A speech last year by Dame Victoria Sharp offers some clues to insurers about where we are heading as regards digital evidence. This is crucial evidence in many insurance fraud cases, where a trail of emails, phone calls, text messages between parties, might suggest collusion on a fake claim for example.
In the speech Victoria Sharp details that jury trial in person, for serious cases, is here to stay. Good news.
As regards minor offences, generally non-imprisonable, these will be increasingly automated and processed by a magistrate plus one expert.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the speech is the assumption that a common standard can be agreed by experts, so that juries can be directed as regards the truth of the digital evidence being presented. As we have found with Covid19, experts are not always in agreement and governments choose to give extra weight to their favourite experts for political reasons.
Victoria Sharp is right about one thing; the challenges posed to the justice system by digital evidence are immense. Let’s just imagine one scenario where an insurtech believes that some of its key eco-system elements have been copied or downloaded by a rival. How can a non-technical jury actually sift that evidence and understand what may – or may not -have been hacked or downloaded and then replicated by AI powered developer software?
You can read the full speech here;
Click to access PQBD-Speech-National-Criminal-Justice-Conference.pdf
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