Agape Blog

It’s a sensible initiative that is being taken by many Indian states to empower its law enforcement officers with forensic training. With the evolving technologies, criminals are making full use of them to execute their criminal activities. And in such a scenario, the law enforcement’s old methods fall flat as they are not acquainted with the technology and thus many crimes go unnoticed.

Recently the Karnataka state government announced a scheme to train police constables in forensic science, with a view to curb terrorism and major crimes, particularly in the light of the recent serial bomb blasts in Bangalore. This is part of government’s effort at modernising the State police and ensuring that they are tuned to the changing nature of crimes. After the completion of the training, the police constables will be designated as crime scene investigators. 

Around 876 police constables would be trained under the program which is set to be launched on October 13. The second batch of the same program would begin after the first batch is over and would consist of police constables from various police stations, railway police, women police and the traffic police. It is worth noting that Karnataka, which is a leader in forensic science among the police forces of the country, is the first State to evolve such a system. As an extension to the training programme, around 1000 CDs of the training module would be provided to all police stations in the state.

Paraben Corporation - a leader in computer forensic software, is conducting the first annual PFIC conference in Park City, Utah on November 9-12, 2008. Paraben’s Forensic Innovations Conference(PFIC 2008) will be providing training, lectures and workshops for FREE! That’s right, Paraben has generously waived their registration fees ($995) to allow people understand the new techniques and tools in forensics.

Also there would be a CSI stick bootcamp, which will teach the operations of the new CSI stick - which is a Compact Mobile Phone Forensic Solution. The fee for attending this workshop is $399. And yes, the new CSI stick will also be provided to the participants of this workshop. There would be more sessions on different topics of forensics but the one featured session you won’t want to miss is P2 Commander 101.

Attend this conference to know the new techniques and tools to improve your forensic investigation results.

There have been numerous cases in India, wherein crimes were commited and the criminals went unpunished. Why? Because the IT Act 2000 had many loop holes and the cyber criminals exploited the same. The police and the law enforcement could only watch the criminal executing the crime, but could do nothing. But this scenario promises to change soon.

Recently the Indian government decided to amend the Information Technology Act 2000 by incorporating new provisions. Now, the cyber forensics devices and tools used for cracking cyber crimes  would be treated as evidence in the court of law. The main objective behind this amendment is to develop indigenous cyber forensics technology to make the country self-reliant in combating cyber crimes. The government is also stressing on the development of tools for cyber forensics, state-of-the-art training in cyber forensics and technical services like cyber crime analysis and cyber crime investigation.

These steps by the Indian government promises to combat cyber crime in India to a higher degree, than what it is now.

The Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) will be offering the state’s first master’s degree program in forensic science.

After successfully completing this program, the candidates will be awarded a degree from Purdue University. The demand for highly trained forensic scientists is growing rapidly and this program will increase the state’s pool of talented, highly-skilled professionals to make it a national leader in high tech and life sciences business.

Students will be educated in the natural, physical and social sciences and will be trained to apply these sciences to the criminal justice system. This way the students would become experts not only in forensic science but also in public health, environmental sciences, criminal case investigations and others. Thus this program offers great career prospects for the students.

THE US government has been providing training to South African state officials in computer forensics to increase SA’s capacity to fight cyber crime, credit card frauds, intellectual property (IP) and counterfeit crimes. The training is carried out by the US justice department, which also trains Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents. Its the first time that US department has trained individuals outside their country.

Lot of cyber crimes and related activities have hit the African continent badly. Especially countries like Nigeria contribute the largest percentage of cyber crimes in the world. Also many sectors like pharmaceutical, automotive parts, aircraft parts and consumer goods, such as clothing, eyewear and handbags have been vulnerable to attacks in recent times.

For the benefit of traders who lose more than $2bn due to cyber frauds, South African department approached their US counterparts to assist it with the training, aimed at honing the forensic and analytical skills of customs officials working for the South African Revenue Service , the police, the national prosecuting authority and officials working in the trade and industry department’s IP enforcement division.

So far 400 officials have been trained and it has helped in cutting down the trade in pirated movies by 90% in SA. They are now planning to train their officials in digital forensics as well.