Digital Forensics for Legal Professionals

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This was a gift for my son who is an inmate and he found it very useful in preparing his legal rebuttal.

nicely book

Authors Larry and Lars Daniel have assembled a nearly perfect book: Digital Forensics for Legal Professionals: Understanding Digital Evidence From the Warrant to the Courtroom is a reference manual, instruction guide, and a best practices and lessons-learned archive that's essential reading for legal professionals working with digital evidence.The topics covered in the book are designed efficiently and easily absorbed, with technical and legal concepts articulated by real-world examples. Technical concepts, such as HASH values, metadata, file carving, and thumbnail caches are simplified. Laws and acts, including civil and criminal proceedings, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, rules of discovery, and orders are explained clearly enough for non-lawyers to understand. Both authors have many years of practical hands-on experience, relevant certifications, and have spoken at dozens of events on the topic of forensics. By all accounts, the authors are experts and have been able to share their knowledge simply and articulately, while presenting forensic evidence, technical, and legal concepts eloquently.The Daniels start chapters with an introduction to each topic, explain the topics with short but informational content supplemented with examples and graphics, and close with a recap of what was covered. The book is arranged into four sections: "What is Digital Forensics"; "Experts"; "Motions and Discovery"; and "Common Types of Digital Evidence." The four sections and the chapters contained within focus on areas that everyone working with digital evidence should be familiar.They also act as an easy reference for looking up specific topics, such as working with and qualifying digital forensics experts within various disciplines; discovery motions and how to request discovery from third parties that store data, including the Stored Communications Act, Electronic Communication Privacy Act, HIPAA, and the Fourth Amendment; and the countless types of digital evidence and the preservation and acquisition of evidence from desktop computers to GPS devices to gaming devices to financial systems -- and everything else in-between.Digital Forensics is the ideal companion for lawyers, paralegals, and technology and business professionals working with potential digital evidence on a day-to-day basis or within civil or criminal proceedings. More than just a good starting point or an introduction, the book is deliberate when explaining the concepts, including typical practices like usage of Faraday Bags for evidence that might be altered via wireless communications when powered on, video recording any manual examination process without any stops during video capture, collecting data from systems that should not or cannot be powered off or on without risk of spoliation during acquisition, assembling detailed documentation of acquisition activities, or how to approach the collection of digital evidence in the manner of a police crime scene investigation.Digital evidence exists all around us on countless devices being every generated manually and automatically every day, so having a book like Digital Forensics as a reference is invaluable.Lawyers can benefit by having a resource that explains the acquisition of evidence and the ways to request this information from various sources, provides an understanding of the technical concepts and practices of forensics, and offers some of the cautions of working with digital evidence. Paralegals, technology professionals, and e-discovery experts can benefit by being able to better assist attorneys, corporations, law firms, and clients to manage what can be a very intimidating process. Accidental or purposeful mishandling of evidence can lead to varying degrees of sanctions, including a default judgment, so knowledge of how to handle digital evidence is crucial.There is so much valuable information contained within this book that I found it was difficult to put down once I started it. Its readability is excellent and I could directly and immediately apply the book's lessons to my day-to-day work within technology, project management, and electronic discovery. As I was finishing the final two chapters, an attorney came to me with a case project that included a digital evidence acquisition with multiple cell phones and, lo-and-behold, I was equipped to speak to the process of the data acquisition and intelligently begin the project due to this book.Digital evidence is here to stay and the management of that evidence has been made easier to understand with Digital Forensics for Legal Professionals.Title: Digital Forensics for Legal ProfessionalsAuthors: Larry Daniel, Lars DanielPublisher:Syngence/Elsevier 2011David J. Kearney is director of technology services at Cohen & Grigsby in Pittsburgh. Email: [email protected] 2012. ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved.Reprinted with permission from Law Technology News. Further Duplication prohibited.

One of the problems about getting free copies of something to review is that if your feedback is overly positive, it seems like you're shilling. Let me make it clear up front that I did receive a free copy of the book through Amazon Vines. With that said, I absolutely love this book.The title is Digital Forensics for Legal Professionals "Understanding Digital Evidence from the Warrant to the Courtroom" but it's bordering on misnamed. It should read "Digital Forensics for Anyone who might have to deal with data-centric legal issues" (Yah, that's a crappy name too, but you get the idea).The two authors, Larry E. Daniel and Lars E. Daniel clearly work in this area as their primary occupation (which is noteworthy b/c there are lots of forensics books by people who got exposed mainly through learning network diagnostics. The authors seem to come from the exact opposite perspective which is why the focus is on the legal aspects). They have several certifications specific to the field and have both worked as expert witnesses. The whole book is dripping with real world suggestions which is one thing that makes it such a good read.As a slight digression, one would expect this book to be about the data gathering process and how to evaluate that data, and it is. But I mentioned it's 'dripping with real world suggestions' and here's what I mean. Section 2 (Chapters 7 -13) Deals exclusively with Expert Witnesses. Chapter 11 is fairly small, but it's a discussion of the "Approaches by Different Types of Examiners" Most lawyers aren't even familiar with digital evidence and there aren't a ton of digital forensic experts, so explaining the different approaches is very helpful. Chapter 12 goes into "Spotting a Problem Expert". There are a ton of cases where innocent people have been convicted b/c of the false reports of expert witnesses. Valid or not, Juries will frequently defer completely to what the State's expert witnesses say. And many are very unqualified and many make statements they simply can't back up with science. Understanding how to detect and deal with such witnesses (whether they're working for you or against you) can literally mean the difference between walking free and being convicted. The discussion is finished by Chapter 13 "Qualifying an Expert in Court". A lot of what's there might appear to be 'common sense' AFTER you've read it, but I've personally been involved in several digital forensics cases where neither party asked any of these questions (other than 'Where did you go to school', "What Degree do you have"). And although it doesn't happen until Chapter 25, there's a chapter that discusses Obtaining Expert Funding in Indigent Cases. If you've dealt with the legal system before you know it's not cheap. Attorney's fees alone can be crushing. Additionally, you can't count on police officers refraining from opining about things they aren't qualified to talk about (or any other person in the process). So what if someone (who's unqualified to do so) claims you've done X or that Y came from your machine? If they are a public employee, that fact alone will carry with it a certain authority with the jury. Since there aren't an abundance of Forensics experts in the market and you may well have to look to other cities to find one, what do you do if you aren't wealthy? Like everything else they discuss, you won't have any question left unanswered after reading this book.So circling back around to the beginning, the first 6 chapters set the ground work for everything else. 'Digital Forensics: The Subdisciplines' (Chapter 3), "The Foundations of Digital Forensics: Best Practices" (Chapter 4), 'Overview of Digital Forensics Tools" (Chapter 5) and "Digital Forensics at Work in the Legal System" (Chapter 6) all serve to get the reader acquainted with Digital Forensics and the big picture issues surrounding the subject. Section 2 (discussed in the last paragraph ) delves deeply into discussion of Expert Witnesses and how to deal with them.Chapter 3 then moves on to "Motions and Discovery". This is such an important section even if you're not a lawyer. If you own a business, what sorts of things should you record? How long should you record it? What are you actually compelled to produce? What does the discovery process look like? What all can be covered under a subpoena? What sorts of things should you be monitoring? What sorts of things could be exposing you to liability?The rest of the book talks about everything from Multiplayer online games to social media sites and what sorts of things they collect. Along those lines, they discuss what can be used against you (or for you if you're innocent). I'm a software developer and consultant and know my art quite well, but even with that background I learned quite a bit from their discussion of types of digital evidence.in any case, I bought 3 copies of the book afterward to give to friends who are in the field I liked it so much. I also started to consider obtaining the training and certifications they authors discuss b/c it would certainly be useful and as a field, it can only grow as 'The Cloud' proliferates and social networks grow. I'm very glad I came across this book and have found it extremely useful in my own life. The authors did a great job and it fits right in with the other excellent Syngress books on digital security.