Building a Digital Forensic Laboratory

Chapter 23. The Future of Digital Forensics in the Criminal Justice System

Introduction

The term digital forensics is only now starting to come into common use. Up until now, we have typically used the term computer forensics. However, digital forensics is more appropriate today, for two reasons. First, forensic investigation is no longer done only on what we would generally consider to be a computer. We have never considered washing machines, refrigerators, televisions, or cars to be computers, but today they all contain processors and memory and can store information that may be of evidentiary value. Second, when investigators of conventional crimes such as robbery and murder hear the term computer forensics, they tend to feel that if no obvious ...