The Social Age of Evidence Collection

http://ow.ly/7w9QC

Article by Sean Martin on law.com on the LTN webpage.

This article discusses the forensic collection process as it relates to social media evidence.

The article states, "Forensically sound evidence with a provable chain of custody is crucial in making, breaking, or even avoiding a case. Most organizations and supporting legal firms have previously cracked the code for collecting this information, using tried-and-true, and typically well-known, processes, tools, and services to secure emails and hard drives as evidence. Most firms will use service providers to perform the evidence collection, hashing the data to show it had not changed. But there seems to be a trend moving toward self-collection, remote collection, and the use of online services; with this comes issues of trust and, more importantly, the ability to prove."

The article further explains, "...screenshots simply won't work as evidence; they miss all of the metadata residing under the covers and behind the pixels represented through the graphical interface.

In an interview, Owen O'Connor, the founder of Cernam, an online evidence software vendor based in Dublin, Ireland, made this point very clear. "In order for the evidence to exist and be viable, it is critical that the appropriate authorities are able to preserve the entire content of a target web page or other online resource in an evidentially-sound manner without converting, re-formatting, or otherwise modifying the original content," explained O'Connor."