Fighting high-tech crime in Kosovo: OSCE provides mobile phone forensics training
In an era of advanced technology¸ extracting data from mobile phones has become an important element in police investigations and solving cases. These investigations can cover high-tech crime such as identity theft and hacking, but also prove useful in other investigations. For Bekim Ademaj, a forensic IT expert in the Kosovo Forensics Agency, knowing how to examine a mobile phone can make all the difference in seeing justice served.
Ademaj, and five other officers – two from the Kosovo Forensics Agency and three from Kosovo Police – attended an OSCE-organized week-long on-the-job training on mobile phone forensics in Ankara, Turkey from 7 to 11 April 2014.
“This was the first training on mobile phone forensics we received and it was one of the best trainings I’ve attended,” he said. Although Ademaj did not want to mention the technical details of what they learned during the training in order not to disclose them, he said the training was very much necessary, and came at a perfect time as smart phones are developing rapidly and being used extensively, while their examination offers new challenges.
Practice makes perfect
Another participant in the training, Sergeant Laura Ahmeti, who heads the Photography and Video-Analysis Unit in the Kosovo Police, said the training will help her everyday work.
“During the training, we went through procedures from the moment the mobile phone is taken as a piece of evidence at the crime scene, to preservation of its data and the way of extracting those data without compromising the evidence, until it is presented in court,” she said. “We have the same procedure here more or less, but analyzing and comparing it with another police force helped us see where we might have potential gaps and fix them where possible.”
According to Ahmeti, what really made the difference was the opportunity to do practical work with the equipment.
“We had the opportunity to touch things with our hands; each one of us had the chance to examine a mobile phone and not just go through theory. That really made a difference.”
Ademaj said that the training also helped them familiarize with advanced forensics technology. “We had the chance to train with the latest technology in the field of mobile forensics and although we don’t have the same equipment and software here for now, we think we will get one of them within this year and we’ll be ready to use it as soon as it arrives.”
No objections
According to Betim Llapashtica from the OSCE, the Kosovo Police and Forensics Agency annual needs assessments showed that both these institutions required training in mobile forensics.
“We started with mobile phone forensics, and a few weeks later moved on to audio enhancement which helped the trainees understand how to improve the quality of recorded sound, making evidence more useful for investigators and admissible in court, while the network forensics helped the participants better understand the process of network security, identification, preservation and analysis of evidence of attacks, internet addressing and similar,” Llapashtica said.
According to Llapashtica, the common aim of all the training sessions was to demonstrate how to properly and legally extract evidence from media equipment, make it useful for the investigation process and how to present it in the court. “By the time we completed the third training, we had 14 officers, six from Kosovo Police and eight from the Forensics Agency trained to work with evidence and send cases to court.”
For the rest of the year we have planned, as per the request of our partners, to have eight more training sessions related to these topics, said Llapashtica.
Case closed
For Ahmeti, the passion for the job, experience and training combine well to bring results, and with results comes satisfaction.
“Every case is unique and makes you curious, she said. “It makes you feel good when you solve a case, or the evidence you find acquits a person wrongly accused. It just makes you feel good,” she concluded.