Sometimes things do not work as planned due to circumstances. I should leave to Riga as chairman for the ENFSI Forensic IT Working group meeting, however was in bad luck, due to an accute appidendicitis, and I had surgery for that. So unfortunately no visit to Riga for me this time, with the nice ENFSI group. However since the conference is very well organized and the steering committee is there, I am sure it will be a nice event.
However I hope the plans next week will work better, and as long as the complications are not too severe, it should work. Also the IAFS conference is this week, so I know many people that go to Madeira.
However many things work well, some projects got approved, and of course some interesting casework.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
September 2011
As usual it is busy in September after the vacation. I had a phone conference call with the Board of Directors of the AAFS www.aafs.org at 2 am in the morning. I am getting used to it, however it takes always some time to get back to sleep afterwards, it is good to see the next call is earlier.
The ENFSI Forensic IT Working group meeting in Riga is approaching, as well as other meetings which I have to prepare. Currently also new students come in for projects on biometric devices and PRNU as well as heart beat. In October I have a meeting in Montreal were I am invited speaker and a meeting in China. Later on I have a week vacation, so lots of travelling in the meantime.
Also I was asked for a forensic cruise, and I was wondering what happens there. People seem to enjoy forensic topics on cruises, so who knows perhaps I might join such a cruise as invited speaker in future.
The ENFSI Forensic IT Working group meeting in Riga is approaching, as well as other meetings which I have to prepare. Currently also new students come in for projects on biometric devices and PRNU as well as heart beat. In October I have a meeting in Montreal were I am invited speaker and a meeting in China. Later on I have a week vacation, so lots of travelling in the meantime.
Also I was asked for a forensic cruise, and I was wondering what happens there. People seem to enjoy forensic topics on cruises, so who knows perhaps I might join such a cruise as invited speaker in future.
Monday, August 01, 2011
August 2011
August is always the time for writing articles and papers, and working on backlogs and doing new proposals for projects etc. Just finished submitting abstracts to the AAFS conference in Atlanta in 2012 . Also preparing our ENFSI FIT Working group meeting Forensic IT in Riga .
I am working on a paper for an encyclopedia on identity fraud, and of course the forensic invesigation of this topic. In the past we worked on issues around identity issues with biometric systems and spoofing etc within FIDIS.
Currently also the financial situation in Europe is getting more troublesome, so I expect more government cuts in future. It is always good to be prepared for this, and hopefully forensic science will not be hurt too much. Unfortunately we saw already in the United Kingdom that the government shut down the Forensic Science Service, the largest forensic science lab in Europe at the beginning of this year.
Also interested to see how the CSI effect will evolve, sometimes I get called to court with questions concerning image processing in CSI and why we can not do the same. Perhaps the expectations will go to the regular level again, since nowadays there are many students in forensic science, however it is not easy to get a job, since in general there are not that many vacancies. This is different for forensic ICT where we see that it is more difficult to have vacancies fulfilled in informatics and related areas, since it is expected that casework in cybercrime and related areas will grow.
I am working on a paper for an encyclopedia on identity fraud, and of course the forensic invesigation of this topic. In the past we worked on issues around identity issues with biometric systems and spoofing etc within FIDIS.
Currently also the financial situation in Europe is getting more troublesome, so I expect more government cuts in future. It is always good to be prepared for this, and hopefully forensic science will not be hurt too much. Unfortunately we saw already in the United Kingdom that the government shut down the Forensic Science Service, the largest forensic science lab in Europe at the beginning of this year.
Also interested to see how the CSI effect will evolve, sometimes I get called to court with questions concerning image processing in CSI and why we can not do the same. Perhaps the expectations will go to the regular level again, since nowadays there are many students in forensic science, however it is not easy to get a job, since in general there are not that many vacancies. This is different for forensic ICT where we see that it is more difficult to have vacancies fulfilled in informatics and related areas, since it is expected that casework in cybercrime and related areas will grow.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
July 2011
In June organized an event on video investigation with the police in the Netherlands, also with a BBQ, since it is our tradition. Of course it is somewhat warmer in the summer.
Also preparing some papers for the AAFS, since August 1st is approaching soon, and some other deadlines for papers and reviewing activities. This month I had to limit the number of review requests, since otherwise I could not fetch deadlines. It is often that requests for reviews arrive before the summer, and often it has to be done in a short time.
I also went to Salvador, Brazil, to the conference http://ictinforensics.org/conference/scope.html ICT in forensics. It was an international conference with participants from Europe, US and Asia. I was invited to give a course on some aspects on forensic ICT, especially handling images and video. It was a nice event, and I organized some hands on workshop, and it the day went very fast to me. Doing these events is also good to present and discuss on forensic issues, and widen the view on interpretation of evidence. In this conference besides forensic scientist also prosecutors and attorneys were present, so it was a good audience.
Also our paper http://lpr.oxfordjournals.org/content/10/2/149.abstract on likelihood ratios in cameras was published in law probablity and risk, so it was good to see.
Also preparing some papers for the AAFS, since August 1st is approaching soon, and some other deadlines for papers and reviewing activities. This month I had to limit the number of review requests, since otherwise I could not fetch deadlines. It is often that requests for reviews arrive before the summer, and often it has to be done in a short time.
I also went to Salvador, Brazil, to the conference http://ictinforensics.org/conference/scope.html ICT in forensics. It was an international conference with participants from Europe, US and Asia. I was invited to give a course on some aspects on forensic ICT, especially handling images and video. It was a nice event, and I organized some hands on workshop, and it the day went very fast to me. Doing these events is also good to present and discuss on forensic issues, and widen the view on interpretation of evidence. In this conference besides forensic scientist also prosecutors and attorneys were present, so it was a good audience.
Also our paper http://lpr.oxfordjournals.org/content/10/2/149.abstract on likelihood ratios in cameras was published in law probablity and risk, so it was good to see.
Sunday, June 05, 2011
June 2011
This month finally some time to think and work on the blog again (too much casework last month), at the University of Warwick, where I am in the Scarman House with a fast internet connection. I am working on a presentation for the FP7 Divefor project of the developments at the NFI, such as defraser. It appears that also others are developing plugins with the software, so this is nice for an open source product. The software is used for analysing and repairing video files in a forensic proper way and is interactive. Currently we are developing the H264 further, however that plugin might not be open source anymore, since the return on investment is low otherwise. Which is an issue with open source, unless there is a smarter business model behind it.
It appears that last month I had most reviews ever in a month. Reviewing papers is always good to do, since it makes you reading papers better then otherwise, and good papers always give you new insights. This time I also had several proposals from the NIJ to review.
At the end of this month I will go to Salvador, Brasil, since I was invited to give a short course there at ICT in Forensics. I am looking forward to this meeting, since it might give another view on new developments and bring me new ideas. Currently I am also updating my site at http://forensic.to , since I had some backlog in updating links.
Also the program of our ENFSI Forensic IT Working group meeting in Riga in September is progressing, I already saw some interesting abstracts.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
April 2011
The month started with a week vacation, and then I had time to read and review. Of course it was also a busy month with casework, and we appeared to receive more cases then predicted, so there was not much time for other things. I also had time for several reviews this month, and was also invited for two keynote talks.
Within the Digital Imaging School at the NFI, I gave a course on Photo Response Non Uniformity and using this in practical cases. I tried to have much interaction, so it appeared to work. Also I went to Riga, Latvia for the preparation of our Forensic IT Working group meeting of ENFSI in September. We try to keep the costs low this time, since many government labs have budget cuts. Air fares to Riga tend to be low due several low cost airlines, and the hotels are not expensive. Of course the challenge is to get most of the meeting in collaboration and new projects, so we will have several workshops, and of course also on developments such as forensic examination of cloud computing and updating our best practice documents.
Within the Digital Imaging School at the NFI, I gave a course on Photo Response Non Uniformity and using this in practical cases. I tried to have much interaction, so it appeared to work. Also I went to Riga, Latvia for the preparation of our Forensic IT Working group meeting of ENFSI in September. We try to keep the costs low this time, since many government labs have budget cuts. Air fares to Riga tend to be low due several low cost airlines, and the hotels are not expensive. Of course the challenge is to get most of the meeting in collaboration and new projects, so we will have several workshops, and of course also on developments such as forensic examination of cloud computing and updating our best practice documents.
Friday, March 25, 2011
March 2011
This month I was busy since I had a knee surgery, which went well. So before this date I waited for the urgent issues and casework that had to be handled before deadlines. The recovery period of this knee operation is about two weeks, and it feels like being repaired now.
It appears I am on a list of
, and there is a wide variety of blogs available on forensic science, such as Cyber Forensics Blog by DMS member Marcus Rogers
has a few recent posts. http://deforensics.blogspot.com/and the Windows Incident Response Blog by one of our newest DMS
members, Harlan Carvey, is at: http://windowsir.blogspot.com/. Always good to see some discussions on digital and multimedia sciences.
Currently we see more interest also in Nucleair forensics, which is important to handle in specialized labs as such and is important in analysing disasters as in Japan.
Also there is an interesting article in Spectrum of IEEE on the law of Moore, where the author claims the growth of speed of super computers will slow down. It is also nice to read that in 10 years the fastest super computer in 1997 has the same speed as a game console in 2006. However perhaps new architectures and other means will also keep us up with the Moores law.
With my knee surgery I now have some time to read and do some reviews. So I collected all tasks which can be done from home untill this date. Obviously I can not work on casework at home, however writing articles and reading the current state of the art in depth is important to keep up with developments.
It appears I am on a list of
, and there is a wide variety of blogs available on forensic science, such as Cyber Forensics Blog by DMS member Marcus Rogershas a few recent posts. http://deforensics.blogspot.com/and the Windows Incident Response Blog by one of our newest DMS
members, Harlan Carvey, is at: http://windowsir.blogspot.com/. Always good to see some discussions on digital and multimedia sciences.
Currently we see more interest also in Nucleair forensics, which is important to handle in specialized labs as such and is important in analysing disasters as in Japan.
Also there is an interesting article in Spectrum of IEEE on the law of Moore, where the author claims the growth of speed of super computers will slow down. It is also nice to read that in 10 years the fastest super computer in 1997 has the same speed as a game console in 2006. However perhaps new architectures and other means will also keep us up with the Moores law.
With my knee surgery I now have some time to read and do some reviews. So I collected all tasks which can be done from home untill this date. Obviously I can not work on casework at home, however writing articles and reading the current state of the art in depth is important to keep up with developments.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)