The Hala Protocol provides 29 Best Practices for collecting, processing, and transferring audio data that are grounded in international law and case law. The Best Practices are designed to be incorporated into a CSO’s workflow and align their data practices with evidentiary standards.
Given the ephemeral and volatile nature of audio data, and given that a CSO may hold the only copy of the data, working in alignment with evidentiary practices is crucially important. Following the Hala Protocol Best Practices can help CSOs to make their data more reliable and of greater potential probative value, enhancing its significance for accountability.
The Best Practices (BPs) are structured as follows:
- BP Title/Action Statement: setting out the action to be taken by the Collector;
- Explanatory Note: detailing and clarifying the action statement;
- Technical Specifications + Resources: listing resources, tools, and techniques to be considered when operationalising the BP;
- (Condensed) Legal Framework: indicating each BP’s foundation in law with hyperlinks to the relevant areas of the Protocol’s Part 2 ‘Legal Framework’, plus the applicable ethical principles.
Words and phrases in bold are defined in the glossary. Definitions are not included in the Explanatory Note for the sake of brevity. The authors recommend reading the BPs with the glossary at hand.