Laboratory to examine mobiles and PDAs opens

A laboratory dedicated to mobile phone and PDA forensics has been opened in Aylesbury.

The laboratory set up by computer forensics company CY40R is equipped with the latest technology to aid mobile phone investigations and gives greater capacity for the increased demands in this field of forensics.

Forces are becoming increasingly aware of the potential evidence that can be retrieved from mobile phone investigations; the capacity for storing information on more sophisticated models can be equivalent to that found on a computer.

With sophisticated mobile phones, forensic experts are now not only looking to retrieve deleted messages and call registers from handsets and SIM cards – however that alone can be incriminating. They are now able to investigate internet access, email correspondence, the making and downloading of videos and images and much more dependent on the make and model of the phone.

CY40R frequently receives calls from clients mid-trial who have realised information that could help their case is stored on a mobile and need a report extremely quickly – with the new lab the company will now be able to offer this service on a large scale.

CY40R has also increased its capacity to analyse audio and visual footage. Audio and visual images captured on CCTV cameras, personal video recorders, mobile phones or dictaphones can often hold compelling evidence for the prosecution or defence, however in the majority of cases the footage is not of a quality to be admissible in court.

This kind of service is being used increasingly for cases involving harassment, assault, murder, road traffic crimes or simply to place a suspect at the scene of a crime. In the majority of cases however, the clarity of the footage is not to a standard whereby it would be taken at face value as evidence.

It is more important than ever for law enforcement agencies and the legal community to factor in the capacity that newer models of mobile phones have for storing and creating media files. The company was recently presented with a media file from a mobile phone – it was the answering machine capability that had been used to preserve a conversation.

Experts were able to remove a substantial amount of background noise which in fact revealed a confession. They have also investigated an incident involving the making and distribution of indecent images on a mobile phone; although it has not previously been an obvious line of enquiry for this type of offence it is presenting itself more often.