Examination of Firearms Review: 2007 to 2010 - Interpol

government labs could be counterproductive, exhausting their limited
resources and driving them out of business.
5.2 Limitations in the Court’s understanding of digital evidence
Edmund argues that police, investigative and security agencies,
prosecutors and federal and state courts have not developed principled
approaches to the use and admissibility of emerging technologies, their
products and the different forms of expertise and opinion based upon them
(72). Edmund argued that these developments are unfortunate because
relatively few of the new techniques have been tested or independently
reviewed (73). It is inevitable that courts will impose more demanding
admissibility standards and that those involved in e-forensics, biometrics
and identification should begin to respond to the anticipated interest in the
validity and reliability of their systems and opinions (74).
6 Future trends
6.1 The future of digital forensics
Technological advances in virtualisation tools have and will continue to
create difficulty for digital forensic examiners. Barrett states that we are
moving towards a dynamic operating environment where organizations are
streaming applications virtual operating systems from remote servers to
desktops on an as needed basis (75). The virtual user environment can be
deleted hence providing a challenge to the digital forensic examiner to
research and implement methods to find virtualization artifacts and identify
virtual activities that affect the examination process of certain virtualized
user environments (76).
6.2 Investigative management
SO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 Information Technology - Security Techniques,
Guidelines for identification, collection and/or acquisition and preservation
of digital evidence is an international standard to ensure that responsible
individuals manage digital evidence in accordance with practical ways that
are acceptable worldwide, with the objective to preserve its integrity and
authenticity (77). The International Standard provides guidelines for digital
evidence management. It describes the processes of identification,
collection, acquisition and preservation of potential digital evidence that
may be of evidentiary value. The objective is to assist organizations in their
disciplinary procedures, and to facilitate the exchange of potential digital
evidence between jurisdictions. This standard deals with common
situations encountered throughout the digital management process. The
potential digital evidence may be sourced from any type of media, and
refers to data that is already in a digital format. This International Standard
does not attempt to cover the conversion of analog data into digital format
(78).
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