Are PC Breathalyzers complete science-fiction?
As the popularity of PCs has increased, so has the use of them in committing crimes. This means a suspect’s computer and the evidence found on it can often be key in securing a conviction. But analyzing a hard drive can presently take months, so clearly what’s needed is some kind of PC breathalyzer, giving instant results as to whether there has been a wrongdoing or not.
That isn’t my idea, unfortunately, otherwise I’d be a top bod in the British police. No, this PC breathalyzer of the future idea comes from the mind of Detective superintendent Charlie McMurdie, head of the Police Central E-crime Unit (PCeU), a British unit dedicated solely to the various cyber crimes hat now exist.
She explained to Silicon.com her idea for a digital forensic tool that would do for PCs what a breathalyzer does for a human body. Anyone stopped for suspected driving while intoxicated undergoes a breath test which almost immediately determines whether they are over the legal limit. As the picture above shows, it is so simple even ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair can manage it. If they are over the limit then a trip to the police station for a more accurate blood test is the next step.
Unfortunately, there is no such device for determining whether a PC has been used for illegal activity or whether there is incriminating evidence hidden somewhere on the hard drive. Instead, computers have to be seized and subjected to rigorous testing and analysis before anything of real consequence can be ascertained. This can take up to a year due to the backlog in digital forensic work.
McMurdie told Silicon:
Do we need to seize five computers in a suspect’s house or could we use a simple tool to preview on site and identify there’s that one email we are looking for and we can then use that and interview the person now, rather then waiting six to 12 months for the evidence to come back to us?
For example, look at breathalyzers – I am not a scientist, I could not do a chemical test on somebody when they are arrested for drink driving but I have a tool that tells me when to bring somebody in.
It’s a nice idea but it’s unfortunately in the realms of science-fiction at the moment. Experts agree that while a positive step, this is years away, if even possible due to some very large technical challenges.
Simon Steggles, director of Disklabs told The Register:
From a practical point of view this is much more difficult than it might seems. You can’t just plug a memory stick into a PC and extract Internet history files, that will alter the state of the computer. Write blocking technology is needed and that’s expensive.
McMurdie also discussed the setting up of some sort of central forensic server, which policeman from all over the UK (and potentially the world) could hook up to in order to analyze a cyber crime. The top cop also revealed that British police have been in talks with American authorities about the use of remote hard drive searches across the Internet.
The PCeU is a new department of the British police which will be focusing on the most serious cyber crimes. It will also be co-ordinating the policing of all online offenses.
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December 14th, 2008
Why don’t you Brits just put keyloggers on every computer, make them not able to be disabled and make them upload their data to a central repository, and then some offline back end processing can go sniffing through whatever anyone has typed and then you can go prosecuting people without any probable cause to even investigate. Man, your society really sucks. I wouldn’t put it past either GB or AUS trying to put forward something this ridiculous in their so-called “free” societies.