The riot that took place on January 6 around the US Capitol building eventually led to the rioters breaching the building and gaining access to various offices, as well as the House and Senate floors. Since then, many law enforcement agencies have been investigating and collecting evidence about the incident. Darrell West of the Brookings Institute recently published an article entitled Digital fingerprints are identifying Capitol rioters, in which he describes the various types of electronic evidence that can and is being collected by law enforcement.

In the article, West discusses items of evidentiary value such as social media posts, text messages and emails. The evidence that can be gathered from social media seems to be one of the main focuses of the article. West writes “Identifying rioters has been easy because many of them posted pictures of themselves inside the Capitol Building.”

Not only do the pictures assist in identifying these people but that also helps build a rough timeline of when something happened as posts to most social media sites are dated and timestamped as to when they were uploaded. Other information such as file metadata would be useful as well, especially with photographs where items such as device location, date and time of the photo, and other items can be found. The article is definitely worth a read and provides an insight into what information is assisting law enforcement with their investigations.

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Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
https://senseient.com/services/digital-forensics

Recently NBC 4 Washington reported on a breakthrough made by the Kalamazoo County Michigan Sherriff’s office in the 2017 murder of Ronald French. French had been discovered dead in a cornfield in the county on June 26, 2017. His fatal wounds were consistent with having been strangled with a cord and dragged behind a car or truck.

Despite the Sheriff’s office best efforts, the case yielded no answers or arrests for French’s grieving family. However, their luck changed when recently one of the investigators learned of the potential gold mine of information that can often be extracted from the onboard computers of newer vehicles. French’s 2016 Chevy Silverado pickup had been stolen around the same time of the murder and later recovered. Focus shifted to what data it might still contain.

As luck would have it, a forensic examination of the truck yielded an audio recording of a man other than French using the hands free stereo system to play music which was time stamped at approximately the same time the murder had taken place. Police played the recording for a number of people close to French and they identified the voice of Joshua Wessel. Wessel’s voice was even identified by his wife according to police reports. Using this evidence, the police were able to put some of the other pieces of the investigation together and they have arrested and charged Wessel with the murder. He has pled not guilty and is awaiting trial.

Email:    Phone: 703.359.0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
https://senseient.com/services/digital-forensics