are severe. But how can you maintain an unbreakable chain of custody, and what are the key elements that should be tracked?
To keep track of an umbrella of activities, every action performed on the evidence file should be logged into the system and monitored continuously. Typically, a chain of custody report should maintain detailed records of anyone who accesses the evidence, capturing the following key elements:
Evidence must also be stored in a secure environment with strict access controls. Chain of custody aids in detecting tampering by tracking unauthorized activities and pinpointing the responsible user. It works alongside features like Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), restricted sharing via tokenized links, and advanced encryption to ensure evidence security.
By combining these secure practices, you can create a robust and unbreakable chain of custody, ensuring that the evidence remains unaltered, uncontaminated, and tamper-proof.
Should someone who needs to view evidence on a need-to-know basis have unlimited access to it? Absolutely not. Access without any restriction poses a significant risk to the integrity of the evidence.
The individual sharing a link to an evidence file should also be able to set an expiration date and time, thereby restricting access to the evidence for a specified period. Password protection adds an extra layer of security, ensuring that the recipient can only access the file if they have the correct password.
Moreover, it's essential to limit the number of views and control the recipient's actions once the link has been shared – allowing them, for instance, to clip the evidence or edit the transcript only while preventing other unauthorized activities. Generating multiple links for a single case file allows you to set different access controls for different users. One recipient may have unlimited access, while another may be restricted to a 2-day access period only.
Implementing location restrictions is another way to restrict access for secure evidence sharing. You can ensure that only users within designated areas can view or interact with the evidence by limiting access to specific geographic regions. This is particularly useful in preventing unauthorized access from regions with higher cyber security threats or where access should be restricted due to jurisdictional boundaries.
Multiple departments and stakeholders operate within the same system in criminal investigations and law enforcement operations. However, this doesn't mean that everyone should have access to all evidence files.
In law enforcement agencies, multiple departments handle various cases within a single, consolidated system. However, there are instances where collaboration with another agency is necessary, particularly when an investigation crosses jurisdictional boundaries. Similarly, prosecutors often need to withhold certain information or redact evidence before sharing it with parties like the defense.
For these reasons and more, keeping digital evidence in a single, accessible space can be risky and challenging as people might see more than they are supposed to. Using multiple digital portals to segregate evidence and control user access helps ensure privacy and security. This approach allows law enforcement and criminal justice stakeholders to share evidence quickly and securely while ensuring that individuals from other departments cannot access evidence in a different portal without proper authorization.
While individual security measures are crucial, like the ones we discussed, they often fall short when implemented in isolation. These features alone won’t effectively resolve your digital evidence security and sharing concerns.
That's where digital evidence management systems come in. These solutions provide a centralized platform for managing digital evidence, offering robust security features and streamlined sharing capabilities.
For law enforcement to share evidence with prosecutors and other agencies, digital evidence management systems like VIDIZMO DEMS just might be the solution.
Recognized in IDC MarketScape 2020, VIDIZMO Digital Evidence Management System (DEMS) is a complete evidence management solution that provides a centralized platform to ingest, store, manage, analyze, and share digital evidence.
Here's the straightforward truth: few digital evidence management systems offer all the advanced secure sharing options we've discussed in one package. Fortunately, VIDIZMO DEMS offers you the perfect solution for secure evidence sharing, which includes:
If you are looking for solutions for secure evidence sharing, try VIDIZMO DEMS for free for seven days.
Digital evidence refers to any data that can be used in a legal case and is stored in digital form. This includes videos, audio recordings, documents, images, and any other type of electronic data. Data that signifies any information most relevant to the case.
Secure sharing of digital evidence is crucial to ensure that unauthorized individuals do not tamper with, alter, or access the evidence. It also maintains the integrity of the evidence, the chain of custody, and promotes a fair court proceeding.
Secure evidence sharing best practices include robust data encryption, timed links with set permissions, strict access controls to prevent unauthorized access, separate portals, tamper detection, location restriction, and secure file transfer protocols to limit who can handle the evidence.
A Digital Evidence Management System (DEMS) transforms how evidence is traditionally collected, analyzed, and shared. It offers a secure and scalable platform designed to store, manage, analyze, and securely share digital evidence in a centralized repository. It offers advanced features such as evidence encryption, tamper detection, chain of custody tracking, role-based access control, and much more.
Using media storage devices like CDs, DVDs, and USBs for evidence storage poses major risks, including the potential for missing evidence, theft, unauthorized access, tampering, and physical damage.
Securely share digital evidence with prosecutors using a Digital Evidence Management System (DEMS) that employs data encryption, secure file transfer protocols, and strict access controls. Implement timed links with specific permissions, use separate portals for different agencies, and apply tamper detection and location restrictions to further protect the evidence throughout the sharing process.