Chapter 15: Conclusion

Technology is such a part of people’s lives today that they feel disconnected and uncomfortable being without their mobile devices.

Connectivity, however, comes with the price of constantly generated data which is often stored off the device being used, that is in a storage facility or ‘cloud’ service. Digital devices give away a lot of information about the user and their activities. Whether this suits the user or not is an individual decision because if the technology can accumulate data, it will.

We have seen that not all available data is stored within a given device, with quantities of data going back to the device or application developer for analytics, storage, on-sell or whatever the End User Licence Agreement (EULA) authorises. Users rarely read the EULA document, however, authorisation is given for the data to be used in ways the user may not be too happy about if they had read the agreement.

As data is constantly being generated in this increasingly technical and always connected environment, we have seen that the detective/investigator has access to evidence in a manner that previous generations of detectives/investigators could never have dreamed of. The capacity to be able to recreate a crime scene from the multitudes of available technology can:

• supply an understanding of events,
• the order in which they occurred,
• the people involved,
• their interactions, and
• other people’s reactions.

This data provides a very detailed view of the crime scene, events, and participants.

We have reviewed many forms of technology In this manual, sometimes mentioning brands as examples. There is nothing wrong with the brands mentioned and there is no indication they do anything wrong, or their products are more likely than others to be used in criminal behaviour. They are mentioned as examples only to describe the wide range and different forms of data collected by technology. In this dynamic environment data that is available today may not be available tomorrow, and inversely the evidence not available today, may become available tomorrow when a new iteration of the device is updated.

It is the responsibility of the investigator to keep up to date with technology. It is not realistic to be across every digital device and its current configuration, however, technology in or about a crime scene must be identified as having data collection capacity and incorporated into the investigation. If the investigator is not familiar with the technology, for instance, what it does and what data it collects, the expectation is that they ask for advice.  An investigator needs be aware of potential technological risks and be prepared should a line of defensive questioning occur in a cross-examination where it is implicated that the evidence that would have cleared their client was on their device and was ignored at the crime scene.

In summary, the message is to embrace technology as an investigation tool as much as the technology companies embrace the data their devices generate. Data is a central component of society today, so embrace the opportunity to incorporate this evolving line of evidence in the same manner investigators of previous generations adapted to the new technology of photographs, fingerprints and DNA testing.