James Kent Digital Crime Project by Brady Woods

What is digital forensics?

bradywoods1 — 2023-11-30 20:36:06 UTC

Digital forensics is a branch of forensic science encompassing the recovery, investigation, examination, and analysis of material found in digital devices.

What are the challenges associated with digital forensics?

bradywoods1 — 2023-11-30 20:36:13 UTC

Some challenges associated are data encryption, data destruction, and data storage.

Data encryption is when encryption can make it difficult to access the data on the device or network making it hard to collect the evidence.
Data destruction are criminals attempting to destroy digital evidence by wiping or destroying devices.
Data storage is an amount of storage that can be stored on modern digital devices that can make it difficult to relevant information.

Describe and define the chain of custody for digital evidence.

bradywoods1 — 2023-11-30 20:36:28 UTC

Chain of custody tracks the movement of evidence through its collection, safeguarding, and analysis lifestyle by documenting each person who handled the evidence.

Steps of chain of custody for digital evidence

Collection
Transfer
Sequence of control
Analysis
Who was in its custody
Date and time of events
Purpose

How is digital evidence preserved?

bradywoods1 — 2023-11-30 20:36:33 UTC

Digital evidence is preserved by making copies of all the data on storage devices. Experts should identify hidden data areas and restore deleted data.

What is encryption?

bradywoods1 — 2023-11-30 20:36:40 UTC

Encryption is the process of protecting information or data by using mathematical models to scramble it in such way that only the parties who have the key to unscramble it can access it.

What are ways that digital evidence may be presented?

bradywoods1 — 2023-11-30 20:36:48 UTC

Computer hard drive

Internet/Search history

Cell phone

Credit card fraud

Child pornography

Emails, text, instant message

Things stored in the cloud

Who is the suspect(s)?

bradywoods1 — 2023-11-30 20:42:59 UTC

James D. Kent (no picture)

When and where did the crime occur?

bradywoods1 — 2023-11-30 20:43:09 UTC

The year of the crime was 2007 and the year of the conviction was 2009. The crime was cleared in 2012. It occurred in Pougekeepsie, New York.

What was/were the crime(s)?

bradywoods1 — 2023-11-30 20:43:17 UTC

James D. Kent was wrongly convicted of two counts of child pornography and for having pornography on his work computer at the college where he was a professor.

Motive? What was the reason/motivation behind the crime?

bradywoods1 — 2023-11-30 20:43:27 UTC

There was no reason behind it because he was wrongfully convicted.

Digital Evidence

bradywoods1 — 2023-11-30 20:43:40 UTC

The digital evidence was child pornography on his computer.

Trial

bradywoods1 — 2023-11-30 20:43:56 UTC

James Kent is charged with two counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child and 141 counts of possessing a sexual performance by a child. He was sentenced to prison for 3 years and and served all 3 years. On May 8, 2012 New York's Court of Appeals overturned Kent's child pornography convictions on the basis that simply viewing child porn on the Internet is not enough to prove he was promoting or possessing it, and therefore there was insufficient evidence to prove he committed a crime. His retrial was barred by double jeopardy.

Sentencing

bradywoods1 — 2023-11-30 20:44:06 UTC

He was sentenced to 3 years in prison.

Reflection

bradywoods1 — 2023-11-30 20:44:17 UTC

Digital forensics has changed over 30 years because the technology is changing. We are upgrading every technology and everyone has some type of device at home or work where crimes can happen. This field in forensics originated because of the law enforcement and military investigators seeing that crimes are becoming more technical. Digital forensics is used to help investigate cyber crime or identify direct evidence off a device. Digital forensics is not an invaluable resource because it helped many investigators investigating a crime with technology involved. Most people don't realize that investigators can track all information on it even if they deleted the evidence. Many crimes would be unsolved if digital forensics didn't exist because many people have gotten caught by digital evidence.