PART III LAW CHARACTERISTICS OF LEGAL EVIDENCE To turn information into legal, trial-ready evidence that a court can trust and use in coming to a decision, the information must have two key characteristics: it must be reliable and relevant. This reliable and relevant evidence is then put in context. Context is simply about how you weave the evidence together to tell the story about what happened to whom, when, and where, as well as who should be held accountable. RELIABILITY For anyone to rely on your footage — the media, human rights commissioners, decision-makers, and courts — your footage must be trustworthy. For instance, reporters need to be sure that what they are showing is real, but they can choose to show footage with the caveat that “This footage has not been independently verified.” A lawyer cannot. When a lawyer submits video evidence to court, he or she must be absolutely sure the video shows what the lawyer says it shows. Here are three key qualities that will enhance the reliability of your footage, and which can generally be achieved by following the basic filming practices below: 1) VERIFIABLE Verification is the process of confirming that the video is what it claims to be and was taken at a specific time, date, and location. This helps the media, human rights advocates, investigators, analysts, and lawyers trust the substance of the video and use it to piece together the full story. It also strengthens the video’s chance of being used as evidence in the courtroom. The verification process applies to both the footage itself and the metadata, because both can be faked or manipulated. Defined: Metadata A video file has two levels of content: the images we see and embedded data that we do not. This embedded data is called “metadata.” Loosely defined, metadata is data about data. Practically speaking, metadata is information about the time, date, location, model of camera used, etc. that is automatically stored with the footage. Think of it as “behind the scenes” information. For more about metadata, see "How to Capture Metadata and Documentation" at: archiveguide.witness.org/create/what-metadata-capture. For More Information To learn how to film so that your footage is easily verifiable by investigators, analysts, lawyers, and potentially courts, see “Basic Practices,” “Filming Secure Scenes,” and “Adding Essential Information” at vae.witness.org. 52 VIDEO AS EVIDENCE: ALL ABOUT EVIDENCE V 1.0