James Robert Quick

I. International Criminal Justice Has Entered the Digital Evidence Era Without Digital Forensics Standards

The International Criminal Court has modernized the collection of evidence faster than it has modernized the authentication of evidence. That gap, between enthusiastic embrace of digital submission infrastructure and an underdeveloped framework for forensic-grade verification, has become one of the most consequential unresolved problems in contemporary international criminal procedure. Wars are now documented through smartphones, satellite imagery, Telegram channels, and open-source investigations of a sophistication unimaginable a decade ago; the Office of the Prosecutor receives hundreds of thousands of digital submissions annually through platforms built for the task. And, working with Eurojust, the Office of the Prosecutor has issued guidance to civil society organizations for documenting those crimes. The evidentiary framework governing those submissions, however, remains substantially anchored in assumptions developed for an analog world.