Managing Overseas Digital Evidence: How Investigators Can Work with Data Returned Under Crime Overseas Production Orders (COPO)

Criminal investigations increasingly rely on digital evidence that is often stored beyond a country’s borders. Social media platforms, messaging services, cloud storage providers, and email systems often hold critical evidence on servers located overseas. For UK investigators, obtaining that data used to be a very slow process involving international legal assistance. This caused issues that could sometimes stall an investigation, or worse – cause delays in identifying victims found through online platforms or device extractions.

The Crime (Overseas Production Orders) Act 2019 (COPO), was introduced to address this challenge. The law allows UK law enforcement agencies to apply to a court for an Overseas Production Order, requiring certain overseas technology companies to produce electronic data directly for criminal investigations. This act was passed to accelerate time to evidence, giving investigators the ability to compel data providers to produce electronic records relevant to a case quickly.

Instead of waiting months for evidence through traditional mutual legal assistance channels, investigators can now obtain critical digital records and evidence much faster. The legislation was designed primarily to support investigations into serious transnational crimes such as terrorism, child exploitation, organized crime, and other serious cross border offenses where digital evidence plays a central role. While COPO improves access to overseas data, it also creates a new operational challenge for investigators: how to effectively process and analyze the large volumes of digital information returned by technology companies.

The Challenge of Data Returns

Data provided under an Overseas Production Order can be extensive and can pose operational challenges for investigators and analysts who receive the data. Investigators may receive account records, subscriber details, IP logs, message histories, images, video files, and metadata from platforms such as social media, apps or messaging services. These files may be in a variety of formats and may be difficult to analyze and visualize together.

These returns often arrive as large structured exports, JSON files, spreadsheets, or document archives. In some cases, investigators may receive large PDF files or zip files containing hundreds of text files. A single request can contain thousands of records that investigators must review and correlate with other evidence in the case. Without the right tools, analysts may spend significant time manually reviewing files, reconstructing timelines, and identifying connections between accounts, devices, or individuals. This manual work can be overwhelming for investigators and analysts and may cause delays in identifying suspects, or even victims.

Turning Data into Investigative Insight

Technology companies, like Paliscope, provide investigators with a structured environment for analyzing complex digital evidence. With Paliscope Explore, investigators can import data returned from overseas providers and begin organizing it within a single investigative workspace. Rather than reviewing raw files one by one in a manual and time-consuming way, investigators and analysts can map and analyze relationships between accounts, identify patterns of communication and build timelines that reveal how individuals interacted online. Data from multiple sources, such as warrant returns, call detail records, and other digital evidence, can be brought together to create a clearer picture of activity tied to a case. This can be done within a single platform, speeding up the time to closure for victims.

The ability to connect disparate data points and surface meaningful patterns is critical when working with data from international providers, where investigators may be reviewing unfamiliar platforms, usernames, or communication networks. Paliscope Explore removes manual work, and is able to quickly surface leads across the multiple formats, providers and data types so that investigators can quickly hone in on the most important aspects of the digital evidence.

Supporting Faster, More Effective Investigations

The COPO Act represents a major step forward in enabling investigators to access digital evidence held outside the UK. This act allows investigators to receive this data faster, so they can uncover digital evidence that may be critical to moving a case forward. But access to data alone does not solve the investigative challenge. Investigators must still analyze that information to identify suspects, uncover criminal networks, and build cases that can stand up to scrutiny in court. This cannot be done without a platform designed to ingest and analyze these large and disparate digital files.

By providing a platform designed to manage complex digital evidence, tools like Paliscope Explore help investigators move from data collection to evidence development to suspect identification, ensuring that information obtained through Overseas Production Orders can be efficiently reviewed, analyzed, and used to advance investigations. Without a platform like Explore, investigators and analysts will continue to be overwhelmed by data returns and thus delaying justice. This type of platform is critical to bringing justice and closure to victims.