Digital Forensics: ACPO Guidelines and Expert Witness Responsibilities

This document presents a solution to a digital forensics assignment, focusing on two key areas: the ACPO Good Practice Guide and the role of an expert witness. The first section explains the importance of the ACPO guide in digital evidence handling, emphasizing its role in ensuring accurate information for practitioners and managers in cybercrime investigations. It outlines the principles of digital evidence, the importance of training, and the application of the ACPO guide, using the example of triage in forensic analysis. The second part of the assignment solution delves into the responsibilities of an expert witness, highlighting the obligation to assist the court and provide unbiased, independent opinions. It details the three main responsibilities, including providing independent assistance, avoiding the role of an advocate, presenting technical evidence, cooperating with other parties, and attending meetings with other experts. The solution references several academic sources to support the arguments presented. This resource, available on Desklib, can be used by students to understand the core concepts of digital forensics and the responsibilities of professionals in the field.

Running head: DIGITAL FORENSICS
Digital Forensics
Name of Student-
Name of University-
Author’s Note-

1DIGITAL FORENSICS
Question 1:
ACPO Good Practice Guide is used for digital evidence because it ensures that correct
information is available for all the practitioners as well as the mangers in fight against the cyber-
crime (Sutherland 2015). This ACPO guide states that persons involved in seizing, securing as
well as transporting the equipment from a search scene needs to investigate crime. This practice
also states that the investigators who are involved in this identification process make use of that
evidence. This practice states that people involved to recover or to reproduce the digital evidence
are to be trained for carrying out all functions and include relevant training so that they might
provide evidence for their actions.
There are many principles that are included in the digital evidence and all those principles
are stated in the ACPO Good Practice Guide. The ACPO Good practice is used to re-evaluate as
well as revise the capabilities for performing the duties (Montasari, Hill, Carpenter and
Montaseri 2019). The digital data can be analysed or can be recovered easily with the help of
ACPO and help to supply vital evidence in investigations. It is very much important that the
people who work with digital forensics should concentrate on the technology and concentrate on
the process as well that are used for the purpose.
An example of using the ACPO practice is using the word triage. This has been
considered as a subject of discussion in the forensic community. It can be noted that only single
triage tool is not considered. Rather it is a complete process that includes certain tools that helps
to play a part in the solution instead of using it in the whole solution.

2DIGITAL FORENSICS
Question 2:
The expert witness has primary obligation that helps to assists the court for the tribunal
on the matter that falls under the expertise. Three main responsibility that are included while
giving evidence as expert witness includes the following:
 There should be expert witness that is to be included in all the stages of digital evidence
(Buckley 2017). The expert should provide independent assistance in the court as well as
include parties by objective opinion that are unbiased in relation that matters in the
expert’s expertise. This is applied to the initial meetings that are conducted by the experts
to provide evidence at the trail. The role of advocate and the role of expert is totally
different and an expert witness should not assume role of advocate.
 The evidence of the expert should include technical matters that will assist the court. The
expert should present independent evidence that is to be included in the litigation. The
witness of the expert should include evidence as well as opinions that is to be done in
same circumstances and includes similar circumstances.
 The responsibility of expert witness is also to co-operate with the other parties and
attempts to lessen the technical issue that is in dispute at earliest stage and helps to
eliminate or place the peripheral issues (Valjarevic and Venter 2016). The expert should
attend other experts without conducting prejudice meetings in the area where there is
disagreement. The expert should also provide independent assistance through unbiased
opinion. There should also be fact state or there should be assumptions that leads to
unbiased opinion with the expertise.

3DIGITAL FORENSICS
References
Buckley, J., 2017. Managing intelligence: A guide for law enforcement professionals. CRC
Press.
Montasari, R., Hill, R., Carpenter, V. and Montaseri, F., 2019. Digital Forensic Investigation of
Social Media, Acquisition and Analysis of Digital Evidence. International Journal of Strategic
Engineering (IJoSE), 2(1), pp.52-60.
Sutherland, I., Spyridopoulos, T., Read, H., Jones, A., Sutherland, G. and Burgess, M., 2015,
August. Applying the ACPO guidelines to building automation systems. In International
conference on human aspects of information security, privacy, and trust (pp. 684-692). Springer,
Cham.
Valjarevic, A. and Venter, H.S., 2016. Introduction of concurrent processes into the digital
forensic investigation process. Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences, 48(3), pp.339-357.