Police in talks over PC crime 'breathalysers' rollout

Police are in talks with companies about deploying a tool to detect evidence of illegal activity on PCs, aiming for it to be as easy to use as a breathalyser.

Officers in the Association of Chief Police Officers' (Acpo) e-crime group are looking into commercial devices that can search text, pictures and computer code on a hard disk for material of interest.

Such 'digital triage' tools would allow police the flexibility to search for anything from text in emails relating to stolen goods to illegal images.

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Forensic specialists within Acpo are examining how commercially-available digital triage tools can be adapted to develop the device, which they want to be as easy for frontline officers to use as a breathalyser.

Commercially available digital triage tools targeted at law enforcement typically boot the target computer using a CD, which runs a forensically sound operating system to preserve the integrity of the data it holds for use in a criminal case. A separate program run from a USB drive will then search the disc for the material and extract it to the drive.

An Acpo spokeswoman told silicon.com: "[Acpo is] working with a commercial outlet...

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