Security of Distributed Digital Criminal Dossiers

Securely managing shared information in dis- tributed environments across multiple organisations is a challenge. Distributed information management systems must be able to support individual organisations' informa- tion policies whilst securing global consistency and com- pleteness. This paper proposes a multi-agent approach to a distributed multi-organisational system design based on this principle, focusing on the example of the distributed digital criminal dossier used in the Courts of Amsterdam and Rot- terdam, compiled and managed by the Public Prosecution. Security requirements are identified and a distributed multi- agent architecture proposed. has a centralized role and is responsible for providing the infrastructure that enables other organizations to securely add information and securely access information in crim- inal dossiers. Together these organizations form a semi- open environment: an environment in which organizations have their own control over their own information. In this environment Dutch Law, however dictates the exchange of this information with other organizations. This paper discusses some of the details involved in the use of such dossiers, focusing on security issues. See (3), (4) for more details on enforcing consistency and completeness and on implementation details. All legal and procedural details discussed in this paper are interpreted in the context of Dutch law, but can be extended to other legislation. The paper first explores security requirements in the semi-open distributed environment associated with the compilation of criminal dossiers. Section III introduces distributed digital dossiers, Section IV discusses the asso- ciated security architecture in light of the security require- ments. Domain specific legal requirements are discussed in Section V and the paper ends with a discussion and conclusions.