FBI and local police departments: open/closed source?

Law enforcement will use any tool that fits their budget and passes their testing and validation. This includes both open and closed source. I think finding a specific list will be a difficult task.

My FBI contact (CART agent) uses FTK. I believe that most of his colleagues use it too.

The PA State Police use EnCase as a general rule, though a few examiners use FTK and at least one uses ILook.

One local PD uses an older version of EnCase and another uses FTK.

I hope this helps.

Thanks a lot for your suggestions..

@cfprof

According to your personal experience the most used forensic tools are open source. Aren't they?
I'm preparing a degree thesis on Computer Forensics and I want to focus on the value of open source tools. My professor asked me to inquire whether any u.s., european or international court never rejected a digital forensic examination carried out by open source tools for considering these ones as not suitable as the closed source tools such as EnCase, FTK, etc. Till now I found nothing about it.. So I think no court, probably, has ever passed such a sentence.

Thank you very much.

According to your personal experience the most used forensic tools are open source. Aren't they?

On the contrary! All of the examples I gave are closed source. I think most law enforcement folks used closed source. I'm sure there are some out there using open source, but I'd bet the percentage is small.

In the general population of examiners (not restricted to just law enforcement) the open source percentage may be a bit higher.

I'm preparing a degree thesis on Computer Forensics and I want to focus on the value of open source tools. My professor asked me to inquire whether any u.s., european or international court never rejected a digital forensic examination carried out by open source tools for considering these ones as not suitable as the closed source tools such as EnCase, FTK, etc. Till now I found nothing about it.. So I think no court, probably, has ever passed such a sentence.

I don't know of any court case where any tool was rejected as unacceptable but I'm not an expert in this area and haven't researched it. It seems to me that whether a case is thrown out seems to have less to do with the tool than the examiner. Several posters to this group use open source tools and have successfully defended them in court. Again, I think the examiner, not the tool is the key.

I hope this helps.

You might try reposting your original question about open source programs being thrown out of court in the "Open Source" forum. Maybe the posters there have more experience with this.

Helix is open source, no?

Also check out

http//www.opensourceforensics.org/

http//sourceforge.net/projects/oscfmanual/

http//www.digital-evidence.org/papers/opensrc_legal.pdf

http//digitalforensics.ch/nikkel05b.pdf

Thank you all for advice!!

I'll repost my question in the "open source" forum…

At soon!

- legionario