Digital Investigations in the Modern Era

The recent Modernising Criminal Justice conference featured an illuminating presentation from Cellebrite, a leading digital investigations company, highlighting how artificial intelligence and cloud technology are revolutionizing criminal investigations.

The Digital Evidence Challenge

Dan Oxley, Senior Director of Investigations at Cellebrite, opened with stark statistics that underscore the scale of today's digital investigation challenges. A single mobile device can contain the equivalent of 33 million pages of paper when fully extracted, while investigators face an average of 69 hours per case with year-on-year backlogs reported by over half of agencies.

The numbers paint a clear picture of the digital transformation in law enforcement:

• 98% of prosecutors believe digital evidence is pivotal to successful prosecutions
• Each case typically involves 2-5 devices, with two-thirds of them locked
• An average person uses 7 different social networks monthly and creates 1.7 megabytes of data daily

Prison-Specific Challenges

The presentation highlighted particular challenges within the UK prison system, where approximately 20,000 contraband mobile phones are discovered annually. These devices enable continued communication with the outside world, often facilitating criminal activities including drug trafficking and gang coordination.

Technology Solutions

Alex Rankmore, Pre-Sales Expert at Cellebrite, demonstrated several cutting-edge platforms designed to address these challenges:

Pathfinder Platform

• AI-Powered Analysis: Automatically categorizes images (firearms, drugs, etc.) with simple clicks
• Link Analysis: Maps communication networks to identify criminal hierarchies and relationships
• Location Intelligence: Places multiple suspects in the same location at the same time using metadata
• Cross-Platform Integration: Tracks conversations across multiple apps chronologically

Guardian Platform

• Cloud-Based Sharing: Enables secure data sharing between departments without USB drives
• AI Chat Analysis: Summarizes thousands of messages in 10-30 seconds
• Multilingual Support: Provides automatic translation and analysis across languages

Smart Search Platform

• Social Media Intelligence: Captures live snapshots of social media activity
• Story Preservation: Saves ephemeral content (Instagram/Snapchat stories) beyond their expiration
• Comprehensive Profiling: Gathers phone numbers, addresses, connections, and interactions from a simple name search

International Cooperation

The technology addresses cross-border criminal activities through:

• Geolocation tracking showing device movement between countries
• Cloud-based evidence sharing with international partners
• Automated translation capabilities for multilingual investigations
  
  

Addressing Practical Concerns

The Q&A session after Oxley and Rankmore's presentation revealed several practical applications:

Burner Phones: Cellebrite can extract data from a majority of digital devices, including some deleted information that users believe is permanently removed.

Attribution: Devices are linked to individuals through initial setup identifiers (email addresses, iCloud accounts) and cross-referenced across multiple platforms.

Staff Vetting: The social media intelligence platform can be used for employment screening, capturing comprehensive digital footprints.

Non-Attributable Evidence: The technology can determine who used shared devices by analyzing login patterns and digital fingerprints.

Future Implications

The presentation emphasized a shift toward "digital native" investigations, where frontline officers and investigators can directly access and analyze digital evidence without specialized technical expertise. This democratization of digital forensics aims to reduce backlogs and speed up case resolution.

The technology also addresses the challenge of "front logs" - cases that never reach investigation queues because they're deemed too complex or time-consuming with traditional methods.

Conclusion

Cellebrite's presentation highlighted how AI and cloud technology are transforming digital investigations from time-consuming, specialist-dependent processes into accessible, efficient tools for modern law enforcement. As digital evidence becomes increasingly central to criminal justice, these technological advances offer hope for reducing investigation backlogs while improving case outcomes.

The conference underscored that while the UK justice system may still require traditional evidence presentation methods, the investigative process itself is rapidly evolving to meet the challenges of our digital age.