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Police in talks over PC crime 'breathalysers' rollout

Exclusive: A pocket digital forensics lab?

Tags: detica, hard drive, forensics, police

By Nick Heath

Published: 3 June 2009 15:30 GMT

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.

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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