23 May 2013

Electronic Crime Laboratory

From Our Changing World, 9:06 pm on 23 May 2013

Electronic Crime Laboratory Control Room

The e-Crime Lab control room where audio is forensically examined (image: Nic Boyd)

Most people use electronic devices every day, so it’s not really surprising that every major criminal investigation by the New Zealand Police has an electronic component. This evidence is processed at the Electronic Crime Laboratory, housed in a secret location in Wellington, and Ruth Beran meets Maarten Kleintjes, Manager of the National e-Crime Group who takes her on a tour.

The first thing she sees is a large number of servers behind a glass wall which can store huge amounts of data. When police seize a computer or electronic device they create an exact copy and examine it through their own computers, which is why they need such a large amount of storage space. Making a clone of the device protects the police’s servers from any malware that might be on the computers and also allows the forensic electronic specialists to examine the alleged offender’s system without the risk of tampering with evidence. The system used to analyse electronic data is called EVE – the Environment for Virtualised Evidence.

The e-Crime Lab also examines mobile phones, which may have been smashed or locked, and this can mean the mobile phone has to be disassembled and the memory chip taken out to be examined.

Nic Boyd shows Ruth Beran the room where audio is forensically examined and explains how it is sometimes necessary to remove background noise to hear crucial information properly.

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