What does “forensically sound” really mean?

Article refers to the study of theoretical issues and problems arising in the investigation of criminal cases related to organized extortion as exemplified by Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The paper examines the theoretical and methodological ideas, solutions of the appropriate problems related to organized extortion, considers criminalistic aspects of the appropriate issues. The paper presents the basic concepts and categories, the structure and the system of investigating criminal cases related to organized extortion, as well as the genesis of the formation of a technique to investigate criminal cases concerning organized extortion, the concept of interrelation of the problematic issues related to the investigation of organized extortion criminal cases in the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code of the states. The authors have made a legal analysis of the Criminal Procedure Code rules and regulations applicable in the investigation of organized extortion criminal cases, have studied the legal problems in application of new techniques in the investigation of such criminal cases. The basic theoretical principles and recommendations for the improvement of the existing criminal procedural legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic have been sets out.

A new triage model conforming to the needs of selective search and seizure of electronic evidence

The paper analyzes scientific and theoretical, organizational and practical ideas about the effectiveness and inefficiency of the investigation of criminal cases in general, and cases of embezzlement of budgetary funds, in particular. Case studies of effective and ineffective investigation of the specified criminal activity are given. The definition of effectiveness is formulated in relation to the investigation of embezzlement of budgetary funds, in which compliance with the main priorities of the state policy of the Russian Federation is important. The paper analyzes the criteria for evaluating the law enforcement activities of law enforcement agencies. There are contradictions between the criteria of real effectiveness of the investigation and the requirements of statistical reporting by investigative authorities. In the context of the effective investigation criterion and with regard to the provisions of the “National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation” approved by the President of the Russian Federation, priorities of effective investigation in criminal cases of embezzlement of budgetary funds have been identified. This is a priority for crime prevention, the need to combat, first of all, the most socially dangerous types of embezzlement committed by public authorities and organizations with state participation, especially corruption concerning those involved in national projects and fulfilling state defense orders. Full compensation for the damage caused and an increase in the level of responsibility for suchlike criminal activity are also a priority. The paper concludes that an effective investigation is the observance of these priorities. They should concern practical, organizational and managerial, and scientific activities. The requirements of statistical reporting by law enforcement agencies need to be adapted to the criteria of the real effectiveness of the investigation of criminal cases. Forensic scholarly research has to be aimed at providing priorities for the investigation of embezzlement, to demonstrate the implementation of efficiency criteria through the case studies as recommendations.

"Verfassung und Recht in Übersee (VRÜ)" analysiert die Verfassungs- und Rechtsentwicklung in den Staaten Asiens, Afrikas und Lateinamerikas sowie deren regionale wie internationale Einbindung. Die Zeitschrift widmet sich verfassungsvergleichend Regionen ausserhalb Europas unter Einbeziehung theoretischer und methodischer Grundlagen. Gegründet 1968 und inspiriert von Dekolonialisation und kooperativem Aufbruch veröffentlicht sie nicht zuletzt Untersuchungen zum Entwicklungsrecht.

BCFL logging: An approach to acquire and preserve admissible digital forensics evidence in cloud ecosystem

Digital Forensics is being actively researched and performed in various areas against changing IT environment such as mobile phone, e-commerce, cloud service and video surveillance. Moreover, it is necessary to research unified digital evidence management for correlation analysis from diverse sources. Meanwhile, various triage approaches have been developed to cope with the growing amount of digital evidence being encountered in criminal cases, enterprise investigations and military contexts. Despite of debating over whether triage inspection is necessary or not, it will be essential to develop a framework for managing scattered digital evidences. This paper presents a framework with unified digital evidence management for appropriate security convergence, which is based on triage investigation. Moreover, this paper describes a framework in network video surveillance system to shows how it works as an unified evidence management for storing diverse digital evidences, which is a good example of security convergence.

This article examines the possibilities of using machine-readable law technologies in criminal procedural legislation and criminal proceedings; the analysis of the Concept of development of technologies of machine-readable law is carried out in order to determine the possibility of applying its provisions in the context of criminal procedural law. According to the author, the development of the technology of machine-readable law sets the legislator the task of starting the process of adapting the norms of the criminal procedure law to their subsequent presentation in formal language. Legislative acts should be structured as much as possible, within the acts, norms are more clearly divided into certain categories and groups with the building of logical connections between them. The norms of legislative acts need to be formalized, their content should not have legal and linguistic uncertainties, normative conflicts and broad discretionary powers. The conclusion is made about the need for legal transformations, formalization of the norms of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, based on the principle of legal certainty. If the adaptation of legislation to machine-readable norms is the future in the development of science and the system of legal regulation of the state, then the use of digital technologies in criminal proceedings is a matter of the present. It seems that modern digital technologies are sufficiently developed to start developing an automated information system at the state level that meets the formal requirements of the Criminal Procedure Code, within the framework of which a preliminary investigation will be carried out. Moreover, we are talking not only about the «electronic criminal case» in its generally accepted understanding. The author proposes the creation of a comprehensive universal program that provides for the automated application of the ontology of machine-readable law (descriptions in the formal language of many objects in the field of law and the connections between them) in the investigation of criminal cases using the method of teaching artificial intelligence based on a large array of data (including data, constituting the empirical base of research, which was studied in the development of private methods for investigating certain types of crimes).

Owing to three major aspects such as crops accelerating potential, evidence providing material during forensic investigation in criminal cases and creator of halogen-assisted carcinogenic by-product trihalomethanes, the monitoring of humic acid is of key attention for scientists working in concerned departments and awareness of general public. Here in this project we used a facile hydrothermal precipitation protocol for synthesising wool-ball like caffeine-assisted copper oxide nanostructures (Caf-CuONSs) using copper nitrate as precursor and caffeine as shape directing material under alkaline influence of ammonia. These nanostructures were characterised through scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis, Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) method and Fourier Transform Infra-red (FTIR) spectroscopy for investigation of their various properties. These nanostructures were deposited on the conductive surface of glassy carbon electrode (GCE) followed by nafion coating and employed as highly sensitive and extremely selective sensor for humic acid detection at trace level with three linear ranges, 100–800 ppb, 10–90 ppb and 1–9 ppb with limit of detection (LOD) as low as 68 ppt. As-constructed sensor was applied for amperometric detection of humic acid in tap water with recovery from 98% to 103%, drinking water with recovery from 97.6% to 101.6% and soil sample with recovery from 96.8–102%, collected from Konya, Turkey and Multan, Pakistan, respectively. These recovery ranges were closely matched with the recovery range of 99.2–103.2% exhibited by certified reference material (CRM).

Faults of prosecutor's supervision over compliance with the law when preliminary investigation in criminal cases is suspended (by the example of prosecution and investigation practice in the samara region).

The objectives of this study are: 1. To analyze implementation restorative justice in the settlement of criminal cases at the investigation level at the Pati Police Resort at this time. 2. To analyze the constraints that arise in implementation restorative justice in the settlement of criminal cases at the investigation level at the Pati Police. 3. To analyze restorative justice in the settlement of criminal cases at the investigation level at the Pati Police in the future. The research method used is juridical empirical. Types / Specifications of Research, Types of Data and Data Sources, Data Collection Methods, Data Analysis Methods. Research results and discussion: Handling of criminal cases by the Police (investigators) at the Criminal Investigation Unit of the Pati Police with criteria including the category of criminal offenses punishable by criminal sanctions of up to 1 (one) year must be prioritized to apply diversion, criminal acts subject to sanctions. a sentence of more than 1 (one) year to 5 (five) years of the Pati Police Criminal Investigation Unit is carried out with the criteria, among others, considering the law enforcement process in accordance with the applicable positive law and if the settlement is through restorative justice. The use of restorative justice by the police in solving criminal cases at the level of future investigations can represent a logical step in public service and general case handling reform. This contributes to improved community police relations. New participatory programs can encourage a form of direct accountability to the communities they serve. Police officers can apply the principles of restorative justice to develop sustainable collaborative partnerships with the community.

Crime is nothing new, its forms and types are increasingly developing along with the times. Various methods and efforts are made to find effective and appropriate ways to overcome this problem. The Indonesian National Police as law enforcers have the duty and responsibility to take action to prevent and overcome criminal acts. The police also have an important role as investigators. This is in accordance with the statement of Article 1 number 1 of the Criminal Procedure Code, Investigation is a subsystem of the investigation which aims to collect initial evidence which will later be used at the investigation stage. In an effort to collect tools and evidence that are indicated as traces of a crime, one of the means used by the Police is the use of tracking dogs or known as the K-9 Animal Unit.

The budding progress and relevance of digital information technology in quite a few areas of business, engineering, medical, agricultural and scientific studies are resulting in data explosion coined by the term “big data”. The dependency on digital media drives and devices has enlarged the dimensions of data formation and storage exponentially around the world, with a need of keeping a record of what data is accumulated and how the data is exercised. So it has raised an alarm of security for the data asset. To discover the pattern of interest leading to a decision from these voluminous data has put forth a challenge for the law enforcement and investigative agencies. Also, tracing such type of misutilization of digital technology in a big data age from the perspective of digital forensics requires minute bit-level examination and observations to locate the digital evidence that explains how maliciously nefarious activities have been done and by whom with the possible extent of the damage. The forensic examination and analysis in such a big data era requires appropriate digital investigation model with the application of tools, techniques and methodologies to boost decision-making and diagnostic process for advanced outfitted competence in digital forensic investigation with the intent of assembling valuable evidence from it. So, the need of the hour is to have a holistic outlook of the big data challenges and opportunities for its application in the digital forensic domain with the goal of making full-bodied investigation pronouncements. Much work has been done to model digital investigation as well as digital evidence but a comprehensive correlated and aggregated merging of voluminous data coming from different heterogeneous sources along with timely and accurate detection and analysis is the need of the hour. This chapter depicts the trends of digital forensics served for big data and the challenges of evidence acquisition, and further suggests the revision of the existing fusion-based digital investigation model by highlighting the formalization, quick detection and timely accurate analysis of digital evidence from multiple sources simultaneously. The modification adopted the inclusion of look-up table into the architecture with the application of data fusion to practice voluminous data effectually.

Chapter 6 - Digital Forensics at Work in the Legal System

The impact of social media on the legal system is reviewed across different junctures of the legal process, specifically focusing on memory contamination. The factors and situations surrounding social media’s influence on eyewitness memory, trial outcomes in criminal cases, novice investigator “web sleuths,” and police investigations suggest that although Internet searching has advantages, these searches have taken some control of the investigative process away from law enforcement professionals. Immediate access to social media by anyone with a cell phone, which results in a suspect search, may serve to contaminate witness memory in criminal cases, which undermines best practice procedures employed by law enforcement to guard against memory error and misidentifications. Face recognition software is a potential solution to some of the memory contamination issues that plague human memory but is not infallible. The advantages and disadvantages of technology-based suspect searching and related ethical issues for legal system policy are discussed.

Information technology systems are attacked by offenders using digital devices and networks to facilitate their crimes and hide their identities, creating new challenges for digital investigators. Malicious programs that exploit vulnerabilities also serve as threats to digital investigators. Since digital devices such as computers and networks are used by organisations and digital investigators, malicious programs and risky practices that may contaminate the integrity of digital evidence can lead to loss of evidence. For some reasons, digital investigators face a major challenge in preserving the integrity of digital evidence. Not only is there no definitive comprehensive model of digital forensic investigation for ensuring the reliability of digital evidence, but there has to date been no intensive research into methods of doing so. To address the issue of preserving the integrity of digital evidence, this research improves upon other digital forensic investigation model by creating a Comprehensive Digital Forensic Investigation Model (CDFIM), a model that results in an improvement in the investigation process, as well as security mechanism and guidelines during investigation. The improvement is also effected by implementing Proxy Mobile Internet Protocol version 6 (PMIPv6) with improved buffering based on Open Air Interface PIMIPv6 (OAI PMIPv6) implementation to provide reliable services during handover in Mobile Node (MN) and improve performance measures to minimize loss of data which this research identified as a factor affecting the integrity of digital evidence. The advantage of this is to present that the integrity of digital evidence can be preserved if loss of data is prevented. This research supports the integration of security mechanism and intelligent software in digital forensic investigation which assist in preserving the integrity of digital evidence by conducting experiments which carried out two different attack experiment to test CDFIM. It found that when CDFIM used security mechanism and guidelines with the investigation process, it was able to identify the attack and also ensured that the integrity of the digital evidence was preserved. It was also found that the security mechanism and guidelines incorporated in the digital investigative process are useless when the security guidelines are ignored by digital investigators, thus posing a threat to the integrity of digital evidence.