Intelligent evidence

Abstract

Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) are coming to terms with the potency of social media and Internet-based communication, not solely as an extension of mass communication but as a phenomenological source of intelligence. One feature of the expansion of material – particularly that which is openly available to investigators – is the narrowing of traditional boundaries between information to support lines of activity (intelligence) and material to be relied on during a criminal trial (evidence). This article addresses the legal considerations facing LEAs when this concatenation of two different categories of material occurs and matters of how to reconcile them.