The birth of the Internet as a commercial entity and the development of increasingly sophisticated digital consumer technology has led to new opportunities for criminals and new challenges for law enforcement. Those same technologies also offer new tools for scientific investigation of evidence.
In telecommunications, Voice over IP raises significant challenges for call intercept and route tracing. Information systems are becoming overwhelmingly large and the challenges of associating relevant information from one source with another require new sophisticated tools. And consumer multimedia devices, especially video and still cameras, are increasingly becoming the tools of choice to create potentially illegal content. At the same time, the scientific gathering and investigation of evidence at a crime scene is being pushed towards digital techniques, raising questions of the veracity and completeness of evidence.
The aim of this conference is to bring together state of the art research contributions in the development of tools, protocols and techniques which assist in the investigation of potentially illegal activity associated with electronic communication and electronic devices. Investigative practice and requirements for presentation of evidence in court are to be considered key underlying themes. This might include discovery, analysis, handling and storage of digital evidence; meeting the legal burden of proof; and the establishment of the forensic chain of evidence.