Rob Gerber is a Veritone Solutions Engineer and former Homicide Investigator – Antioch Police Department
Today’s landscape of criminal investigations and legal proceedings has evolved significantly. Traditional methods of handling evidence are no longer sufficient. They cannot address the complexities and vast amounts of data that could make or break an investigation.
Given the rampant increase in video evidence, understanding what’s within a file has never been more important. Moreover, finding key moments in a timely fashion is critical for a successful digital forensics practice.
This shift underscores the importance of AI in forensics, specifically in digital evidence management. This article will introduce digital evidence management, highlighting its importance, core components, and the challenges traditional methods face.
Overview of digital evidence management
Digital evidence management involves collecting, preserving, analyzing, and presenting digital data to maintain its integrity and admissibility in legal proceedings. The core components of digital evidence management include:
- Collection: Gathering data from various sources.
- Preservation: Ensuring the data remains unchanged and secure.
- Analysis: Extracting relevant information using forensic data analysis techniques.
- Presentation: Organizing the data in a manner suitable for legal processes.
Digital evidence can originate from a multitude of sources, such as:
- Computers: hard drives, operating systems, and software applications.
- Mobile devices: smartphones and tablets with their communication logs, apps, and stored data.
- Cloud services: online storage and services that house data remotely.
- Internet of Things devices: smart home gadgets and wearables can provide critical investigation information.
- CCTV cameras: traffic or building security cameras that capture footage of possible criminal acts or track persons of interest.
Key challenges in traditional evidence management
Historically, traditional law enforcement technology and evidence management methods have fallen short. They could not effectively sift through hundreds of hours of footage and gigabytes of files. Traditional evidence management systems often struggle with several significant challenges, including:
Data volume and complexity
The sheer volume of digital data generated daily is staggering. Traditional methods cannot manage, sort, and analyze this data at scale. This is especially concerning considering that digital evidence is a factor in about 90% of criminal cases. Adding the complexity of data from diverse evidence sources further complicates the investigative landscape that law enforcement agencies struggle to adapt to.
Manual processes and their limitations
Manual evidence handling is time-consuming and prone to human error. It involves labor-intensive procedures that can delay investigations and compromise the accuracy of the data collected. For instance, video redaction processes, an aspect of video analysis, have been largely manual. A ten-minute video could take a technician or records management professional over an hour to redact, depending on the complexity of the footage and the tools they are using.
Ensuring data integrity and security
Maintaining the integrity and security of digital evidence is crucial. Any tampering or unauthorized access can render the evidence inadmissible in court. Traditional methods often lack robust security measures to protect against such risks. These risks are heightened when evidence is not centralized with the necessary measures to track the chain of custody and control accessibility to these files.
Lack of standardization in procedures
The absence of standardized procedures in traditional evidence management can lead to inconsistencies in how evidence is collected, stored, and analyzed, affecting its reliability. This can materialize by using disconnected tools to analyze evidence, which keeps important data siloed that could otherwise be leveraged to find other case-impacting information.
Resource constraints faced by law enforcement and legal professionals
Law enforcement agencies and legal professionals often operate under tight budgets and limited resources. These constraints can hinder their ability to manage digital evidence using traditional methods effectively—Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). From FY2022 to FY2023, FOIA requests increased by 30%, with agencies processing a record high of 1.1 million requests.
Importance of effective digital evidence management
Effective digital evidence management is vital for supporting criminal investigations. Properly managed digital evidence can provide crucial insights and support criminal investigations, leading to the successful prosecution of offenders. This has never been more important, given police clearance rates for violent and property crimes are at their lowest rates since at least 1993, according to FBI data. In 2022, compared to 2013, there’s been an:
- 18.4% decrease in clearances for reported murders and nonnegligent homicides.
- 28.2% decrease in clearances for aggravated assaults.
- 35.7% decrease in clearances for rapes.
- 21% decrease in clearances for robberies.
Manual processes only contribute to these reductions as they slow down and hinder the speed of case clearances.
Furthermore, reliability and admissibility of evidence in court are paramount. Effective digital evidence management ensures evidence remains intact, verifiable, and credible. And lastly, various regulatory standards govern the handling of digital evidence. Effective management ensures compliance with these standards, which is essential for the legal admissibility of the evidence.
Closing thoughts and future topics in this series
Digital evidence management is a critical aspect of modern investigations and legal proceedings. The traditional methods of handling evidence are filled with challenges such as data volume and complexity, manual processes, and security concerns. To address these issues, advanced solutions like Veritone iDEMS offer innovative tools that streamline and enhance digital evidence management. By embracing these technologies, law enforcement and legal professionals can improve the efficiency, reliability, and integrity of their investigations and legal processes.
Learn more about Veritone iDEMS