As little as 15 years ago criminal investigations and subsequent prosecutions were likely to focus on the crime scene for evidence backed up by eye witness testimonies and door-to-door enquiries. This has been transformed by the way we now live our lives and share information online. So said the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Max Hill QC, in a talk to the Westminster Policy Forum.
He said: “The digital devices which are becoming part of the fabric of everyday life, like smart phones, social media and even things like Alexa can actively provide key evidence to pinpoint whereabouts, provide footage of an incident or a timeline.
“Alexa has already been used as a line of enquiry in a murder case the US. The opportunities and threats presented by the digital age is a constantly evolving challenge for all parts of the criminal justice system, as well as for wider society.”
The DPP gave an example of how the GPS system in a Land Rover Discovery was instrumental in providing evidence during a crossbow murder case earlier this year. The defendant was questioned about his possession of crossbows, but it was only two week later when the GPS system was retrieved from his partner’s burned out vehicle that vital evidence was found.
Information retained by the car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover proved that the car had been used for reconnaissance as it was traced to the victim’s driveway the night before the murder. It also showed that the car had travelled to the crime scene again the next night and remained until 12 minutes after the victim was shot. The system indicated the boot was opened and closed when the car arrived and before it left. The offender was convicted and received a life sentence.
Max Hill said: “The detectives of the past could only dream of the modern opportunities to gather and deploy evidence. But these also represent unprecedented evidential challenges. Just as technology is changing the nature of crime, technological innovations will change investigations. Machine learning and artificial intelligence is being developed to be more effective and reliable in sifting through vast amounts of data.
“Prosecuting crime in 2020 means integrating new and old techniques to make sure digitally-driven investigations are translated into fair and effective cases. This is a fast moving landscape and we will not and must not stand still.”
Examples
To take recent examples; last month a farmer was found guilty at the Old Bailey of blackmail and contaminating goods by adding shards of metal to baby food jars as part of a £1.5m blackmail plot against Tesco; a laptop was found in the suspect’s Toyota, which held draft copies of extortion letters. As Max Hill pointed out in a speech last year, ‘a large counter terrorism investigation might recover more than 20 terabytes of material. And when a single terabyte is the equivalent to two solid weeks’ worth of DVD films’.
As the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) acknowledges, for crime investigation as in general life, connected devices mean huge amounts of data, and metadata (data about the data); hence it says it’s investing in technology to help it review large sets of evidential data – as common in cases of complex fraud and money laundering, and child sexual exploitation – and to identify personal data while keeping to GDPR data protection rules.
