The IJIS Courts Advisory Committee (ICAC) Presents Digital Evidence Training Event

 

Via press release from the IJIS Institute:

Over the past several years, our society has seen an influx of advanced technology solutions that have made available a tsunami of structured and unstructured data about our lives, our public safety, and our disputes. As a result, law enforcement, prosecutors, defense counsels, the private bar, and the courts are all faced with an abundant amount of data (both relevant and irrelevant) for investigations, discovery, and court cases. The collection of this data ultimately requires a great deal of time and effort by public safety and criminal justice practitioners globally. How should our law enforcement and court communities adapt to this increased demand for the collection, vetting, management, and sharing of digital evidence?

Virus Outbreak Prompts China's Courts to go Online

We learned from the South China Morning Post (via a repost from Abacus)

As a result of the COVID-19 (Corona Virus) outbreak, the courts in China have moved much of their work to online electronic services.

"The Shanghai High Court recorded a 63 percent increase in online court cases compared with the same period last year, state media reported. In addition to handling court case filings online, the court is using online platforms to handle payments, contact with judges, material submissions and other litigation services. Remote court trials are conducted over video links.

Online court technology is also being used in other parts of the country, but not everything is going smoothly. Assistant judge Ma Chengcheng of the Intermediate People’s Court in Xinyang told local media that before the trial, participants needed to be contacted by phone or WeChat and patiently walked through how to use the software."

This and That in Court Technology – August 2018

In this edition, we share news about eCourts 2018 conference, law enforcement body cameras, the 25th anniversary of PDF, and microfilm to digital conversion technology to write up while the software is installing on my new laptop. 

Digital Evidence Collection Standards

In the “missed an announcement in December category”, the US National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) released federated testing tools that are “designed to help law enforcement and forensic practitioners”…”in making a copy of the data from a seized electronic device”.

Since courts deal with evidence, we need to discuss this below…

Not Just Police Body Cams

GoPro Pet Camera Mounts

A recent Pennsylvania appellate court decision points out that the record keepers will deal with more than just law enforcement body camera evidence. Courts are having to deal with video evidence from many sources.

This and That in Court Technology – October, 2016

Microsoft Surface Studio

It was a busy month in court technology. In this post we share news about judicial decision prediction system, a court rejecting e-signed documents, a new online traffic ticket mediation implementation, several Microsoft related technology announcements, and last call for the Australia legal and court technology conference registration.

This and That in Court Technology – September, 2016

Attendees enjoying e-Courts

We share news about the e-Courts 2016 Conference, the Federal Courts test of prisoner electronic access kiosks, news in the search for a quiet keyboard - now in portable form, questions raised about Australian use of court videoconferencing, a Blockchain notarization service, and a new court podcast in Florida.

Storage, SSD’s and the Future of Court Records

A recent article stated “SSD prices plummet again, close in on HDD”.  Translated that means that solid state “flash” storage that runs much faster than traditional hard disk drives (HDD’s) is closing in on price parity.  But what does this mean for court records?  We discuss and speculate below.

Even More This and That in Court Technology – June, 2016

After I wrote the post last week a lot of new items of potential interest to court technologists appeared.  In this edition we share news from Microsoft, Facebook, the ODR 2016 Conference, the Tyler Excellence Awards, uses for E-Discovery Software, and a cleaned up software utility repository.

Another Technology to Plan For: Blockchain Contracts

As we all know, courts have to deal with contracts between parties.  And courts also very often have to verify the authenticity of information.

There is a lot of work going on using Blockchain database technology.  So it is time to learn about and plan for its use in the justice system.  We discuss below.

Some News Notes

A busy couple of weeks.  But we wanted to share three notes about “The Free Law Project” Judicial Database, Microsoft’s partnership with the Legal Service Corporation and Pro Bono Net, and some recent legal action involving digital evidence.

Criminal Justice Identification in the Cloud

Courts have an unending problem with criminal defendant identification.  If one thinks about this issue for a minute, in many instances it is a benefit to the defendant to not be properly identified.  As most of you know, there have been biometric systems (fingerprint, face recognition for example) available for law enforcement, prosecutors, and courts for many years.  But there has been a significant initial cost barrier.  Last week I saw an interesting possible “cloud based” solution that may help.

“Managing Digital Evidence in Courts”

The COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee has issued a new report: “Managing Digital Evidence in Courts”.  The report identifies potential challenges and recommends steps courts should consider when receiving, evaluating, protecting, and presenting digital evidence, including video from body-worn cameras, private citizens, and other sources.

Click here to view and download the report.