Secure Distributed Dossier Management in the Legal Domain Martijn Warnier Frances Brazier Intelligent Interactive Distributed Systems Faculty of Sciences, VU University Amsterdam {warnier,frances}@cs.vu.nl Martin Apistola Anja Oskamp Computer Law Institute Faculty of Law, VU University Amsterdam {m.apistola,a.oskamp}@rechten.vu.nl Abstract The use of digital dossiers in Courts of Law, although currently in the phase of study, will be common practice in the future. This paper introduces the notion of distributed digital dossiers supported by a multi-agent system architec- ture, developed in interaction with the Courts of Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Management of such dossiers is core to the approach: consistency, completeness, integrity and security key concepts. 1. Introduction In today’s society information is inherently distributed across different physical locations and systems (both human and automated). More and more information is becoming available digitally, making it possible for information to be sought, structured, and processed electronically. This also holds for Courts of Law. Many sources of information are consulted during the course of a case. The Courts of Rotter- dam and Amsterdam are currently experimenting with the digital dossier during trials. This dossier, prepared by the Public Prosecutor, is shared by the judge(s) involved, the public prosecutor, the defense and the clerks 1 . Each of these individuals can make his/her own notes and decide whether and with whom to share his/her notes. The Public Prosecutor is responsible for the creation and preparation of the digital dossier. Although currently the dossier is based on scanned documents, more and more in- formation (relevant for the dossier) is available electroni- cally. This paper explores the options of distributed digital 1 Defense lawyers are at the moment not included in this pilot study, but they should be at a later stage. dossiers, supported by a multi-agent system architecture, to improve consistency, completeness, integrity and security of the information in such dossiers. This is also the goal of the the Agent-based Criminal Court Electronic Support Systems (ACCESS) project 2 , initiated by the VU Univer- sity Amsterdam together with the Courts of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and financed by the Dutch Court for Jurisdic- tion 3 and NWO 4 . The focus of the project is on complete- ness, consistency, security and reliability of digital dossiers. In our approach, physically distributed information sources, such as the Public Prosecution, the Police or the Prison system remain responsible for the integrity of their own information content, each monitored by one or more of their own software agents. The Public Prosecutor, in turn, is responsible for consistency and completeness of the dossier. Checks can be done periodically or whenever information is modified. Security is the topic of Section 2 together with the domain specific requirements of this application. Sec- tion 3 sketches how a distributed digital dossier can be im- plemented. Section 4 proposes the high level functional de- sign of an agent based system for accessing the distributed digital dossier and Section 5 discusses the associated se- curity architecture. Section 6 uses a simplified case study dealing with juvenile repeat offenders to illustrate some of the legal challenges of a system used in the environment of the courts. The paper ends with conclusions and future work. 2. Security requirements The two most important requirements for the distributed digital dossier addressed in this paper are security and re- 2 http://www.iids.org/access 3 Dutch: Raad voor de Rechtspraak 4 the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research