INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE "CROSS-BORDER DIGITAL FORENSICS"

Welcome to the website of the International Conference "Cross-Border Digital Forensics", Udine (Italy), 28 September 2017

Evidence is crucial in legal thought since it is placed between Legal Science and Legal Philosophy, Epistemology and Hermeneutics, Interpretation and Rhetoric.

The concept of evidence has been revisited in order to keep pace with new technologies. Among the social changes triggered by ICTs, very remarkable are those afflicting legal systems and specifically values, rules and concepts they are made of. Indeed, nowadays technology allows us to accurately trace human behaviour – both on-line and off-line – and so to easily obtain proof of such actions, likewise it provides tools to avoid detection and identification, to encrypt messages and to bypass warranties of genuineness or authenticity of the data collected.

Different approaches, methods and competences are needed by each party in court – prosecutors, lawyers, judges – in order to discuss such information in courts. In short, Digital forensics is the field of forensics sciences tackling such issues. Many initiatives have been adopted in order to foster investigative authorities’ international cooperation and to balance their legitimate prerogatives with defendants’ rights, from the 2001 Budapest Convention on Cybercrime in the European Council to the most recent European Investigative Order (Dir 2014/41/UE) which came into force in Italy on the 28th of July 2017 with the D. Lgs. 108/2017.

The purpose of this conference is to discuss such questions within the European Union and in a cross-border and interdisciplinary perspective. It is specifically aimed at involving academics, officers, witness consultants, defendants of three bordering countries (Austria, Slovenia, Italy).

The conference is hosted by the “Scuola Superiore” of the University of Udine – being the final event of the course “Knowledge and Understanding in the Digital Era” – it is co-organized in conjunction with the Department of Law of the University of Udine and the Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques of Florence (Italian National Research Council) with the coontribution of the Fondazione Friuli and under the patronage of the Bar Association and the Criminal Lawyers’ Chamber of Udine. This event follows the success of a previous conference held in 2012 (www.digitalforensics.ud.it).