Reflective Essay: Crime Scene Collection and Acquisition Module

This report is a reflective essay on the crime scene collection and acquisition module within a digital forensics course. The student explores the processes involved in crime scene investigation, including the importance of evidence protection, documentation, and reconstruction. The essay delves into the practical aspects of digital forensics, specifically referencing the use of the Autopsy interface in Kali Linux for analyzing digital evidence. The student reflects on their learning experience, highlighting the significance of both circumstantial and direct evidence, as well as the application of hashing functions for data integrity. The essay concludes with an understanding of digital forensics as a complex task requiring technical expertise and a thorough grasp of methodologies for evidence collection, analysis, prevention, and presentation.

Running head: CRIME SCENE COLLECTION AND ACQUISITION
CRIME SCENE COLLECTION AND ACQUISITION
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author note

1CRIME SCENE COLLECTION AND ACQUISITION
Introduction
Crime scenes are those locations the crime has taken place and this is the place from
where a investigator expects to find all the necessary evidences that can help him to get hold
of the criminal. Carrying out investigations in the crime scene one needs to be careful and
alert as a single mistake or lack in focus can let go of important evidences that could have
otherwise helped in solving the criminal case (Holt, Bossler and Seigfried-Spellar, 2015). In
this paper, the crime scene collection as well as acquisition will be discussed upon providing
proper definitions of the related terms and sharing a reflection as well.
Description
A crime scene investigator follows a certain process in order to carry on with the
investigation, collect evidences and evaluate the same. There are different types of crime
scenes that include internal investigation, criminal investigation and civil investigation. There
exist differences in civil and criminal justice system. The crime scene should be sealed and
none other than the investigator should be allowed as people can destroy the evidences
(Dang-Nguyen, Pasquini, Conotter and Boato 2015). The important steps while starting off
with the investigation, includes survey of the physical evidence, documentation of the
evidences and the scene, searching for more additional evidences if any, protecting these
evidences, reconstructing the crime scene and finally coming up with the results.
Reflection
The main aspect of crime scene collection and acquisition is protecting the evidences
that have been collected. An investigator should be well aware of the importance of the
evidences and should deal with it carefully. Both circumstantial as well as direct evidences
are important. There are guidelines laid down for different evidences such as computer

2CRIME SCENE COLLECTION AND ACQUISITION
evidence for which it is required that the collected evidence should be admissible, authentic,
complete, reliable and believable and understandable. Hashing or hash functions refer to
cryptographic algorithms that are made use of in crime scene investigation processes for the
purpose of validating data integrity as well as its confidentiality (Årnes 2017). This tool is
still underappreciated in the realms of digital forensic investigation. I got familiarized with
the Autopsy interface in Kali Linux while practicing with this tool, creating a specific case
and running basic analysis associated with an image. This is a very effective tool for
investigating what has happened to a computer system. It is easy to use and provides a variety
of modules that are Forensic Carving tools, Forensic imaging tools, Sleuth Kit Suite, web
artifacts, PDF forensic tools, multimedia, hash filtering and many more (Grajeda, Breitinger
and Baggili 2017). I got familiar with Autopsy Forensic Browser that acts as a graphical
interface to the Sleuth Kit along with other digital investigation tools. If these are put
together, they work even better and help in analyzing both Windows as well as UNIX disks
and associated file systems. With the knowledge that I was getting from these practical and
theories, I added some more information and did a little research on digital forensic
processes. This, module gave added a lot to my knowledge base.
Conclusion
Thus, after completion of this module I understood that performing digital forensics
analysis is both serious as well as complex task. Other than technical expertise, proper
understanding of different methodologies used in collection, analysis, prevention and
presentation of evidence before the law is also important. The investigator should have a
proper knowledge and idea as to which tools should be used and how the work proceeded
with. In this the most important thing is protection of the evidences that are collected from
the crime scene.

3CRIME SCENE COLLECTION AND ACQUISITION

4CRIME SCENE COLLECTION AND ACQUISITION
References
Årnes, A. ed., 2017. Digital forensics. John Wiley & Sons.
Dang-Nguyen, D.T., Pasquini, C., Conotter, V. and Boato, G., 2015, March. RAISE: a raw
images dataset for digital image forensics. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM Multimedia
Systems Conference (pp. 219-224).
Grajeda, C., Breitinger, F. and Baggili, I., 2017. Availability of datasets for digital forensics–
and what is missing. Digital Investigation, 22, pp.S94-S105.
Holt, T.J., Bossler, A.M. and Seigfried-Spellar, K.C., 2015. Cybercrime and digital forensics:
An introduction. Routledge.