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OAS Regional Workshop on Cyber-crime held in Panama  

Investigators and prosecutors from Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic, with responsibilities related to the investigation and prosecution of cyber-crime, met in Panama City from August 25 to 26, 2009, in order to participate in a regional training workshop in the area of digital evidence in criminal investigations and prosecutions.

This event, organized jointly by the United States Department of Justice, the General Secretariat of the OAS and the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Panama, in fulfillment of one of the recommendations adopted during the V Meeting of the Working Group on Cyber-crime within the process of the Meetings of Ministers of Justice or other Ministers, Prosecutors, or Attorneys General of the Americas (REMJA), was focused on the collection of electronic evidence in investigations, in an adequate format for trials, including, among other topics, the concept of digital evidence, the support provided by this type of evidence in criminal proceedings, standards of proof at trials, reliability and specificity, the integration of the search for digital evidence in all investigations, incident response, identification, security and protection of digital evidence, the search and seizure of computers, cellular telephones and other electronic media, as well as forensic analysis.

Similarly, during the third day of the workshop, the General Secretariat of the OAS, through the Department of Legal Cooperation, presented the new developments, components and information contained in the Inter-American Cooperation Portal on Cyber-Crime, which was created as a useful tool for cooperation and the exchange of information between Member States.