Fergie's Tech Blog

Computer Forensics Faces Private Eye Competition

Deb Radcliff writes on Baseline:

The Internet is boundless and cybercrime scenes stretch from personal desktops across the fiber networks that circle the globe. Digital forensic investigators like Harold Phipps, vice president of industry relations at Norcross Group in Norcross, Ga., routinely slip across conventional geographic jurisdictions in pursuit of digital evidence and wrongdoers.

Lawmakers across the Savannah River in Columbia, S.C., have different ideas, however. Under pending legislation in South Carolina, digital forensic evidence gathered for use in a court in that state must be collected by a person with a PI license or through a PI licensed agency.

If the law passes, the highly specialized task of probing deep into computer hard drives, network and server logs for telltale signs of hacking and data theft would land in the hands of the same people who advertise in the Yellow Pages for surveillance on cheating spouses, workers' compensation fraud and missing persons. Otherwise, digital evidence collected by unlicensed practitioners could be excluded from criminal and civil court cases. Worse yet, those caught practicing without a license could face criminal prosecution.

posted by Fergie @ 1/02/2008 04:34:00 PM