September 2010

This month is again more busy, since everything is back from vacation. This month I will go to the ENFSI Forensic IT Working group meeting in Moscow www.enfsi.eu where I am chairman of. Forensic IT relates to cybercrime, and we see that most cybercrimes crosses borders, so a strong effort from the international community is necessary also to share information an solve the crimes.

Last week I gave a talk to students about cybercrime, and the awareness of students on cybercrime seems not to be high yet. Of course the government and companies can protect us from some of the issues related with cybercrime, however it is also good to have a higher awareness with the users, so cases can be solved more rapidly. There are many efforts also from law enforcements and courts to handle more casework, and often changes of laws are necessary also to cope with it internationally.

Of course we will continue with issues such as observer bias and context effects within forensic science (article Whitman and Koppl). In science it is advised do the cases double blind. In practice some courts will send the case with no additional information to compare, however as they also discuss that the simple fact that the samples are submitted causes a bias.

Last weeks some telephone meetings as member of the Board of the AAFS. Since there is time difference between the Netherlands and the US, it meant that I had to wake up at 2 am in the morning, which I am not used to. However the last meeting was at 11 pm, so that works better. Furthermore also giving some contribution on the Interpol review on image analysis.