Understanding verification and documentation DATA THAT WILL HOLD UP IN COURT Legally admissible evidence Requirements for court Human rights documentation has a powerful If you want your data to lead to criminal impact on legal proceedings. The International prosecutions, you need to make sure to record Criminal Court, as well as several hybrid tribunals, all relevant metadata. A court should be able actively seek civil society’s support. But courts are to clearly identify the location of a video, either slow to adopt new technologies, and judges, who through location coordinates embedded in the tend to be older, are often not familiar with how video or landmarks that can be identified in the digital data can be folded into normal evidentiary video content. Moreover, the subject of the video rules. It will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction should be clear – blurry or shaky video that casts whether a YouTube video will be accepted as doubt on who is in the film or what act they are legal evidence. committing will likely not be accepted. For example, in 2015, Sweden’s justice system Also consider chain of custody. To be accepted prosecuted a former fighter from Syria for torture for a criminal prosecution, most courts need to based on a video posted to Facebook. Many know every individual who handled the content, Syrians are crowdsourcing such online content starting from the original creator and ending with to prosecute abroad former Syrian officials, the prosecutor in the courtroom. Chain of custody militaries, and fighters that have fled the country. must show exactly who possessed the content, when, and for how long in order to help safeguard against manipulation of evidence. The closer you get to the original video, the easier it will be to present in court because the chain of custody will be shorter and easier to demonstrate. 36