Police investigators excited by ‘digital detective’ at fingertips

KATHMANDU, Dec 1: As traditional tools and techniques are proving inadequate for fighting cyber crime, Nepal Police has provided its investigators digital forensic tools and technology that will amount to a ‘digital detective’ that is available at their fingertips.
Cyber crime investigators from the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB), Maharajgunj and Metropolitan Police Crime Division (MPCD), Teku anticipate being rid of the daily headaches posed by telecommunication and computer-related crimes.The Crime Investigation Department of Nepal Police on Monday handed over two digital forensic lab sets consisting of field forensic devices, social media discovery and web collection technology devices, email investigation and analysis tool USB dongle, mobile forensics software and live system imaging kits to the investigators.
DSP Naresh Malla of CIB said, “As modern cyber crime has left us with no choice but to change our whole approach to curbing such crimes, the new devices have brought us hope and minimized our dependence on conventional crime control.”
Citing several limitations in cyber crime investigations, police investigators said that the newly acquired devices would be a huge support despite the lack of computer emergency response teams, related experts and a necessary legal framework.
Field forensic devices examine computer related crimes, discover social media connectivity and trace the identity of original territory, and also track the route of emails. Similarly, with the help of mobile forensic software, data can be accessed, stored and synchronized in order to recover digital evidence or data from mobile devices under forensically sound conditions, according the police investigators.
The live system imaging kits also analyze data and provide an analyzed image of cyber crimes, thereby helping the investigators, according to police.
Some of the devices were already in use by police with the help of related organizations, police said adding that now they don’t have to depend on others. For digital evidence to be admissible in court, investigators must follow proper legal procedures when recovering and analyzing data from computer systems.
“As the number and quality of lawyers and related experts have been increasing of late, the performance of such devices will be valued highly,” said Inspector Pashupati Ray Yadav of Metropolitan Police Crime Division. But he also said the inability of the law to keep pace with technological advancements may ultimately limit the use of computer forensics as evidence in court.
Nepal Police had been seeking such digital forensic devices since a decade back but because of budgetary reasons this dream had not come true. Nepal Police is planning to increase the number of such devices along with the number of experts in the challenging era of cyber crime investigations.
According to the crime investigating agencies, the number of cases related to online banking, ATM issues, unauthorized access, email, exchange of sexual material, publication of illegal material, web sms or group sms, source code thefts, internet fraud, and mobile and computer related issues have been increasing in recent years.
Police had been left in dismay due to lack of such detecting tools, techniques, related experts and the legal framework. Due to lack of technical evidence, many criminals were able to escape, according to the investigators.
Last year police introduced lie detecting machines that have brought them success even in complex cases.