Recovering and Examining

Introduction
The world is becoming a smaller place in which to live and work. A technological revolution in communications and information exchange has taken place within business, industry, and our homes. America is substantially more invested in information processing and management than manufacturing goods, and this has affected our professional and personal lives. We bank and transfer money electronically, and we are much more likely to receive an E-mail than a letter. It is estimated that the worldwide Internet population is 349 million (CommerceNet Research Council 2000).
In this information technology age, the needs of law enforcement are changing as well. Some traditional crimes, especially those concerning finance and commerce, continue to be upgraded technologically. Paper trails have become electronic trails. Crimes associated with the theft and manipulations of data are detected daily. Crimes of violence also are not immune to the effects of the information age. A serious and costly terrorist act could come from the Internet instead of a truck bomb. The diary of a serial killer may be recorded on a floppy disk or hard disk drive rather than on paper in a notebook.

FBI computer evidence examiners
review the contents of a computer
hard drive.


Just as the workforce has gradually converted from manufacturing goods to processing information, criminal activity has, to a large extent, also converted from a physical dimension, in which evidence and investigations are described in tangible terms, to a cyber dimension, in which evidence exists only electronically, and investigations are conducted online.
Computer Forensic Science
Computer forensic science was created to address the specific and articulated needs of law enforcement to make the most of this new form of electronic evidence. Computer forensic science is the science of acquiring, preserving, retrieving, and presenting data that has been processed electronically and stored on computer... [continues]

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