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An estimated 500 million devices are sitting unused in United States houses. ecoATM offers a way to sell and recycle unwanted devices by utilizing one of the company’s 6000 kiosk locations. What happens when the device sold had been stolen?

 

ecoATM checks each device in various electronic reporting systems for signs of being stolen and reports every transaction to the local jurisdiction. Because of this integration and cooperation, law enforcement agencies have been able to make positive IDs.

How can you know if video evidence is valid or has been altered? By analyzing a file’s metadata without accessing personal information or video footage, Medex can identify if it has been tampered with and flag it for further investigation. 

As videos can be easily manipulated, authenticating them is becoming legally necessary. The digital forensic community should apply more pressure to ensure that files can be evaluated earlier in their lifecycle.

Digital evidence is critical to all ICAC investigations. As storage devices become increasingly smaller in physical size but store more data, locating that evidence becomes difficult. North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation has responded to this need by adding K-9 Rita to the team.

 

This episode’s conversation with Nathan Anderson discusses electronic detection K-9s and their role in criminal investigations.

In a perfect world, on-premise storage infrastructure is refreshed every five years. That timeframe isn’t realistic for law enforcement agencies. The benefit of using cloud resources is that it removes the need to buy all new hardware. As a cloud services provider, AWS handles the refresh so that organizations always have the latest storage and pay for only what they need.

Often backup systems in agencies take the form of a NAS device underneath someone’s desk. In the event of a natural disaster, everything would be lost. Even if the backup wasn’t destroyed, there may not be access to it, and the operation would be down. With cloud storage, mission-critical systems can continue to operate simply because the system is in a separate location.

Grayshift wants to allow customers to remove limitations such as inadequate computers and the need to use expensive external units. VeraKey has delivered the ability for investigators to share evidence regardless of geographic boundaries. 

VeraKey is Grayshift’s solution for commercial customers who want a GrayKey device, the collection tool used by law enforcement. Unlike GrayKey, VeraKey is a consent-based mobile forensic solution. It performs the same function in performing full file system collection from a device and providing that for forensic analysis.

Many challenges accompany investigations on the dark web. Jurisdiction isn’t the only hurdle. The investigator must also find a prosecutor who understands the investigation and is on board to tackle the challenge. With crypto, is enough money involved to get someone’s attention with everything else they’re doing? With a dark website, appropriately dedicated equipment is necessary. Not every agency can do that. 

Learning to navigate the dark web requires time. Interacting with it is the best way to learn. Because it’s so easy to download, Billy and Olin focus on teaching people how to get connected with it. Then investigations consist of taking the information found on the dark web to traditional places and hoping the criminal messed up somewhere.

Digital Forensics is about finding the truth. Something that isn’t discussed often is how sometimes the evidence doesn’t add up, and people are exonerated. Data either exists or doesn't exist. Or, data existed at one point and doesn’t exist now. Very rarely can something happen outside of those facts. What digital forensics can prove or disprove is crucial to the truth.

E-discovery is a collaborative effort with multiple parties involved. Various stakeholders have a role to play in the whole process. People working in digital forensics need to be able to explain some of the technical terminologies in layperson’s terms so that everyone can understand why an artifact is presenting itself a certain way or why something exists or doesn’t exist on a device.

One of the biggest challenges in helping victims of human trafficking is reiterating the importance of a victim-centered approach. When law enforcement agents are new to human trafficking, they must remember that someone is not in a sex-trafficking position because they want to be. A lot of manipulation is behind the situation, along with prior trauma that may have led that individual to their awful situation. 

These cases differ from other investigations, such as drugs, guns, and gangs. They affect human lives, and these individuals will be the key to making the case. When working with these human trafficking cases, there needs to be an element of compassion while also being careful about removing biases.

Our listeners want to know more about Grayshift, our mission, and the knowledgeable people who work here creating powerful digital forensics tools. Our guest today is Bernie Lampe, Vice President of Research at Grayshift, and we’re talking about all things Android. 

GrayKey has developed as a standout, game-changing leader in iOS access and extraction, but many people don’t realize that Grayshift also supports Android devices. So this episode is dedicated to talking about the Android capabilities related to GrayKey.

The relationship between prosecutors and law enforcement is crucial to success. Nothing goes perfectly in a criminal trial; something crazy always happens. Trust is important so that whatever happens can be corrected in the run-up or during the trial itself. While law enforcement and prosecutors sometimes disagree, they are on the same team.

When a relationship is developed between prosecutors and local and federal agents, they feel like they can call on each other for advice. If an agent is on a scene or going to be involved in an arrest and something unusual happens, the agent can call a prosecutor and ask how that would impact the prosecution later. That collaboration is critical on so many levels.