STEM

The Role of Digital Forensics and Tracking Down US Capitol Riot Criminals

Thursday, January 14, 2021, By Daryl Lovell

With just under a week left before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony, investigators and law enforcement agencies across the country are working speedily to identify as many of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot offenders as they can. Knowing exactly who and where the offenders are also supports national security preparation for the Jan. 20 ceremony and events.

Mark Pollitt is an adjunct professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies, who previously served as a military officer and FBI Special Agent. With the FBI, he investigated organized crime, narcotics, stolen property, white collar fraud and computer crime cases.

He details the actions digital forensics experts will take in the coming days.

Pollitt says:

“The digital forensic process is really a four-step process: evidence acquisition, examination, analysis, and reporting. The number of items to acquire and process is mind-boggling! It includes mobile devices, laptops, desktops, email and social media accounts and cloud storage from suspects, service providers, and that which is crowd sourced. Video, photos, and tracking data will be monumental. It will cross over between digital forensics (looking at evidence items), forensic computing (evidence management and computation for meta-analysis), and investigative analysis (including things like network analysis, correlation of people, places, things, and travel data, and putting together timelines, case files, etc.)

“It is likely that the goal will be to improve the four-dimensional modeling (physical 3D visible in ‘real time’) that was done on the Boston Marathon bombing case. I more than suspect that this will be an all-hands evolution across disciplines, job titles, and organizations.”

 

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