Models in collaborative and distributed digital investigation

Ubiquitous computing and communication systems produce ubiquitous electronic evidence of use in many disciplines. For law enforcement, the use of digital evidence has expanded beyond electronic child exploitation materials into other traditional areas of criminal justice, including homicide, robbery and narcotics trafficking. This expanded utility is also available to any information community in need of historical data. But the growth in the distribution and volume of this information and its storage media create challenges for collection and the validation of reliability. Several ad hoc and distributed models for investigative process may assist both law enforcement and the curation and archival communities. We examine and discuss the data from these models and the future of distributing digital forensic expertise for broad use.

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