SIRIUS

More than half of all criminal investigations today include a cross-border request to access electronic evidence, such as texts, emails or messaging apps. In a rapidly changing online environment, investigators and prosecutors need support to cope with the complexity and volume of information and to develop their knowledge when obtaining electronic data from online service providers (OSPs).

The SIRIUS project, co-implemented by Eurojust and Europol, is a central reference point in the EU for knowledge sharing on cross-border access to electronic evidence. It offers a variety of services, such as guidelines, trainings and tools, to help with accessing data held by online service providers. These services are available to law enforcement and judicial authorities via a platform and an application. To this day, SIRIUS serves a community of competent authorities from 44 countries, representing all EU Member States and a growing number of third countries.

The SIRIUS project has received funding from the European Commission's Service for Foreign Policy (FPI) under contribution agreement No PI/2020/417-500.

SIRIUS project

Scope

The SIRIUS platform hosts several products, such as:

  • Guidelines of more than 40 OSPs for data disclosure based on voluntary cooperation and Mutual Legal Assistance
  • IT tools facilitating the structuring and interpretation of electronic data
  • Discussion forums: common and restricted forums for members of the judiciary and law enforcement authorities, including an SPOC network
  • Webinars and training materials for judicial and law enforcement authorities
  • Factsheets on legal concepts and instruments related to electronic evidence

Membership and access

The multidisciplinary SIRIUS community is hosted on the Europol Platform of Experts (EPE). The platform is restricted to judicial and law enforcement authorities from Members States and third countries with a cooperation agreement with Eurojust (Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Georgia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Norway, Switzerland, Ukraine and the USA) and/or Europol (Albania, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Colombia, Georgia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, Ukraine and the USA).

Registration

Judicial authorities (prosecutors, investigative judges, judges, etc.) can apply for membership contacting sirius.eurojust@eurojust.europa.eu

Law enforcement authorities can apply for membership contacting sirius@europol.europa.eu

Access

Login: https://epe.europol.europa.eu/

The platform is accessible also via the SIRIUS App available for Android and iOS.

Activities

SIRIUS Annual conference

The SIRIUS conference, co-organised by Eurojust and Europol, offers judicial and law enforcement authorities the opportunity to address issues and challenges of transnational access to e-evidence.

Advisory Board meeting

The SIRIUS Advisory Board meeting is held annually to present the main achievements of the project and discuss the way forward.

The Advisory Board is composed of representatives of the European Commission, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training (CEPOL), the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (UN CTED), the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the United States Department of Justice, the European Judicial Network (EJN), the European Cybercrime Training and Education Group (ECTEG), the European Judicial Cybercrime Network (EJCN) and the European Judicial Training Network (EJTN).

Templates

The SIRIUS project, in cooperation with UNODC, UNCTED, CEPOL and the EuroMed Justice and EuroMed Police projects, has developed a set of stand-alone model forms for national authorities seeking to send data preservation and data disclosure requests to service providers via voluntary cooperation.

Downloads:

25 January 2022|DOCUMENT
Available languages:
25 January 2022|DOCUMENT
Available languages:
25 January 2022|DOCUMENT
Available languages:

SIRIUS Report

Each year, the project issues the SIRIUS EU Digital Evidence Situation Report, a publicly available report gathering the perspectives of judicial authorities, law enforcement and OSPs on the methods and challenges of collecting data for investigation and prosecution.

The reports can be downloaded here:

2021 | 2020 | 2019