EXECUTIVE SUMMARY content, all of which can represent critical electronic evidence of an offence. National legal obligations and private sector data retention and disclosure policies vary widely by country, industry and type of data. Countries most often reported using court orders to obtain evidence from service providers. In some cases, however, law enforcement may be able to obtain stored subscriber data, traffic data, and even content data, directly. In this respect, private sector organizations often reported both a primary policy of requiring due legal process for data disclosure, but also voluntary compliance with direct law enforcement requests under some circumstances. Informal relationships between law enforcement and service providers, the existence of which was reported in more than half of all responding countries, assist the process of information exchange and trust-building. Responses indicated that there is a need to balance privacy and due process, with disclosure of evidence in a timely manner, in order to ensure that the private sector does not become a ‘choke-point’ for investigations. Cybercrime investigations invariably involve considerations of privacy under international human rights law. Human rights standards specify that laws must be sufficiently clear to give an adequate indication of the circumstances in which authorities are empowered to use an investigative measure, and that adequate and effective guarantees must exist against abuse. Countries reported the protection of privacy rights in national law, as well as a range of limits and safeguards on investigations. When investigations are transnational, divergences in levels of protection, however, give rise to unpredictability regarding foreign law enforcement access to data, and potential jurisdictional gaps in privacy protection regimes. Over 90 per cent of the countries that responded to the questionnaire have begun to put in place specialized structures for the investigation of cybercrime and crimes involving electronic evidence. In developing countries, however, these are not well resourced and suffer from a capacity shortage. Countries with lower levels of development have significantly fewer specialized police, with around 0.2 per 100,000 national internet users. The rate is two to five times higher in more developed countries. Seventy per cent of specialized law enforcement officers in less developed countries were reported to lack computer skills and equipment, and only half receive training more than once a year. More than half of responding countries in Africa, and one-third of countries in the Americas report that law enforcement resources for investigating cybercrime were insufficient. Globally, it is likely that the picture is worse. The study received responses, for example, from only 20 per cent of the world’s 50 least developed countries. All responding countries in Africa, and over 80 per cent of countries in the Americas and Asia and Oceania reported requiring technical assistance. The most commonly cited area for technical assistance required was general cybercrime investigative techniques. Of those countries requiring assistance, 60 per cent indicated that this was needed by law enforcement agencies. Electronic evidence and criminal justice Evidence is the means by which facts relevant to the guilt or innocence of an individual at trial are established. Electronic evidence is all such material that exists in electronic, or digital, form. It can be stored or transient. It can exist in the form of computer files, transmissions, logs, metadata, or network data. Digital forensics is concerned with recovering – often volatile and easily contaminated – information that may have evidential value. Forensics techniques include the creation of ‘bit-for-bit’ copies of stored and deleted information, ‘writeblocking’ in order to ensure that the original information is not changed, and cryptographic file ‘hashes’, or digital signatures, that can demonstrate changes in information. Almost all countries reported some digital forensics capacity. Many responding countries, across all xxiii