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Since its emergence, blockchain has put itself in almost every task across industries, and now Judiciary can also take advantage.
The notion of blockchain is known to be decentralized and permissionless has been one of its major selling points. Prominent creations like cryptocurrencies and Web 3 are made possible due to blockchain. Neither it has any centralized control nor is it required to trust any entity in between to act upon its designated tasks. Now taking this ability of blockchain into account, many people argue that if proof of illicit activities such as war crime videos were on blockchain, they would be trusted easily once admissible in the courtrooms.
Take into consideration the recent and ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, where hundreds of thousands of videos and images sent throughout the world give the view of terror created due to the chaotic motion of Russia to invade Ukraine. Ordinary people came up with the theory of mobile phone cameras to capture the apparent war crimes happening and while uploading them on social media platforms raises questions and calls for accountability for those who are responsible for doing this and those who are to stop them.
Still, many of these videos from both sides can’t be trusted blindly, no matter how compelling and unequivocal they seem. The process for these digital proofs to be admissible in front of the court is lengthy, complex and full of risk. This is due to the abundance of available tools that can be used to manipulate digital media and alter video proofs. Such scenarios can be fatal for this digital evidence, even if they are too good to be true.
But here is what blockchain and Web 3 technologies came up into play that can potentially solve this problem. The Starling Lab developer team has developed a framework while leveraging these open-source and decentralized tools. This could capture and store data along with verifying the digital content securely to resolve the challenges it faces on both technical and ethical sides. The digital records having proof of war crimes in Ukraine would be the first to be testified using these tools.
These tools work seamlessly along with integrating Layer 1 and Layer 2 protocols, nonfungible tokens, and hardware secured wallets that could create an immutable and end-to-end Web 3 solution to preserve digital evidence.
Steve Anderson is an Australian crypto enthusiast. He is a specialist in management and trading for over 5 years. Steve has worked as a crypto trader, he loves learning about decentralisation, understanding the true potential of the blockchain.
