Foundations of How to Work a Digital Case

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With the increasing criminal investigations involving digital crimes, Foundations of How to Work a Digital Case is a three-day course that will summarize the foundational principles of how to work an overall digital criminal investigation.

This class is coming to the Criminal Justice Institute on March 19-21.

This hands-on course will include examples of working cases involving social media, cloud-based servers, emails, and cellular devices. Learn how to communicate and request information from websites, cloud-based servers, and more entities from within the United States of America and other countries.

Starting with the reporting of the crime, you will learn to preserve evidence, acquire evidence (search warrants and/or consent searches), search the evidence, and interview the suspect to help you build a concrete case file for prosecution.

**This course is primarily based on digital criminal investigations of child sexual abuse material (commonly referred to as child pornography), but the principles learned from this course will work for all digital criminal investigations.

Topics include:

  • The do’s and don’ts when dealing with sensitive digital material
  • Basic programs used, new nomenclature, how these cases are worked differently
  • Law Enforcement Portals for digital subscriber information
  • Internet protocols
  • Managing initial search warrants and subpoenas
  • Preparing devices (cellphones, laptops, etc.) for analysis
  • Open-source data, and how to search through it to obtain a history of targets of the criminal investigation
  • User-agent strings and how they can be useful in a criminal investigation
  • Prioritizing and searching through data
  • Converting GPS data from different types of files, such as cellular extractions
  • A brief introduction to the dark/deep web, steganography, and other unique factors
  • Options for the final stages of the criminal investigation, such as search warrants
  • Interviewing targets of criminal investigation
  • Preparing a case file for the prosecutor

Officers will also undergo a practical exercise. A compilation of data files will be provided and students will go through the evidence in the search for information on their target(s). Identification of the target is required.

Following the practical exercise, officers will openly discuss mistakes made and/or roadblocks, not only in the practical but in the performance of their duties, with an intent to learn what could have been done differently.

Don’t miss this learning opportunity! Registration is now open.

Questions? Contact Donnie Reddick @ [email protected] or 501-570-8097.