EVIDENCE Project developed the Road Map for harmonizing the exchange of electronic evidence considering necessary actions - from social impact to legal, technical and standardization ones, validating the process with stakeholders from its very beginning and building the future of the electronic evidence exchange in Europe. The e-CODEX family of projects is providing a fast, easy and reliable connection between legal professionals across Europe allowing them to efficiently and effectively handle cross border legal cases in a digital manner. Merging and combining the actions carried out by these two projects will render two complementary approaches and will allow contribute to the necessary level of awareness towards piloting the EVIDENCE2e-CODEX ‘true to life’ application. They will provide for implementing the exchange tool in all Member States, thus starting the harmonization process of exchanging electronic evidence in a trusted and secure manner EU-wide.
Furthermore, the extended network of stakeholders – brought along by both the EVIDENCE and e-CODEX Consortiums, will contribute greatly to the development of the activities and reaching of goals foreseen within EVIDENCE2e-CODEX. However, the latter will continue building bridges among different actors of the electronic evidence domain and further expanding the community.
The EVIDENCE2e-CODEX Project will pave the way towards an interconnected system, without multiplying the systems and e-forms that are already in use. The objectives of the project match the requirements identified during the November 2016 Expert Meeting that e-CODEX should be the system for secure transmission of requests and, to the extent possible, e-evidence should be transmitted through e-CODEX as well. The learning by doing’ approach will be an added value for both EU institutions and Member States as the project's results will be developed and validated together with stakeholders and will generate in re ipsa reciprocal trust among them. The EVIDENCE2e-CODEX application will be designed bottom-up starting from the specific context of the electronic evidence exchange.
Thus, the EVIDENCE2e-CODEX Project will:
generate awareness with prosecutors, judges and other legal professionals on the impact of European Investigation Order (EIO) and the potential of instruments like EVIDENCE and e-CODEX to improve EU wide crime fighting; and
show through a ‘true to life’ example that electronic evidence can be shared and exchanged in a fast, secure and reliable manner between legal authorities, by:
using a real life EIO case,
developing a comprehensive understanding of how to handle large files,
adopting a learning by doing approach carrying out activities hand to hand with interested stakeholders,
keeping Internet Services Providers, being the major owners of e-evidence, in the loop of the application’s development; and
dealing with digital forensic software companies and the digital forensic market as a whole;
pre-pilot the EVIDENCE2e-CODEX application with the support of the Ministries of Justice – members of the project, thus dealing in real time with the variety of judicial realities and keeping track of the challenges and the gaps of the current process and/or legislation.
