Digital Forensics Product Helps Counter Terrorism Unit Officers Prevent Explosions
A new cost-effective solution for front line officers: Seizing phones, iPads and laptops safely and securely, ensuring they are not remotely wiped or used to detonate bombs.
Law Enforcement, Military and Counter Terrorism Agencies have long had problems with what to do with the mobile phones and similar “smart” devices they seize as evidence at point of arrest.
Turn them off and they potentially lose valuable information, which could be crucial to the prosecution or for the agency’s intelligence effort. Don’t turn them off and they could inadvertently download further information and texts, which could be considered as ‘interception’, and any additional texts or downloaded data could overwrite crucial evidence. Even worse, if left on the device could be remotely wiped before its contents are secured – permanently destroying evidence – or used to detonate a remote I.E.D. (Improvised Explosive Device).
Illustration: greatreporter. The original photograph is no longer available.
Illustration: greatreporter. The original photograph is no longer available.
In the UK, ACPO, (Association of Chief Police Officers), states clearly:
Principle 1:
No action taken by law enforcement agencies or their agents should change data held on a computer or storage media which may subsequently be relied upon in court.
In explaining how to deal with this principle, ACPO state the following:
Use a shielded container/box
This may allow examinations to be conducted safely at different geographic locations. Battery life will be reduced due to power increase, as handset tries to connect to network.
As such, the device should be fully charged prior to examination or a portable power source attached to the device within the enclosure. Cables into the box must be fully shielded to prevent intrusion by network signals.
The new range of products by Disklabs enable Law Enforcement, Military and Counter Terrorism agencies to deal with these issues in a simple and cost-effective manner, whilst complying with ACPO’s Guidelines.
Director of Disklabs, Harlan Simpson said ‘We are getting more and more orders from organisations that simply were not aware that these signal blocking products were available’. He went on to say ‘We are now receiving orders from several Counter Terrorism Units around the world’.
Disklabs provide a range of faraday signal inhibitors for the following items:
Mobile Phones, (Cell Phones), iPads, Netbooks, Laptops, SatNavs and cables (often forgotten as a signal leakage issue), working on all major frequencies used by these devices: 900Mhz, 1800Mhz, 1900Mhz, 2.1Ghz, Bluetooth (2.4 – 2.48Ghz) and Wi-Fi (2.4Ghz).
Materials used to ensure that the Faraday effectiveness of these devices include Silver, Nickel, Copper and tin, yet despite record high prices of these raw materials, manufacturing costs have dropped, therefore prices have fallen.
Disklabs is a specialist data services company, targeting Data Recovery, Computer and Phone Forensics, Certified Data Erasure and Faraday Bags. The need for the faraday bags arose from a requirement by Disklabs own in-house Mobile phone forensics department requiring a solution to obtaining data from the mobile phone without breaching ACPO’s guidelines. The bags were developed by Disklabs director Simon Steggles using specialist materials that provided faraday shielding to the devices.
