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Few items that comprise the material culture of the International Space Station ever return to Earth. Most are left on the station or placed on cargo resupply ships that burn up on atmospheric re-entry. This fact presents a challenge for archaeologists who use material culture as their primary evidence. Together with a sociologist, we observed the processes that have been developed by NASA contractors to handle and return items that come back to Earth on the Cargo Dragon vehicle. We observed two missions, CRS-13 and CRS-14, in January and May 2018, respectively, traveling to the locations of work and interviewing the contractors and associated staff. These observations are described here, using the lenses of archaeological understandings of discard practices, the anthropological concept of the chaîne opératoire , and the forensic idea of "chain of custody" to interpret the meanings and associations of the various kinds of objects returned from space. • Processes for handling cargo from ISS are elaborate, thorough, and costly. • ISS cargo includes scientific samples, broken equipment, and crew personal items. • Archaeology and sociology show the meanings behind ISS cargo processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many believe that an increase in the public confidence in the investigation of sexual crimes, and in conviction rates, will lead to an increase in the reporting of these crimes. Consequently, Forensic Science Providers are continually striving to make improvements in evidence recovery and examination and the subsequent interpretation of evidence. One development is in methods that enable an individual to self-sample. However, in cases where a complainant has self-sampled, questions of when the samples were taken, how they were stored and so on, can be legitimately raised. Additionally the continuity and integrity of evidential samples may be questioned resulting in them not being acceptable to the courts and potential evidence could therefore be lost. There is a large emotional and psychological impact of sexual assault and rape and no complainant who reports a sexual assault and recovers material should have that evidence inadmissible to a court. Specialised units for victims of alleged sexual violence are available and offer far more than the recovery of evidential samples. This commentary on behalf of the Faculty of Forensic & Legal Medicine (FFLM) and the Association of Forensic Science Providers Body Fluid Forum (AFSP BFF) highlights the need for after care for the victims of sexual assault and why all evidence recovered in cases of alleged sexual assault and sexual violence should be obtained in line with best practice protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advancing technologies become tools for illicit activities and avoid detection, digital forensics is necessary for law enforcement in modern criminal investigations. In order to maintain the integrity and authenticity of the evidence, a chain of custody is essential for the successful prosecution of criminals in court. However, it is a great challenge to manage the preservation and collection of digital evidence because of its fragile and volatile in nature. Blockchain has been proposed as a promising and reliable technology to provide immutability and traceability of digital content, however, the applications of blockchain to the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) requires special attention to the security issue. In this research, we proposed a blockchain of custody framework to facilitate the security and transparency of digital evidence in criminal investigation process. The framework is implement on Ethereum smart contract to support authenticity and integrity of digital evidence in preliminary investigation, case management and court phases. We also propose the role of investigator to leverage access control in evidence creation, transferring and modification. The corresponding actions with judicial process is simulated using private ethereum blockchain. The experimental results indicate that the proposed framework can prevent digital evidence been tampered or contaminated and assure its legal defensibility with rigorous privilege management. Moreover, by successfully synchronizing digital evidence transactions to multiple nodes ensures the accountability of evidence data for every involved law enforcement agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the high technologies are wildly adopted in illicit activities, the high volume and complexity of digital evidence make the collection task at the crime scene a great challenge. Triage is a well-known solution to give a quick review and prioritize the data regarding the admissibility of digital evidence. However, conducting triage at the crime scene may lead to evidence contamination due to limited time, space and human resources. And these common vital mistakes are fatal to the prosecution. In order to facilitate the effectiveness of the on-scene criminal investigation, we propose an AutoTriage B-CoC model to support automatic triage collecting and blockchain uploading. The superior accuracy and completeness of the digital evidence can be achieved without human interfering. The experimental results show that the on-scene examiner can manage the preservation and collection of digital evidence by typing two key values, CaseID and EvidenceID. We expect the detailed design of operations regarding to four phases, i.e. Triage, Documentation, Blockchain and Report, can provide important guidance for further practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La province de l'Ogooué-maritime est véritablement connue du domaine de l'archéologie dès les années 1980 par les chercheurs du LANA, sous l'impulsion de Lazare Digombé, Michel Locko et leur (s) équipe (s). Un peu plus de 30 ans après, les premières missions de recherches, des ramassages de surface non loin de la centrale de traitement des hydrocarbures de la société Perenco, Batanga centrale 2 ont livré la documentation archéologique retenue pour ce travail. Cette étude technologique a permis de déterminer une chaîne opératoire adaptée à la production d'éclats à partir de plaquettes de silex roulées et de rares galets ovoïdes. Le débitage est essentiellement représenté avec différents schémas opératoires (unipolaire, bipolaire et centripète). L'analyse des nucléus atteste d'un caractère particulièrement déterminant pour les processus de débitage en raison de la morphologie, de la texture et des modules des blocs. L'étude typologique signale une forte présence d'éclats corticaux ou non, de petites dimensions, assez larges et assez épais, de nucléus et de blocs ayant rarement servi de percuteurs. Les éclats en présence semblent caractériser les objectifs du débitage. Aucun outil typologiquement identifiable n'a été relevé. La céramique est attestée par quelques tessons également récoltés en surface. Des éléments liés à l'alimentation ont également pu être approchés par quelques restes de coquilles probablement des huîtres. Au regard des objets en présence, ce site peut être attribué à la fin du Late Stone Age. The province of Ogooué-Maritime has been known to the field of archaeology since the 1980s by LANA researchers, under the impetus of Lazare Digombé, Michel Locko and their team(s). A little more than 30 years after the first research missions, surface collections not far from the Perenco company's hydrocarbon processing plant, Batanga Centrale 2, provided the archaeological documentation selected for this work. This technological study made it possible to determine a chain of operations adapted to the production of flakes from rolled flint plates and rare ovoid pebbles. The debitage is essentially represented with different operating schemes (unipolar, bipolar and centripetal). The analysis of the nuclei shows that the morphology, texture and moduli of the blocks are particularly decisive for the debitage processes. The typological study indicates a strong presence of cortical or non-cortical flakes, of small dimensions, fairly wide and fairly thick, of nuclei and of blocks that were rarely used as strikers. The flakes present seem to characterise the objectives of the debitage. No typologically identifiable tools were found. Ceramics are attested by a few shards also collected on the surface. Elements related to food could also be approached by some remains of shells, probably oysters. In view of the objects present, this site can be attributed to the Late Stone Age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advancements in Information Technology landscape over the past two decades have made the collection, preservation, and analysis of digital evidence an extremely important tool for solving cybercrimes and preparing court cases. Digital evidence plays an important role in cybercrime investigation, as it is used to link individuals with criminal activities. Thus it is of utmost importance to guarantee integrity, authenticity, and auditability of digital evidence as it moves along different levels of hierarchy in the chain of custody during cybercrime investigation. Modern day technology is more advanced in terms of portability and power. A huge amount of information is generated by billions of devices connected to the internet that needs to be stored and accessed, thus posing great challenges in maintaining the integrity and authenticity of digital evidence for its admissibility in the court of law. Handling digital evidences poses unique challenges because of the fact they are latent, volatile, fragile, can cross jurisdictional borders quickly and easily and in many cases can be time/machine dependent too. Thus guaranteeing the authenticity and legality of processes and procedures used to gather and transfer the evidence in a digital society is a real challenge. Blockchain technology's capability of enabling comprehensive view of transactions (events/actions) back to origination provides enormous promise for the forensic community. In this research we proposed Forensic-Chain: A Blockchain based Digital Forensics Chain of Custody, bringing integrity and tamper resistance to digital forensics chain of custody. We also provided Proof of Concept in Hyperledger Composer and evaluated its performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lawful Interception (LI) of data communications is an essential tool for Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) in order to investigate criminal activities carried out or coordinated by means of Internet. However, the ability to secretly monitor the activities of citizens also has a great impact on civil rights. Therefore, democratic societies must prevent abuse and ensure that LI is only employed in specific cases with justifiable grounds or a probable cause. Nowadays, in many countries each interception must be authorized by a wiretap warrant, usually issued by a judge. However, this wiretap warrant is merely an administrative document that should be checked by the network or service operator before enabling the monitoring of its customers, whose communications are later handed over to a LEA in plaintext. This paper proposes the idea of employing a Digital Wiretap Warrant (DWW), which further protects the civil liberties, security and privacy of LI by ensuring that monitoring devices can only be enabled with a valid DWW, and by encrypting the captured data so only the authorized LEA is able to decrypt those communications. Moreover, in the proposed DWW framework all digital evidence is securely time-stamped and signed, thus guaranteeing that it has not been tampered with, and that a proper chain of custody has been met. In particular this paper proposes how to apply the DWW concept to the lawful interception framework defined by the ETSI LI Technical Committee, and evaluates how the additional security mechanisms could impact the performance and storage costs of a LI platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In 2001 FAO published the “International Plan of Action to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing”. Based on this plan, national and supranational authorities have developed legislation to fight the so called IUU fishing. A key aspect of the legislation proposed so far is the mandatory recording of some data elements and the requirement that these data should be available for access through a traceability system. This article outlines a general framework for evaluation of these types of requirements, using a predictor-outcome N-way matrix. A “good practise” system is described, against which the existing systems and practises can be evaluated. The framework can be used to assess if the regulatory requirements ensure that the relevant IUU fishing identification data are made available, and it can also be used to evaluate the requirements imposed on the traceability system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

When handling a security incident, there is a lot of information that needs to be stored, processed, and analyzed. As a result of the volume of information and the necessity to deal with a security incident investigation promptly, different forensic tools have been developed to provide cyber threat intelligence and security incident response management platforms and solutions. These platforms enable responders to effectively collaborate in identifying and investigating incidents, manage their work on a case from creation until resolution or completion, and automate incident response tasks with the external threat information. Since incident response services are a growing priority at organizations, there is a pressing need for a trustworthy and transparent way to maintain the authenticity and integrity of investigative actions that is independently verifiable. Generally, security incident case management allows a security analyst to add related logs. Asides from the possibility of a log being deleted, it is difficult to audit the log for traceability and provenance if a user decides to be malicious. To address this problem, we propose utilizing a blockchain ledger for security investigative actions and associated metadata by extracting requirements for cybersecurity incident response from the models gathered through the analysis of an open-source incident management platform. We demonstrate the applicability of the proposed techniques and methods by investigating a case scenario of evidence actions within TheHive security incident response platform (SIRP). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines the issues that need to be considered when planning water sampling for chemical monitoring and provides guidance on the work required. In addition, it considers the limitations associated with current monitoring practices based on spot sampling and presents some existing technologies that may used to complement standard spot sampling. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Field necropsies of individual or multiple animals can be fraught with difficulty and frustration. Planning and preparation for these events, including development of required supplies and equipment checklists, necropsy forms, designated test sites, and a personnel pool, can alleviate many problems. Flexibility is paramount in field situations as is the need for individuals from multiple disciplines to collaboratively collect, record, disseminate, and interpret findings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Organizations responsible for monitoring potentially harmful activities, including proliferation of controlled, prohibited or illegal materials, are heavily reliant on verifiably reliable information. These organizations require a robust solution for tracking chain of custody of exhibits and associated documentation. This work provides a tamperproof timestamped provenance ledger using a public pre-existing trusted blockchain, that can be adapted to any setting. This solution provides multiple levels of integrity verification, and is designed with privacy in mind. In addition, the solution is scalable and can support automation, standardization and interoperability. The implementation in this work concentrates on provenance of digital data, but the same approach can be applied to physical material in a laboratory environment, from receipt to storage or destruction. Future work will explore ways to integrate electronic tags, such as barcodes and RFID systems. • Blockchain-based data provenance tracking system to support data integrity and authentication. • Prevents undetectable alterations to original data or associated provenance information. • Provides multiple verification methods, including cross verification and reverse verification. • Mechanism to confirm that the (possibly independent) verifier actually obtained correct provenance details. • Scalable, automatable, interoperable data provenance tracking system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]