Practical Digital Forensics by Richard Boddington

Author:Richard Boddington [Boddington, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Published: 2016-07-06T04:00:00+00:00

The challenges facing non-forensic law enforcement agents

Law enforcement field agents are often tasked to be evidence collectors. In effect, they carry out para-forensic roles because of the heavy workload of specialist crime scene personnel and forensic examiners, who may not always be readily available to help stabilize the crime scene and recover evidence in a timely manner. Law enforcement agents attending the scene of an incident are now increasingly confronted with seizing and examining computers and data held on computer networks, mobile devices, digital cameras, and video recorders.

It may often be of importance to access these devices to obtain information as a matter of operational urgency rather than primarily as evidence collection and preservation. Whether or how they do it is a judgment call for the officer at the scene. Operational requirements that, for example, may lead to the apprehension of a suspect or prevent harm to others or severe damage to property have an overriding priority over evidence collection. But that is not to say that some form of awareness and response training cannot be given to agents in the field who are not forensic specialists.

Data recovery from mobile phones, for example, has traditionally been handled by computer crime teams experienced in recovery with access to a laboratory or forensic field kits. These teams are often centrally located with heavy caseloads and regular and time-consuming court attendance as expert witnesses, and are usually focused on higher-level categories of cases. At best, they may only be able to communicate directions to field agents as to the best evidence recovery response, sometimes leaving the field agents with limited guidance, no experience, and no effective tools to preserve the evidence.

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