OSINT in Civil Law: Shifting from Prosecution to Compensation

[Deniz Mykola Dirisu is an international OSINT consultant and co-founder of OSINT For Ukraine, with experience in building and leading diverse teams across borders within the context of digital investigations and justice.

Anastasiia Liulina is a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen, whose research is focused on digital open source evidence of international crimes. She also worked as an intern in the OSINT Team in the International Partnership for Human Rights]

Introduction

Open source evidence has long been used in the ICC and other international criminal courts and tribunals, such as the ICTR, ICTY, and STL. Yet, despite this increasing reliance on open source information and methodologies in international criminal law and criminal trials, OSINT is rarely used to prove liability in civil (tort) proceedings. NGOs specialised in carrying out OSINT investigations rarely collaborate with NGOs acting on behalf of victims to help them find open source evidence to substantiate their claims for compensation for damages. This is especially evident in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war, where civil claims for damages and reparations remain largely disconnected from the directions OSINT investigations by NGOs take. Both within Ukraine and among international NGOs supporting its accountability efforts, there is a noticeable lack of integration with civil justice mechanisms designed to facilitate victim compensation. Thus, in this blogpost we would like to discuss how not only criminal, but also civil law liability can be achieved through OSINT investigations.

The Proliferation of OSINT as a Tool for Accountability

Following the inception of OSINT as a tool for accountability during the Syrian civil war, the Russo-Ukrainian War has further highlighted the growing role of OSINT in international criminal law. The conflict has seen an unprecedented proliferation of OSINT activities, both official and unofficial. Grassroots efforts have been particularly pivotal in investigating atrocities and international crimes committed during the conflict. Various individuals and groups have leveraged OSINT to document and verify incidents, providing crucial evidence that might otherwise remain hidden or unreported. For example, the Ukrainian NGO Truth Hounds uncovered the evidence of unlawful detention, torture and execution of four men by Russian commanders. This evidence was submitted jointly with the Clooney Foundation for Justice to support the request to German Federal prosecutors to start an investigation into war crimes committed in Ukraine. There are also institutional efforts to foster the use of OSINT: Europol established an OSINT Taskforce to support prioritised requests from Ukraine and the ICC. These efforts have demonstrated the potential of OSINT to uncover truths in the fog of war, contributing valuable data for potential war crime prosecutions and fostering a broader understanding of the conflict’s human rights implications.

Despite the growing use of OSINT in international justice, its application remains overwhelmingly focused on criminal accountability. This narrow lens has led to duplication of efforts, fragmentation among investigative actors, and a systemic neglect of victims’ perspectives, many of whom seek restitution or acknowledgement, rather than necessarily criminal convictions. Moreover, OSINT actors are still rarely allowed to participate in proceedings as expert witnesses directly. Instead, their findings must often be reverse-engineered or repackaged by law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, who alone have the legal standing to submit evidence in formal processes.

Civil Law Liability as a Victim-Centered Supplementation for International Crimes Investigations and Prosecutions

Civil society organisations have already taken action to provide compensation for victims of grave human rights violations: in 2005, in the case Doe v. Unocal, an NGO EarthRights International represented the farmers who suffered from forced labour and relocation, rape, torture, and murder at the hands of the Burmese military hired by the company US oil and gas company. This case became ‘the first in U.S. history in which victims of human rights abuses committed abroad gained the right to a trial against a corporation’. Ultimately, Unocal agreed to compensate the victims.

NGOs have helped victims of violations committed by corporations in civil lawsuits as well: a prominent example is Milieudefensie v. Shell, in which Nigerian farmers and their communities, with the help of a Dutch environmental organisation, won the case against Royal Dutch Shell for the oil pollution it caused and were entitled to 15 million euros in compensation. All these examples demonstrate that it is possible to identify the company responsible for human rights violations and to compel it to compensate the victims in a domestic court. The same route can be taken to seek redress for the damage caused by Russian aggression as well: victims can file a civil lawsuit in a Ukrainian court against a Russian company complicit in a war crime, demanding compensation for the material and/or moral damage that was caused by their actions.

Civil legal proceedings offer a largely untapped yet strategically promising avenue for OSINT organisations and practitioners seeking to contribute to justice and accountability. One key advantage lies in the lower evidentiary thresholds of civil courts, which make it easier for open source evidence to be admitted. In some jurisdictions, civil law frameworks also provide greater flexibility for investigators to participate directly in proceedings as expert witnesses or technical specialists, something less possible in the more rigid structure of criminal trials. These conditions open new possibilities for OSINT actors to meaningfully influence outcomes without relying solely on state prosecutors or law enforcement to reverse-engineer, interpret, and submit their findings.

Moreover, civil law opens the door to documenting a broader spectrum of harm using OSINT methods and techniques. Armed conflicts cause massive economic and property losses, creating a wide range of potential cases where OSINT techniques can be highly effective. Yet, these areas remain underexplored compared to the current OSINT focus on war crimes. As a result, many victims of property destruction, or other ‘ancillary’ violations, are left without recognition and/or redress. While mechanisms like the Register of Damage for Ukraine (RD4U) are a welcome step toward reparations, they still lack formal channels for OSINT groups and organisations to submit evidence directly on behalf of victims.

Though there are very few, if any, substantial precedents in the Ukrainian context, there has been an attempt to test the application of OSINT for civil law liability for Russia’s destruction of cities. In 2021, Global Legal Action Network and Bellingcat organised a hearing that explored the admissibility of online open source evidence in a mock criminal trial according to the criminal procedure law applicable in the jurisdiction of England and Wales. Inspired by this project, OSINT For Ukraine and Ukraine Legal Network organised a moot court in the hopes of starting a conversation about how OSINT organisations can become more victim-centred. Many NGOs collect evidence to hold Russia and war criminals responsible in international courts; however, these organisations rarely work with victims directly to help them receive compensation for the damage these atrocities caused. The moot court also aimed to encourage not only Ukrainian courts to use OSINT, but also the RD4U, which admits evidence only in digital format anyway, and has a lower admissibility threshold compared to a court.

As stated in the report on the moot court, its organisers proved the admissibility of open source evidence based on the Ukrainian legislation and case law. According to Article 76 of the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine, evidence includes any data on the basis of which the court establishes the presence or absence of circumstances (facts) that substantiate the claims and objections of the participants in the case, as well as other circumstances that are relevant to the resolution of the case. These data can be established, among others, through electronic evidence, as well as expert conclusions.

Furthermore, Nataliia Akhtyrska, the Deputy in Chief of the scientific lab of National School of Judges of Ukraine writes that ‘[t]he sources of evidence of damage caused by armed aggression include the results of radio technical reconnaissance, geolocation (Google Maps), photo and video recording of events and their aftermath (with metadata); electronic correspondence (for example, about the theft of property and its shipment by post from Belarus); Viber screenshots, etc.’ Akhtyrska refers to the ruling of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, according to which data from Google Maps can be considered admissible and reliable evidence, as it is collected from various sources, including satellites, car cameras, user applications, and other sources. Google continuously updates and verifies the data to ensure its accuracy and relevance.

Duly captured user-generated evidence, proving the damage done by the hostilities, was admitted in three cases in commercial proceedings and one in an administrative case in Ukraine. In all these cases, the footage was captured through the app eyeWitness to Atrocities. This app enables users to capture photos and videos with embedded metadata, ensuring their authenticity in court and maintaining a secure chain of custody during the transmission and storage of evidence. Although the data admitted was not open source, these cases still create a precedent for using digital evidence for compensation claims.

In addition, in a domestic Ukrainian case, the victim claimed moral damage for the death of her parents, who lived in Mariupol. She referred to the information from internet resources UADAMAGE and ‘Map of destruction’ to confirm that their house was destroyed, which led to the death of her father and relocation of her mother to Russia, who also died there eventually.

Based on the above-mentioned, it can be concluded that the Ukrainian courts are ready to admit OSINT evidence in cases on compensation for the damage caused by the hostilities, since the notion of electronic evidence is present in the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine, the Supreme Court of Ukraine issued a position proclaiming admissibility of a number of different types of open source data and there are first decisions granting compensation for damage based on the digital evidence.

Conclusion

Demonstrated in the MH-17 case, where Russian authorities unsuccessfully sought to exclude open source evidence from a human rights court, efforts to discredit or suppress OSINT are already underway. In civil proceedings, which often afford more procedural latitude to both parties, there may be even more room for adversarial actors to contest or undermine digital evidence. This makes it all the more urgent to establish clear standards and methodologies for admitting OSINT in both civil and criminal trials. Moreover, it may require the courts to engage expert witnesses on OSINT to provide their opinion on the authenticity of the submitted evidence. Scholars have already pointed out the challenges of determining who can be qualified as an OSINT expert in the ICC. Ukraine has also not clarified the qualifications that OSINT experts must possess.

The integration of open source investigations into civil legal frameworks offers a powerful, yet underutilized, pathway for advancing justice and accountability. While OSINT has gained increasing acceptance in international criminal law, its potential to support civil claims, particularly those focused on victim compensation and restitution, remains largely untapped. The recent efforts in relation to Ukraine to test the admissibility of open source evidence in civil proceedings represent an important first step in bridging this gap. But this approach need not be limited to the context of armed conflict or the Ukrainian experience alone.

Civil law presents a versatile framework for applying OSINT in a wide range of global contexts. For instance, rather than stopping at public exposés of illegal deforestation in the Amazon or corporate oil spills, open source research groups could collaborate with affected communities and NGOs to help build legal claims for environmental damages, land rights violations, or corporate negligence. By connecting technical investigative capacity with civil justice processes, OSINT actors can play a more direct role in supporting victims not only by uncovering the truth but by contributing to tangible outcomes like reparations, compensation, and legal recognition. In this way, civil law accountability can become a vital frontier for the evolution of open source investigations, transforming them from tools of exposure into instruments of redress.