Casey Anthony Trial - More On The Digital Forensics - BNN

Casey Anthony Trial - More On The Digital Forensics
Posted on June 9th, 2011 by Simon Barrett

Excerpt:

Nerding is a hard business to sell to any jury. In someways it is easier to sell the jury on the art of detecting the smell of human decomposition. A jury can wrap their heads around the idea of burying a dead body or dead pig and periodically smelling the air. As I recall Mythbusters did something similar involving removing the smell of a decaying pig from a car. It was far being a scientific experiment, but it was amusing. The smell could not be erased. This was a car that no one would ever want to drive again.

Computer nerding is a different game, a game that many people do not understand. In fact electronic nerding in general is not understood. A good example is the cell phone. You don’t need a Smartphone, a $20 disposable one with no GPS capability will still give a general idea of your location. Simple geometry based on data received from a cell site says much. At the most simplistic level, if the cell tower that picks up you signal is in California, there is a good chance that the phone is in California rather than New York. Cell phones transmit at a very low level. Only a cell site in the local area will pick up the signal. Of course the system is a little more complex. If someone is moving, lets say driving down the road, the cell system needs to ‘hand off’ the call to another site as the signal weakens. In fact most cell systems use at least three cell towers to track the call, using some high school geometry and physics you can make a pretty good determination of the general location of the phone.

It is not voodoo it is simple math.

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