Cybercrime is focus of Adelaide conference

Friday, 16 January 2009

Investigating and proving cybercrime and the surrounding legal minefield will be the focus of an international conference and workshop hosted by the University of Adelaide next week.

The e-Forensics conference on Forensic Applications and Techniques in Telecommunications, Information and Multimedia will be held at the National Wine Centre, from January 19-21.

Issues covered by the conference and workshop will include questions over legal jurisdiction, protocols for gathering and storing electronic evidence, identity fraud and data protection.

"Proving that a particular person in the real world is responsible for an act committed in cyberspace is highly complex," says Conference General Chair, Dr Matthew Sorell, from the University's School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

"Today's communications and virtual environmental technologies create particularly difficult legal issues. For example, one of our speakers is looking at cloud computing, where data is hosted on different, huge online servers around the world. Providing access to that data for the purposes of investigating a crime opens up a legal minefield of privacy, jurisdiction, security and integrity issues."

The conference keynote speaker is Dr Andy Jones, Head of Security Research with British Telecom, who will speak on future e-forensic issues brought by advances in technology and the changing environment. During a military career, Dr Jones directed intelligence and security operations for the British Army in Northern Ireland.

The three-day conference will incorporate an international workshop on e-Forensics Law featuring presentations on the Cybercrime Convention - the only binding international treaty governing the Internet, the increasing effects of privacy and privilege on digital forensics, and problems with evidence based on emerging technologies.

Registration for the conference includes the e-Forensics Law workshop and at-door registration is available. Further information can be found at www.e-forensics.eu

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