Electronic Evidence, Empirical Research

It has been less than ten years since the concept of electronic evidence became known by China's judicial circles. I began to touch this new thing during the recently years even though I have been working as a criminal policeman for many years. The ordinary people will surely have more difficulties understanding this new concept. The police station all over the country began special campaigns against internet pornographic activities and internet gambling activities in July and November 2004 respectively. In order to solve the problems arising from these cases, the Supreme Court and the Supreme Procuratorate enacted two judicial interpretations successively. I have the honor to participate in the symposium for these judicial interpretations, realizing the differences between evidences of internet crimes and traditional crimes. Thus I have come up with the idea that I should add some experience of handling internet crimes to the research achievements about electronic evidence. Though no such courses are offered for the master candidates, I have read some books concerning this topic with the help of my advisor, thus I am able to present this dissertation.This dissertation is divided into five parts. The first chapter presents the problem and the background for this dissertation: looking back to the development of computers and internet;introducing the beginning, development and the resulting problems of electronic evidence in the field of internet crimes;summarizing the current situations, legislation and adoption of electronic evidence;finally introducing the research objectives, research methods and innovation of this dissertation. The research objectives focus on the electronic evidence in the cases of internet gambling and internet pornographic activities;the research methods are mainly case law study while analyzing the legislation aims of the laws;the innovative aspect of this dissertation is that it sticks to the principle of "paying much attention to facts " , trying to make the research useful for the policemen working at the lower level.The second chapter introduces the current theoretical achievements even though they are not unified and scholars have different ideas. After a careful study of these theories, we can easily find that they have something in common. Because of different scopes and perspectives, scholars have got some different results. Then the authorpresents his own idea: the current electronic evidence is only the electronic forms of traditional evidence.Beginning in July 2004, the police started a national campaign against pornographic activities over the internet. In September 2004, the Supreme Court and the Supreme Procuratorate jointly enacted a judicial interpretation about how to handle the cases of manufacturing, coping, publishing, selling and spreading of pornographic information through internet, mobile communication terminal and so on. In this part, the author analyzes the electronic evidence in three cases from the city of Shenzhen.In chapter four the author tries to compare internet gambling activities with traditional ones, pointing out that internet gambling is in essence a kind of gambling even though they are based on the use of internet. After analyzing the problems from internet gambling cases, the author goes on discussing the judicial interpretations by the Supreme Court and the Supreme Procuratorate. At last the author compares the electronic evidence in internet pornographic activities and internet gambling.In chapter five the author summarizes the contents in the previous parts. In this part, the author thinks that the police and judicial organs should define and classify the electronic evidence based on the current laws so that they can make full use of it, regardless of its future development and scholars' arguments. Thus the electronic evidence can be used as traditional evidence.