Pioneering Digital Evidence Submission to the ICC

I am so proud to announce that our team at Starling Lab, alongside partners Hala Systems and DFRLab, has submitted groundbreaking digital evidence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) documenting alleged attacks on schools in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Our submissions, made on June 10, 2022, and January 17, 2023, represent a new approach to preserving and authenticating digital evidence in international criminal investigations.

Working with legal expert Ashley Jordana, we focused on documenting attacks against schools – protected objects under international law. Our evidence package includes authenticated web archives of Telegram messages, OSINT verifications, and field photographs documenting damage to School 17 and School 35 in Kharkiv.

Here’s the release covered by CNN: “A crypto-based dossier could help prove Russia committed war crimes”; and by Politico: “In Ukraine, war crimes go on-chain”

Using our innovative Framework for Data Integrity, we ensured each piece of evidence was captured, preserved, and verified using cryptographic signatures and distributed storage systems. This methodology combines traditional legal investigation techniques with cutting-edge digital preservation tools.

We’re particularly encouraged that the UN Special Rapporteur on Education (blog post to come) has cited our work as an emerging good practice in documenting attacks on educational facilities during armed conflict.

This project demonstrates how modern digital authentication techniques can strengthen evidence collection while ensuring long-term preservation and verifiability.