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STUDY VISITS TO FORENSIC INSTITUTIONS IN NORDIC COUNTRIES

During implementation of the State Police and Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Public Administration project „Experience exchange in the field of forensic IT and Forensic Speech and Audio analysis by study visits to forensic institutions in Denmark and Norway”, the State Police Forensic Service Department Forensic IT and Forensic Audio and Voice Analysis Unit experts visited Forensic laboratories in Norway and Denmark.

From February 2nd till February 5th 2015 the Forensic IT and Forensic Audio and Voice Analysis Unit delegation visited The National Criminal Investigation Service (KRIPOS) of Norway. KRIPOS was also visited by the delegation from The Cybercrime and Digital Evidence Division of the Crime Bureau of North Prefecture of Estonia.

Forensic IT experts from Norway, Estonia and Latvia discussed methods, software and hardware used in IT forensics. During practical examination, experts performed the chip off methodology. KRIPOS expert’s demonstrated chip desoldering using infrared rework station, chip reading with programmator, looking "inside" the chip using x-ray, removing chip from PCB using grinding machine. During the visit research methods used in Latvia and Norway were compared.

Forensic Audio and Voice analysis experts shared their knowledge in audio authenticity analysis and person identification based on acoustic and linguistic signs as well as discussed examination specifics with Norwegian and Estonia colleagues.

KRIPOS Child Abuse Investigation Department specialists presented their methods and research in child exploitation area, KRIPOS Data recovery experts shared their approach to corrupted media files’ recovery.


From March 16th till March 18th 2015 the Forensic IT and Forensic Audio and Voice Analysis Unit experts visited the Denmark National Cyber Crime Centre (NC3) and National Forensic Centre (NKC).

The NC3 colleagues demonstrated the laboratory which is used for electronic device structure analysis, equipment and software used. The following topics were discussed: structure and future plans of NC3, actual problems in digital evidence analysis and understanding in court, child abuse cases in Denmark and international cooperation, skimmer cases, mobile phone cases. The specially equipped bus, which contains all necessary equipment for work with digital evidence in the field, was demonstrated.

The NKC colleagues and Latvian forensic audio experts discussed the actual problems in audio forensic field such as audio file technical parameters’ (frequency range, the signal amplitude codec) influence on audio quality, echo effects and others.

Exchange of experiences during the study visits to Norway and Denmark has been organized in cooperation between the State police of Latvia and the Nordic forensic experts.


Olga Šeršņova
Project manager
16.04.2015.