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Public interest litigation (PIL) refers to the litigations in which the relevant organizations sue the court for the violation of the law, which has caused de facto damage or potential damage to state or social public interest, which plays an important role in the civil justice system. Unlike private litigations, only procuratorates and other organizations prescribed by law are qualified to prosecute in PIL (Y. Wang & Xia, 2023). As a special form of litigation, the PIL has received increasing attention from the state and society (Holladay, 2012; Wenjun Yan, 2021). It has helped address a number of problems such as pollution (Jain, 2022), terrorism, government corruption, and women’s and children’s rights (Paraschiv, 2011; Samuels, 2018; Xie & Xu, 2022; Yap & Lau, 2011). In China, procuratorates filed about 169,000 PIL cases in the year 2021 alone1, and environmental public interest litigation in China has entered a booming period and made great progress (A. L. Wang & Gao, 2010; Zhuang & Wolf, 2021).
Figure 1 shows a real-world example of an administrative PIL filed by the procuratorate. Company X privately occupied public land and built a parking lot to make profits without the approval of the District Bureau of Land and Resources. Upon preliminary investigation, the procuratorate found that the district bureau failed to perform its duties in accordance with the law and therefore filed the administrative PIL with the court. The procuratorate then initiates case investigation and evidence collection. The PIL evidence can be collected from the district bureau, the company, other governmental agencies, IoT devices, citizens, and so on.
Figure 1. An Example of an administrative PIL filed by the procuratorate
However, current PIL faces challenges due to the lack of secure data sharing and privacy protection during case investigation and evidence collection. On one hand, evidence collection in PIL investigations can be quite difficult (Yi Wang et al., 2022; Zhu et al., 2023). Given the lack of existing information interconnection between different organizations involved in a PIL case, the evidence providers are often reluctant to disclose related information considering the risk of information leakage or the fear of public monitoring. For example, Zhu et al (2023) found that local officials reduce information disclosure in PILs to avoid public monitoring (Zhu et al., 2023). Even between governmental agencies, data sharing is not smooth due to the data privacy and trust problem. Individual evidence providers are even fearful of revealing identity information and being retaliated against maliciously (Agrawal & Bhalotia, 2022), e.g., Wal-Mart fired employees who reported the use of “black oil” (Sirui & Zhihui, 2015), and qui tam actions come from former employees due to the fear of retaliation (Hurwitz, 2019). Even though the courts and procuratorates have the obligation to protect informants or witnesses from physical harm, the current system cannot fully protect the privacy and security of evidence providers, as their information may be disclosed by internal staff. On the other hand, the storage and preservation of evidence are not guaranteed. The gradually increasing electronic evidence files, such as Internet trail information, satellite remote sensing maps, and network media opinion, are often stored on individual computers or on the Internet (Hegarty et al., 2014; Oatley, 2022; Taylor et al., 2010). Such a centralized storage system easily causes risks of information leakage, tampering, or hacker attacks, thus authenticity and integrity are not guaranteed when electronic evidence is arbitrarily modified or damaged (Casey, 2002; Wenqi Yan et al., 2020). Developing blockchain technology can alleviate these challenges.