The Expanding Use of DNA in Law Enforcement: What Role for Privacy?

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Rothstein ◽  
Meghan K. Talbott
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Forensic Analysis ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Dna Identification ◽  
Violent Crimes ◽  
Criminal Justice Systems ◽  
New Applications ◽  
Dna Profiles

DNA identification methods are such an established part of our law enforcement and criminal justice systems it is hard to believe that the technologies were developed as recently as the mid-1980s, and that the databases of law enforcement profiles were established in the 1990s. Although the first databases were limited to the DNA profiles of convicted rapists and murderers, the success of these databases in solving violent crimes provided the impetus for Congress and state legislatures to expand the scope of the databases with little critical examination of each expansion's value to law enforcement or cost to privacy and civil liberties.We are now entering a new stage of DNA forensics, in which successive database expansions over the last decade have raised the possibility of creating a population-wide repository. In addition, new applications of DNA profiling, including familial and low stringency searches, have been added to DNA dragnets, the use of medical samples for forensic analysis, and other measures to create a series of crucial, yet largely unexplored, second-generation legal and policy issues.

scholarly journals Enacting an Improved Response to Sexual Assault: A Criminal Justice Practitioner’s Guide

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia A. Melton
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Violent Crime ◽  
Sexual Assaults ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Violent Crimes ◽  
Serial Offenders

Sexual assault is a violent crime that traumatizes individual victims and endangers entire communities. Every victim of sexual assault deserves an opportunity for justice and access to the resources they need to recover from this trauma. In addition, many perpetrators of sexual assaults are serial offenders who also commit other violent crimes, including armed robberies, aggravated assaults, burglary, domestic violence, and homicides, against strangers and acquaintances. Criminal justice agencies have the power to create a strategic, sustainable plan for an improved response to sexual assault that aligns with current best practices and national recommendations. In this document, we define an “improved response” as an approach that supports effective investigation and prosecution of sexual assault cases, holds perpetrators accountable, and promotes healing and recovery for victims of sexual assault. This guide will help prosecutor and law enforcement agencies create a process with milestones, goals, and suggested actions, all designed to support a successful and sustainable approach for addressing sexual assault cases. Improving the criminal justice system’s response to sexual assault ultimately improves public safety and promotes trust between criminal justice agencies and the communities they serve.

scholarly journals Accessing medical biobanks to solve crimes: ethical considerations

2020 ◽  
pp. medethics-2020-106133
Author(s):  
Nina F de Groot ◽  
Britta C van Beers ◽  
Lieven Decock ◽  
Gerben Meynen
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Biological Samples ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Potential Value ◽  
Crime Investigation ◽  
Ethical Guidance ◽  
Relevant Case ◽  
Dna Profiles

Millions of human biological samples are stored worldwide for medical research or treatment purposes. These biospecimens are of enormous potential value to law enforcement as DNA profiles can be obtained from these samples. However, forensic use of such biospecimens raises a number of ethical questions. This article aims to explore ethical issues of using human bodily material in medical biobanks for crime investigation and prosecution purposes. Concerns about confidentiality, trust, autonomy and justice will be discussed. We explore how to balance these concerns against the importance of crime solving. Relevant case examples of forensic use of medical biobanks show that requests by law enforcement to access biobanks are handled in disparate ways. We identify some core ethical issues and conclude that further research on these issues is needed to provide ethical guidance.

ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO URINALYSIS IN THE DETECTION OF DRUGS

1991 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail S. Gibson ◽  
Shelah Manley
Keyword(s):  
Civil Liberties ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Psychological Tests ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Drug Detection ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
American Civil Liberties Union ◽  
Urine Testing

Detecting drugs in the workplace by means of urinalysis has been subject to a great deal of controversy as its acceptance by employees, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), state legislatures and unions varies considerably. A multitude of technical and practical reasons continue to support the belief that there is no viable substitute for urinalysis. Because of the susceptibility of urine testing alternatives methods of drug detection need to be explored. This paper examines physical alternatives as well as psychological tests that may be useful alternatives.

scholarly journals Data Mining Technique to Data Collection and Analysis for Cyber Forensic

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 2786-2789
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Crime Scene ◽  
Forensic Analysis ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Data Mining Technique ◽  
Faulty Node ◽  
Digital Forensic ◽  
Data Collection And Analysis ◽  
Data Investigation

In the world of Digital forensic the uncovered digital may contain vital information for digital data investigation for investigator. Digital data collected from the crime scene leads to find out the clue after performing analysis by the examiner. This process of data examination data collection and analysis plays important role in cyber world for the forensic investigator. The cybercrime is a part of computer forensics where the digital evidences are analyze by the investigator and to perform analysis special measurements and techniques are required in order to use this details that has to be accepted in court of law for law enforcement. The data collection of evidence is a key aspect for the investigator, such kind of digital data has to be collected from different sources at the crime scene and this process involves to collect each and every evidence of digital crime scene and later this gather data will be analyze by the experts to reach to the conclusion. In this paper the proposed method collected the data from the crime scene efficiently which includes log data, transactional data, physical drive data, and network data; later this collected data analyzed to find out the theft node in the network. In this paper FTK 4.0 digital forensic tool used to reduce plenty of time for data processing and later report will be produce that will be accepted tin the court of law. This paper also focuses the data collection method with in the network and reach to the faulty node and later this faulty node analyzed with all collected data for forensic analysis. For this standard algorithm used to analyze the performance of distinct features used for network attacks. Kmeans clustering methodology is used to create cluster of victim node and represent victim data in systematic manner for the ease of law enforcement.

scholarly journals An investigation of latent fingerprinting techniques

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ritika Dhaneshwar ◽  
Mandeep Kaur ◽  
Manvjeet Kaur
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Forensic Analysis ◽  
Fingerprint Recognition ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Benchmark Datasets ◽  
Multiple Challenges ◽  
Reliability And Robustness

Abstract Background Latent fingerprints are the unintentional impressions that are left at crime scenes, which are considered to be highly significant in forensic analysis and authenticity verification. It is an extremely crucial tool used by law enforcement and forensic agencies for the conviction of criminals. However, due to the accidental nature of these impressions, the quality of prints uplifted is generally inferior. Main body In order to improve the overall fingerprint recognition performance, there is an insistent need to design novel methods to improve the reliability and robustness of the existing techniques. Therefore, a systematic review is presented to study the existing methods for latent fingerprint acquisition, enhancement, reconstruction, and matching, along with various benchmark datasets available for research purposes. Conclusion The paper highlights multiple challenges and research gaps using comparative analysis of existing enhancement, reconstruction and matching approaches in order to augment the research in this direction that has become imperative in this digital era.

scholarly journals Forensic Analysis of Fitbit Versa 2 Data on Android

Electronics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 1431
Author(s):  
Yung Han Yoon ◽  
Umit Karabiyik
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Credit Card ◽  
Smartphone Application ◽  
Forensic Analysis ◽  
New Device ◽  
Related Data ◽  
Mobile Forensics ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Media Message ◽  
Fitness Trackers

The increase in the adoption of wearable fitness trackers has led to their inclusion as valuable evidence used by law enforcement during investigations. The information available in these fitness trackers can be used by law enforcement to prosecute or exonerate an individual. Wearable fitness devices are constantly being released by companies, with new firmware created for each iteration. As technology developers, research and law enforcement must keep pace to take advantage of data that can be used in investigations. The Fitbit line of devices is a popular brand of wearable trackers. This study will investigate what artifacts are generated by the new Fitbit Versa 2 by investigating what data are generated and stored on the smartphone app component of the new device. The artifacts discovered will be related to areas of forensic interest that are relevant to a law enforcement officer or digital forensics practitioner. Previous research and their methodologies used for application and mobile forensics will be used to conduct this research. This study finds the Fitbit Versa 2, and by extension, the Fitbit smartphone application does not store social media message notifications pushed to the tracker by the user’s mobile device. Some credit card information, health-related data, such as heart rate, GPS locations, and other potentially identifying data were found in plaintext. While the exposed data is not enough on its own to pose an immediate serious issue, it can be used as leverage to phish a user for further details.

Criminal Jurisdiction, the Public Dimension to ‘Effective Protection’ and the Construction of Community-Citizen Relations

2001 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 25-46
Author(s):  
Estella Baker
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
European Court Of Justice ◽  
Effective Protection ◽  
The Public ◽  
Community Law ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
European Court ◽  
Criminal Justice Systems ◽  
Law And Justice

In a series of decisions the European Court of Justice [‘the Court’] has ruled that Member States must deploy their law enforcement authorities, including their criminal justice systems, so as to safeguard Community interests from threat or damage. These rulings have received attention from commentators because, amongst other things, they make it explicit that Community law has a tangible impact on matters of criminal law and justice notwithstanding the absence of a criminal legal base in the Community Treaty.

Functioning of DNA Database in Poland

2017 ◽  
Vol 297 ◽  
pp. 59-65
Author(s):  
Anna Jurga ◽  
◽  
Jakub Mondzelewski ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Police Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
Forensic Dna ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Dna Databases ◽  
Dna Database ◽  
Small Collection ◽  
Dna Profiles

Forensic DNA databases that operate in the zone forming an interface between science and law have the purpose of gathering and processing DNA profiles for the needs of law enforcement and judicial authorities responsible for preventing and combating crime. Therefore, their appropriate functioning is important. On one hand, it improves efficiency of police work and, on the other hand, it has to play a required role in protecting citizen rights and personal data. The National DNA Database has functioned in Poland since 2007. Its effectiveness is correlated with the number of stored profiles. Despite small collection the Database has on numerous occasions proven its high usefulness in solving criminal cases. The possibility of carrying out searches in other countries databases, as well as legislative and organisational undertakings aiming at improvement of the Database operation are gradually bringing effects and result in an increased detective potential of this tool.

A Forensic-as-a-Service Delivery Platform for Law Enforcement Agencies

2013 ◽  
pp. 313-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Marturana ◽  
Simone Tacconi ◽  
Giuseppe F. Italiano
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Service Delivery ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Forensic Analysis ◽  
Design Guidelines ◽  
Functional Requirements ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Service Delivery Platform

With the global diffusion of cybercrime, the ever-growing market penetration of high-performance and low-cost personal digital devices, and the commercial success of cloud computing, the area of digital forensics is faced with various new challenges that must be taken seriously. In this chapter, the authors describe a novel approach to digital investigations based on the emerging “Forensics as a Service” (FaaS) model. This model attempts to optimize Law Enforcement Agency’s (LEA) forensic procedures, reduce complexity, and save operational costs. Inspired by previous work on distributed computing for forensic analysis, this chapter provides the reader with design guidelines of a FaaS platform for secure service delivery. The proposed FaaS platform should be able to support investigators and practitioners in their daily tasks (e.g. digital evidence examination, analysis, and reporting) once implemented by a cloud forensic provider or internally by a LEA. In this chapter, the authors also present the architecture components, interfaces, communication protocols, functional and non-functional requirements, as well as security specifications of the proposed framework in detail.

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