Processing

Audit and Chain of Custody

The key to an effective chain of custody is to have a set of procedures which are followed in practice. The procedures should be in writing and the steps ought to be documented. Chain of custody cannot be parsed into stages (data collection, processing, review, etc.); rather, the entire process must be taken into consideration from soup to nuts (or A-Z). On a physical level, the simple act of restricting the number of hands that touch the evidence is the first step to avoiding handling errors and mistakes. On the technology side, the software used to handle the data should have appropriate reporting and audit capabilities. Automation with robust reporting capabilities is the best way to build a solid chain of custody. To that end, the entire process from the data collection to the review platform should be automated as much as is practical and the human role reduced.

Fortunately most of us have seen two good models of this process. The first is the police evidence lock-up featured on every police-related television show from Dragnet to Law and Order. In each of these there has been a sleepy-looking officer behind a counter who receives all evidence, catalogs it by item description, date of receipt, case number, the name of the officer providing it, and the inventory number. When possible the items are tagged or put in Ziploc bags labeled with a summary of the catalog information. Then the evidence officer stores the item in a locked area with limited access. This is an excellent model for procedure steps.

The second model of the process that many have experienced is the online FEDEX or UPS tracking systems. When a shipper uses one of these services the shipper sends the recipient an e-mail with a tracking number. By inputting the tracking number on the FEDEX or UPS web sites, the recipient can track the shipping progress of the package across the country or across the world. These tracking systems are updated with all key progress information usually within minutes or a few hours of the event. This is an excellent model for transparency and auditing because interested parties can see the progress from the Web whenever they would like. Combining the important parts of these two models yields a best practices model for electronic discovery.

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Practices to Consider

Analyzing Original Data