Forensic Science



Forensic Science

Introduction

The term forensic investigation refers to the use of science or technology in the investigation and establishment of facts or evidence to be used in criminal justice or other proceedings. Forensic investigation is a rather broad field with many different subdivisions. The American Academy of Forensic Science and the International Association for Identification are major professional organization that advances the application of scientific methods and their application in the legal system. Interested persons are highly encouraged to regularly review these websites for career information, current job listings, training course opportunities, and certification body-of -knowledge requirements. Adjunctive disciplines with subspecialties for forensically trained professionals are present such as in forensic nursing, forensic social work, computational forensics, forensic accounting, forensic anthropology, forensic photography, among others. Interestingly enough, journalists have recently begun seeking forensic training to expand their careers as crime writers or as public information officers in criminal justice agencies.[6]

Forensic investigation is increasingly playing an important role in the pursuit of justice. But the use of forensic investigation is not the straightforward endeavor that is portrayed in many television programs and other mass media sources. Forensic investigation is very complex. Forensic investigation techniques, when used appropriately, can be an incredible tool for practitioners and society. But used inappropriately, forensic investigation techniques can generate error and injustice in the system. For information about death row exonerations due to the misapplication of forensic investigation techniques, please see the Death Penalty Information Center's pages on Forensic Science Misconduct and Unreliable/Limited Science.

A description of areas of forensic strengths in the report

Measurements of the Internet for law enforcement purposes must be forensically valid. We examine the problems inherent in using various network- and application-level identifiers in the context of forensic measurement, as exemplified in the policing of peer-to-peer file sharing networks for sexually exploitative imagery of children (child pornography). First, we present a five-month measurement performed in the law enforcement context. We then show how the identifiers in these measurements can be unreliable, and propose the tagging of remote machines. Our proposed tagging method marks remote machines by providing them with application- or system level data which is valid, but which covertly has meaning to investigators. This tagging allows investigators to link network observations with physical evidence in a legal, forensically strong, and valid manner.[1]

The most popular resource for the criminal acquisition and distribution of images and video of child pornography is peer-to-peer (p2p) networks, including BitTorrent and Cnut.ella.". Law enforcement (LE) have both an easy and difficult time policing these networks. On the one hand, it is easy to identify millions of IP addresses trafficking in known child pornography (CP), as we demonstrate in Section 3. On the other hand, this success falls short in several ways. IP addresses and application identifiers are the foundation of all current criminal network investigations, yet IP addresses do not distinguish multiple physical machines behind a NAT box. Similarly, it is difficult to link the activities of a single mobile user moving among many IP ...