Cell Site Analysis in Legal Aid
An interesting article appeared in the Guardian recently, highlighting issues raised by the Forensic Regulator Dr. Gillian Tully at the Forensics Europe Expo in London last week.
There was a call for an increase to legal aid funding to help Criminal Defence Lawyers check and challenge the increasing complexity of digital evidence gathered for criminal prosecutions.
The regulator said she was working with the Legal Aid Agency “to try to increase the level of appropriate funding” so that defence lawyers could subject criminal charges to proper scrutiny. Greater capacity is required if forensic investigations are not to be loaded on to too few private experts, she added.
She stated that “Computers and mobile phones are complex scenes of crime. It’s not just a DNA match. People are being asked to show evidence of planning, of bad character and of a course of action. It requires a lot expert interpretation”.
One area of digital forensics that is proving difficult to reach agreement on in criminal cases is reliance on ‘cell site analysis’, by which the location of mobile phones can be established. The precision of the information produced, Tully said, is open to challenge and produces problems of interpretation in court.
We have often written about the problems with cell site analysis evidence and funding. This issue has been highlighted in the past few weeks as a number of reputable cell site analysis providers have closed down. No doubt in part caused by a number of unqualified ‘experts’ being able to charge much less.
Cell site analysis is still an unregulated area of digital forensics and as we have said many times before, anyone can state that they are an expert. We are amazed at how few times we are asked to provide a CV for one of our cell site analysis experts.
Cell site analysis evidence is highly complex. The Forensic Regulator stated as above that the precision of the information produced is open to challenge and produces problems of interpretation at court. The only problems with interpretation of cell site analysis evidence are that people who do not fully understand it are giving the evidence.
If the prosecution have used an in-house analyst to conduct their work then the defence will often have this work checked. On many occasions the police evidence is ‘checked’ for accuracy by the defence team using what they likely believe to be a cell site analysis expert, but in reality they may in fact be a computer expert. There is no crossover between areas of digital forensics and we believe that to claim expertise in this area of digital forensics then the ‘expert’ needs to have worked for one of the network providers. They would need to have undertaken the role of planning and optimisation or similar to have a relevant background needed to fully understand the complexities of the evidence and to be able to give evidence of opinion.
Next time you need to instruct an expert ask for their CV, check their background and find out how many cell site analysis cases they have conducted. You may be very surprised.