In this era where the digital environment has become an unavoidable factor in life, the nature of evidence related to different cases is also evolving to be digital. People mostly assume that social media is a trumpet for sharing our thoughts and life happenings. Social media platforms have become a medium where we share our sufferings, ups, and downs in life, and sometimes even comment on different important matters. Whatever you do on social media is visible to the public, therefore, you must analyze the consequences of your actions as nowadays, your social media posts can be used as evidence against you in front of the court.
In today’s date, the courts are inclined to admit social media content as a form of evidence both for and against you depending on the nature of a case. Investigating agencies in India, also known as intelligence agencies and police officers, have recently started producing content posted by individuals on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms as evidence for various cases. This is permitted under the Indian Evidence Act, of 1872.
What is Social Media Evidence?
Social media evidence is data stored on a social media platform that can support or prove a relevant fact in a case proceeding. Social media evidence can be posts, pictures, profiles, and all the other information published on various social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Social media has its place in the court and it is likely to grow more with time because around 80% of people around the globe use social media at least every month.
How to retrieve social media evidence?
In this era of digitalization, even evidence collected from social media is accepted by the court. But, If you are willing to use information from social media to defend your position in court, you must make sure that you obtain the evidence appropriately. There are some specific laws & regulations about ethical evidence gathering that applies directly to electronic evidence.
Social media evidence can be collected by printing out a copy of the particular webpage, capturing a screenshot of the social media comment or posts, etc. These proofs are perfectly adequate for simply replicating what is appearing on your device screen, but will they hold up in court? The answer is a big NO. It is because unless you properly authenticate the proofs, the court will not consider them. of electronic evidence. A simple screenshot will never act as a proper piece of evidence in front of the court. And here, specialized social media investigation services play a very crucial role. They have years of experience and tools to easily track all the required details. They can gather important evidence by creating hash values, and code language that can authenticate when, where, and by whom a post was made in front of the court.
Authenticating social media proofs
Gathering your social media evidence is not the only step you need to follow before presenting them to the court. You will also have to prove its authenticity or else the court will not consider it as evidence. You must over-authenticate social media evidence as much as possible because for social media evidence to be admissible, you will have to prove the circumstances under which it was collected, as well as the digital chain of custody, and how the evidence was preserved before presenting it in front of the court.
The methods of measuring the authenticity of the pieces of evidence usually vary from nation to nation. But, some standard procedures need to be followed.
- You must have an affidavit of a witness with knowledge of the social media post to verify the accuracy of the data.
- Unique characteristics such as appearance, contents, or other unique features of the evidence can be taken together with all the circumstances in order to authenticate the evidence.
- Evidence describing a process or system showing that it produces an accurate result in line with the specimen.
- Evidence verified by a notary, providing an affidavit that states that the collected social media evidence is a true representation of the original data as viewed by them.
CONCLUSION
Social media posts serving as evidence can be of great help at times. The Indian government formed a separate division for the cyberspace crime investigation in 2000 along with a separate act which is known as the Information Technology Act, 2000. It is substituted by other supplementary cyber laws to deal with such offenses.
Information gathered from the social media handle of the accused person can be very helpful to take a case in the proper direction. But as authenticity remains the priority of the courts, instead of collecting the pieces of evidence by yourself, you should hire a detective agency in Jaipur to perform the social media investigation for you.
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