The UK government recently announced plans to conduct a pilot project for digital evidence storage on a blockchain platform.
Balaji Anbil, head of digital architecture and cybersecurity at the UK Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS), part of the UK Ministry of Justice, said HMCTS use of blockchain technology is a key component of the agencys court reform plans part.
To this end, the HMCTS and the Open Innovation Group of the UK Cabinet Office held a joint meeting to examine how blockchain and digital ledgers could assist court reform.
The decentralization feature of blockchain technology enables data to be stored in each node, ensuring data integrity and saving high server costs and maintenance costs. The blockchain automatically processes abnormal records through information such as whether each node verifies and approves the block and the transaction information in it, whether the network node is attacked, and whether the ledger of each node is complete, and then completes the audit.
This audit trail essentially forms the basis of the court systems record of the creation, modification, and acquisition of digital evidence. Using this evidence, accurate and continuous reconstructions of events can be made to examine actions and determine how the current state of digital evidence came to be. Therefore, blockchain can effectively provide a key protection framework for digital evidence by providing assurance of evidence integrity.
It is reported that researchers at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom are working with the National Archives on a blockchain project to create a secure digital archive storage solution. The project also plans to develop a blockchain-based inter-agency evidence sharing platform.
In July, the UK government considered introducing the use of smart contracts into UK law as part of an effort to help the UK remain competitive amid technological advances.
