Vast amounts of digital evidence and seized data are among the biggest challenges facing police investigators.
Trends highlighted by investigators surveyed showed that 45% said that over three quarters of their cases involved work-related devices.
Insights provided by NetClean from 224 police investigations in 11 counties in the UK show that the overwhelming majority said that they were dealing with ‘more data’ and ‘more cases’ than ever before.
Johann Hofmann, Law Enforcement Liasion and Analyze Product Manager at NetClean, said: "Digital evidence is becoming increasingly prolific, and investigative teams are being overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of evidence in some of these cases,"
Hofmann said: "A huge percentage of the crime that takes place today has some sort of digital element, whether that’s images witnesses have taken and uploaded to social media, data seized by officers or even photos taken by crime scene investigators. Having the right tools to intelligently deal with large quantities of image and video files is essential for law enforcement agencies."
The vast quantity of visual data as a result of growth in smartphones, digital camera, cheap storage devices and cloud services has changed the way investigators are working on their cases. More investigators are now focusing on victim identification in child sexual abuse crimes, rather than only building cases.
Hofmann said: "A few years ago barely any of these investigators would have been working on victim identification. Pouring over visual evidence used to take hours and due to the volume of cases and a lack of resources they simply wouldn’t have had the time. The focus on victim identification is an immensely positive trend. One that wouldn’t have been possible without more sophisticated technologies and approaches being used in analysing evidence."
NetClean has historically specialised in supporting investigations into child exploitation, however many respondents revealed they were also using the NetClean Analyze DI platform for investigations into different types of crime. The common denominator being the large quantities of visual media included in evidence, ranging from fraud and terrorism, to firearms and gang violence.
