The survey on cross-border collection of digital evidence by representatives from Polish prosecutors' offices and judicial authorities

Abstract

Dynamic development of IT technology poses new challenges related to the cross-border collection of electronic evidence from the cloud. Many times investigators need to secure data stored on foreign servers directly and then look for solutions on how to turn the data into a legitimate source of evidence. To study the situation and propose solutions, I conducted a survey among Polish representatives of public prosecutors’ offices and courts. This paper presents information from digital evidence collection practices across multiple jurisdictions. I stated that representatives from the prosecution and the judiciary in Poland are aware of the issues associated with cross-border acquisition and preservation of cloudbased evidence. In their view, many of the problems are time-consuming and ineffective international cooperation, the voluntary nature of cooperation between foreign cloud service providers, lack of harmonized procedures and guidelines, the diversity of legal systems, and the lack of knowledge held by law enforcement officials and the judiciary. This work should be the beginning of an open discussion with practitioners about existing challenges and an invitation for further research with a larger sample of prosecutors and judges. There are no such studies in literature. The paper shows that it is possible to improve current procedures for the cross-border collection of cloud-based digital evidence.