Don't come onto a forum and spout that you can do something and then invoke the separate forums issue. There are plenty of black hats, cops, feds, and private people who post everything on here and don't make such claims.
Scientific enquiry into a subject requires frank and open discussion of the issues and hypothesis, that is an essential element of peer review. If we ever hope of dragging this field into the realm of forensic sciences the 'too dangerous for general consumption' mentality is going to have to drop. I have seen this attitude in some of my colleagues over the years and it is counter-productive.
The 'Forum Romanum' was established by the Romans to allow the citizens a place to gather and communicate persuasively (the orators), among other things. These forums here are such places.
As far as feeding lawyers… they are going to get this stuff out of you anyway, it's called 'disclosure', I am sure those of us here who have courtroom experience knows how that works. If you are asked about failure rates and potential inaccuracies of results on the stand you have to testify unless you can show a reason not to (threat to life, ongoing criminal investigation, not in the national interest, lawyer-client privilege etc).
I guess it's allright to post a link to the time where I expressed some perplexities about "secrecy" in a related matter, and was probably misunderstood
http//www.forensicfocus.com/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2488
jaclaz
Good points 'Beetle', totally agree with you.
To add some of my opinion to this part
As far as feeding lawyers… they are going to get this stuff out of you anyway, it's called 'disclosure', I am sure those of us here who have courtroom experience knows how that works.
I don't even see the benefit of keeping knowledge away from lawyers (or other people in general). If we can educate some lawyers by discussing things on a forum, I'd say that is a benefit for the profession in general (or would we like them to hide some legal stuff from us as well, just to make us look bad in a courtroom?).
If they are better prepared because they know more about the specifics of computer forensics, they can ask better questions and eventually a whole trial will be at a higher level. Yes, of course they might ask difficult questions, but that's their right and you should be prepared to answer those anyway. That just will help to raise the standard for both sides.
This 'prosecution vs. defense / us vs. them' attitude that I sometimes sense, is in my opinion completely unnecessary, as we all should have the same interest providing fair and factual information. We can of course have very fanatic debates about the contents of the information, but the access to the information should be open for everyone.
Well think about it this way code slave. If you know about it and open it to public discourse the industry and community you are a part of will have a better opportunity to discuss and create solutions or rebuttals to the scientific merit. NO ONE here in there right mind would say that computer forensics lives in the realm of 100% accuracy and quite frankly that is not what the legal system expects. We offer an unbiased scientific approach to a situation and offer an opinion based upon our findings. It is up to the trier of fact to weigh the evidence given to determine the outcome of the proceedings not us - we only offer certain insight. It is better as a scientific community that we know our weakness and openly discuss them so we are better prepared when the issues come up from the opposition.
I will go one step further, since you post that you are from China. How is it that you will be 100% sure who anyone is.
I've met people from the forum, I said my name to them, shook their hands and they said their name back to me. How do they know I am who I say I am? What is the purpose of your post? Na na na na bo bo I know something you don't know? As best I can tell people are here to learn and to share
One thing I am pretty sure of is that you have done 0 cases which have ended up in a US court. The first time you were to go for the "this is not 100 safe" defense it would be out in the open and companies who specifically search for E-Discovery type items would have it. All of us have come across something which maybe not a lot of people knew, but we were of the mind that it helps everyone to share, it appears you are of the mind, anyone but the lawyers,
Aren't AUSA's and prosecutors lawyers????
😯 LOL,
And feed the lawyers , absolutly NO WAY…, not unless I am 100% sure of to whom I am releasing the information.Thats is an improvement to the FF website
two forums , one absolutly private, and the other public. (or 1 forum with a security rating option, to block information)The other thing that this site needs is a 'secure' place to uploaded material, such as reports. Then maybe just maybe I can upload a couple of 'interesting' PDF research reports, for 'peer review' and feed back, (i really would like some peer review) but I really do not want the material publically circulated.
C.
We're conflating a lot of different, although related, issues and concepts here. Perhaps we can agree that technological systems represent the practical expression of science, and that an array of practical considerations and decisions made during the process of designing such systems will result in somewhat different expressions of the same science.
For instance, the science of water purification is well understood, but there is a vast array of different water purification technologies - each of which is designed to meet its own objectives - i.e., operational characteristics, physical form factors, price target, production/manufacturing demands, time to market, etc.
Technicians are trained to operate technologies properly, to recognize and respond to failures, to document various metrics, etc. Should they be called upon to testify in court regarding an incident involving the system, they may quite competently testify as to what they know about the system, the conditions at the time of the incident, what they saw or didn't see, what they did or didn't do, etc. If further expertise is needed, their testimony can be supplemented as needed.
We see this all the time in medical malpractice cases where lab results are in question. The lab technician might testify as to the tests that were ordered, how the sample was collected, what equipment was used to perform the tests, that the equipment was checked and noted to be operating correctly, the results that were obtained, laboratory procedures regarding calibration of equipment, measures to prevent cross-contamination of specimens, and perhaps even what the manufacturer has stated regarding test sensitivities, false positives, etc.
If counsel wishes to delve into matters of the science behind the technology that are beyond the technician's domain of competency, appropriately-qualified experts will be called to testify.
Now, imagine if we were to say that the person performing the tests must be a graduate biochemist in case they're asked to discuss the relative merits of the Schott-Grabbenhumper study showing that a 3,9 chromosomal transposition in the grandparents of patients with Leiden factor VIII produced false results with this technology in 0.04% of the cases. It's safe to predict that a lot of labs wouldn't be able to find such people, and equally safe to predict that the cost of lab testing would rise dramatically. Worse, it's predictable that we'd have overqualified people doing work that technicians could have done - and done just as well.
<my 2 cents> While I agree that the science of computer forensics, the knowledge and techniques should be shared among competent individuals. I must point out that, much like gun safety, its not the tools that are hard to use or dangerous. Its the user's understanding of how to use them properly that is. Educating an attorney who is still stuck on paper and tiff that is reluctant to even power his on computer would be the wrong person to attempt to educate. Arming them with a series of questions and being prepared to testify to your methods will almost always prove a better solution.
Now as far as PBF goes. Having a simple, easy to understand, "even a cave man can do it" tools that are credible, tested, verified and would take more time to screw up than just run. I think would fit nicely. Or better still an SOP that is the basic guideline. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has run into situations where someone else did a collection that made absolutely no sense.
Having this kind of knowledge out in the wild and easily accessible isn't going to put anyone out of business. The "Merlin with his book of spells" syndrome has to stop. If we ever hope to have a universal standard, that in the end will make everyone's job easier.
When I was in the army we had a saying "make it an SOP and you'll never have to worry about it getting done right when you on leave." I always added "and give it to the right person." </my 2 cents>