Digital media captured in high-stakes environments, such as war zones or human rights crises, may be required to meet the evidentiary standards required for criminal trials. While photos and videos are persuasive, they often lack a verifiable “chain of custody”. Traditional messaging services routinely strip critical metadata to protect privacy; however, this decontextualization makes it nearly impossible for investigators to prove origin or authenticity once the file leaves the original device.

Furthermore, without documented, informed consent from the source, such records are often deemed inadmissible, leaving critical survivor testimonies legally invisible.

Starling developed a chatbot, integrating with secure messaging services like Signal and Telegram, to automate the authenticated collection of digital evidence. When a source sends media to the bot, the system instantly generates a cryptographic fingerprint (SHA-256 hash) and seals the file alongside its associated metadata in a tamper-evident archive.

Crucially, the bot leads the documenter through an interactive back-and-forth to record the informed consent of the sender at the moment of ingestion. This consent is cryptographically bound to the media’s unique hash, creating an immutable record of usage permissions. This authentication layer ensures that crowdsourced evidence can be prioritized, processed, and examined by international prosecutors with its legal and ethical integrity fully intact.