Electronic Evidence

With the ever-changing of science and technology, information technology hit deeply all sides of social life, politics, economics, law and life of people all over the world are increasing, electronic evidence which involves kinds of cases of criminal, civil, administration occurs in the field of justice .Electronic evidence is an inevitable problem that is reflected to the lawsuit evidence with modern development in science and technology .Today, electronic evidence has played a very important role in procedure, especially, in proof. How to establish and use electronic evidence to settle those problems in real life has became the hot and thorny issue in the circle of legal theory and the circle of legal practice. In the field of studying evidence, the traditional evidence concept has received the enormous impact of electronic information. Though in the nowadays judicial practice, the electronic evidence has been already playing a more and more important role, but we still lack the effective legal structure to the electronic evidence, relevant legislation are deficient and lag behind. The application of the electronic evidence in the practice of lawsuit of our country, mainly infer it as the documented evidence or audiovisual material at present. But this is only a kind of alternative in lack the law and express regulations cases, it is not a basic way to solve the problem, the special nature of the electronic evidence makes it very difficult to be contained by documented evidence and audiovisual material. Electronic evidence effect has been acknowledged in modern countries ruled by law . The study on electronic evidence has recently began with this newly emerging thing, but it is very slow and superficial. So it is the time to solve such question as confirmation, adoption of electronic evidence, etc .In the end , we must design a series of measures to remedy the law' s weaknesses and to keep up with the step of social development.Electronic evidence has independent meaning. It is suggested that the concept of electronic evidence be adopted instead of computer evidence or digital evidencebecause of its true meaning. Electronic evidence can be divided into various kinds by different methods, for instance, it can be separated into the electronic data interchange, E-mail, telegraph, telex or fax, bulletin board system, electronic money, and electronic signature. With those qualities of obscurity, accuracy, fragility, globalization and so on, the electronic evidence distinguishes itself greatly from traditional ones.Electronic evidence has quality of objectivity, relevance and legality. As to the competency of the electronic evidence, it requires the accessibility to the evidence. Different countries of different systems have different barriers in the admission of the electronic evidence. And the past breakthrough made in the hearsay evidence rule and best evidence rule has solved to some extent the problem of qualifying those electronic evidence. As the legal system in China is far front being perfect , and the electronic evidence defers greatly from the traditional audiovisual reference materials, documented evidences, and expert's conclusions. Hence the electronic evidence should be established as an independent category of the eighth kind.It is necessary that a perfect System based on relevant procedure as to the rules of electronic evidence. At first, the basic principles of electronic evidence should be established. Then, we should focus on the idiographic rules and the things that should be noticed in obtaining, fixing, conserving, examining, adopting electronic evidence, and so on.There is no legislation about electronic evidence in our country. We must pay our attention to the experiences about electronic evidence in many countries, analyze the legislative of electronic evidence in China based on the related rules, and then puts forward to suggestions about the legislative principle ^ legislative model and legislative contents of electronic evidence.