Digital Forensics

Digital Forensics: Potential for Miscarriages of Justice Madhavi Chandra Saladi

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ISYS90051 [e-mail] Introduction

Forensic Science plays a key role in the collection, preservation and examination of evidences for an investigation and digitisation has substantially transformed traditional forensic procedures including the way evidences are collected, stored and produced in the court of Law. Paper records have almost been replaced with electronic records from various digital devices like computers, mobile phones and network drives. Digital evidences are being accepted in courts as proofs during trials and several digital forensic tools are employed for use by forensic practitioners on a day to day basis within military,

With the ubiquitous use of personal computers, the collection of digital evidence has become a primary stage of any crime investigation. Laptops and mobile phones of suspects are predominantly scanned for impeaching material that can be substantiated into evidences using not so sophisticated digital forensic tools. Some hidden and encrypted evidences escape the forensic leaving investigation officers produce interpretations based on inadequate information. On the contrary, information retrieved from operating system restore points, web history, images, logs and archives can be disingenuous at times causing miscarriages of justices (Caloyannides,

As there were logs in web history proving the act of visiting pornographic websites in the school computer during class time, Amero was convicted on the grounds of impairing morals of a child. Upon a plea of not guilty by Amero, second coronial inquest uncovered the fact that the school computer’s anti-virus protection was never updated which resulted in an attack of school network by a malicious spyware infestation called NewDotNet that engendered inappropriate imagery from pornographic web sites uncontrollably. Subsequently, the court had to release Amero with a penalty of US$100 on a single charge of disorderly conduct forfeiting her educator credentials on a note that porn websites were not intentionally opened by Amero (Beyerstein, 2007). This case clearly articulates the gap associated with digital evidences and the legal system. As it is increasingly common for criminal trials to rely on digital evidence, this paper argues that the legal system is still not catching up when it comes to accurately employing digital evidence (Boddington,