The SIRIUS* conference 2018 took place on 6 and 7 November at Europol's headquarters in The Hague. This two-day event, organised in collaboration with Eurojust, gathered over 200 judicial and law enforcement authorities from 40 countries, as well as representatives from Airbnb, Apple, Facebook, Google and PayPal, to address issues and challenges encountered when conducting Internet-based investigations.
The objectives of this event were to take stock of the progress made within the framework of the SIRIUS project in building capacity both at EU and US levels in cross-border access to electronic evidence, and to devise novel solutions to emerging and future challenges in the field, capitalising on the input from participants from different backgrounds. The conference provided a perfect opportunity to share knowledge and best practice, as well as to increase mutual understanding and trust between judicial and law enforcement authorities and Online Service Providers.
The conference included training sessions by the US Department of Justice, the FBI and Eurojust regarding mutual legal assistance (MLA) procedures, further working towards improving the swiftness of MLA requests. More practice-based activities took place, including a Codefest, which gave participants an opportunity to learn how to use the tools available on the SIRIUS platform and to test the information shared during the two-day event. The conference closed with an inspiring session during which participants, guided by Europol, were able to contribute to the future of SIRIUS, which seeks to remain a reference point for developing knowledge in the area of cross-border access to e-evidence for practitioners.
SIRIUS is an innovative project that includes an interactive knowledge-sharing platform accessible to judicial and law enforcement authorities, and aims to produce and disseminate trainings and digests to improve EU-US cooperation in cross-border access to electronic evidence. The project is of operational added value in the investigation and prosecution of crime and terrorism.
Europol's EU Internet Referral Unit and the European Cybercrime Centre officially launched the SIRIUS platform during a kick-off meeting in The Hague in October 2017. The platform was enhanced in December 2017 thanks to a grant from the European Commission's Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI). At that time, Eurojust became associated with the platform, including the judicial dimension with MLA processes between the European Union and the USA.
The SIRIUS project is funded under grant agreement No PI/2017/391-896.
* Scientific Information Retrieval Integrated Utilisation System
Eurojust is an agency of the European Union