Meeting the Technical Community: Validation of the Evidence Exchange Standard Package Application

One of the main EVIDENCE2e-CODEX goals is to produce a 'true to life' working solution by integrating a formal language for representing and supporting the electronic evidence exchange process in an electronic evidence platform based on e-CODEX architecture, i.e. the Evidence Exchange Standard Package (EESP) Application. To achieve this goal, the project team broke down the electronic evidence life cycle in simple phases in order to verify the capacity of the formal language to store the forensic and legal information related to the current status of the evidence: initialization of the case, search and seizure, acquisition, analysis taking into consideration the preservation and the chain of custody. Relying on pseudo-anonymization of real cases, a simulation on how the formalism represents all the involved information was prepared in order to evaluate the strengths and the weakness of the chosen formalism within the EVIDENCE2e-CODEX Project.

EVIDENCE2e-CODEX is currently at the final stages of validating different aspects and functionalities of the EESP Application and the project team sought the opinions and views of both the technical and legal communities over its achievements.

'Meeting the Technical Community: Validation of the Evidence Exchange Standard Package Application' Workshop, a a two-day joint WP3/WP4 event engaging the technical community with the EVIDENCE2e-CODEX achievements and goals, took place on 26-27 March 2019 in The Hague. It was designed around six major topics seeking the feedback from practitioners toward the EESP Application’s validation.

More than 50 experts from the digital justice and forensics community gathered to discuss and network over presentations from project partners and stakeholders. The event opened with a project introduction to the evidence exchange scenario, the benefits of using a standard for evidence representation, the CASE language, and the architecture, API and main functionalities of the EESP Application.

Further on, the workshop was designed around six main discussion topics:

Panel 1.A debated on the functionality and GUI of the EESP Application:

what kind of needs would judicial authorities/practitioners have using the EESP Application in terms of Evidence Package integrity and authenticity checks, opening and/or verifying the Evidence Package content, etc.;

what kind of needs would forensic labs and law enforcement agencies have using the EESP Application with respect to Evidence Package preparation, browsing, encryption, review, etc.;

validation of the EESP use cases designed within the project; etc.

A second discussion (Panel 1.B) was dedicated once more to the EESP Application – this time within the context of the e-Evidence project, developed by the EC, and the potential integration of the EESP Application with other platforms, including issued of exchanging messages, links, automatisms, Evidence Package encryption and manifest file, etc.

The first day finished with two more stakeholders’ discussions over:

the forensic tools that are already able to produce a report compatible with the CASE standard, highlighting a growing awareness and sensibility toward the importance to adopt this language as a standard in the future, and what is the forensic tools software development companies’ perspective on CASE (Panel 2), and

the data protection issues and other concerns of legal nature such as Evidence Package data retention, Evidence Package disposal, the need for special legal grounds the Evidence Exchange Scenario to be accepted in the Member States, etc. (Panel 3).

The second day of the event continued with two sessions dedicated to:

dealing with exchange of large file of evidence (Panel 4); and

a discussion on the other platforms currently in use for purposes of evidence exchange and the issues/solutions that these platforms are experiencing (Panel 5).

Each session was organized around a technical overview and/or demo of the specific features, followed by a panel discussion.

The participation of the major stakeholders in the EU arena helps EVIDENCE2e-CODEX to develop and promote the ‘true to life’ example for electronic evidence exchange. The event welcomed DG Justice and Consumers and e-CODEX representatives, officials from INTERPOL, EUROJUST, EUROPOL, OLAF, International Criminal Court, National Chambers of Judicial Officers, European Judicial Network, and the Ministries of Justice and/or Prosecutor’s Office from Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, as well as experts from digital forensics companies, academia and national/international organizations working in the field of judicial cooperation.

All event presentations are available in the Resources sub-section below.

Full summary of the event and brief on the EVIDENCE2e-CODEX evidence exchange scenario can be found in the event brief.

The event took place in the premises of the Igluu Den Haag in The Hague, the Netherlands, located at Louis Couperusplein 2, 2514 HP, The Hague, The Netherlands. For the exact location of the venue, visit Google Maps by clicking here.

Tuesday, 26 March 2019

Wednesday, 27 March 2019