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Friday, 11 January 2008

Investigators, researchers and lawyers fighting the rapidly growing problem of Internet and other electronic-based crime will gather in Adelaide on 21-23 January to discuss the latest developments in e-forensics.

The University of Adelaide will host the first International Conference on Forensic Applications and Techniques in Telecommunications, Information and Multimedia, e-Forensics 2008, at the National Wine Centre.

Delegates are attending from around the world and include keynote speaker and world expert on pattern recognition and artificial intelligence Professor Patrick Wang from Northeastern University, Boston, USA. Professor Wang will speak on the potential applications of intelligent pattern recognition using biometrics (body shape parameters), including face recognition. He will also give a half-day tutorial on this field.

University of Adelaide Senior Lecturer Dr Matthew Sorell is the Conference General Chair. He said: "Conventionally, digital forensics has involved finding evidence for illegal activity in computer files on hard drives, such as pornographic images, or tracing Internet use for fraudulent activities such as banking fraud.

"But, today, digital forensics is much broader than that. Illegal activity using the Internet and increasingly sophisticated digital consumer technology is growing rapidly in scope and quantity.

"We are becoming concerned with issues like intercepting Internet phone calls and tracing the original source of photographs, video and printed documents. There are new opportunities for criminals and new challenges for law enforcement. There are also, however, new tools for scientific investigation of evidence."

The conference will bring together the latest research in the development of tools, protocols and techniques from crime investigation in the electronic domain. A key underlying theme will be investigative practice and requirements for presentation of evidence in court including discovery, analysis, handling and storage of digital evidence, meeting the legal burden of proof and the establishment of the forensic chain of evidence.

Topics include digital images, video processing, biometrics, data recovery and evidence tracing.

E-Forensics 2008 will be held at the National Wine Centre on 21-23 January. Registration is available online until 18 January at www.e-forensics.eu or at the door.

To listen to the podcast of a Radio Adelaide interview with Dr Matthew Sorell regarding this conference, please go to www.adelaide.edu.au/podcasts/interviews/eleceng/