Digital Device Security & Forensics ...

GPS Forensics for Counter Terrorism and Law Enforcement Agencies
A relatively new handheld electronic device that is often seen in the public domain is called the GPS navigation receiver. This type of device is used in cars, trucks, airplanes, boats, and can also be used by pedestrians. These devices contain maps. The GPS device collects a series of signals from various orbiting sattelites and then triangulates them. The result is that the location of the GPS receiver is shown on the map.

Let us consider a real example that I tested. On the Garmin Nuvi 1300 receiver, there is a small onscreen icon that indicates the location and speed of the driver. This GPS device contains a two gigabyte drive that uses a FAT 32 file system and appears as a flash drive when it is connected to a Microsoft Windows based computer. A person can use a mini USB cable to connect the Nuvi 1300 to the laptop or desktop computer. That means that pictures, documents, music, videos, and all types of digital media can be easily moved to the GPS receiver from the computer by a process known as, "dropping and dragging". A person can also use the GPS device as a digital container.

The Garmin Nuvi 1300 receiver can also hold information concerning a person's trips, favorite destinations, and selected points of interest. If a person pairs his or her cell phone to the device via Bluetooth, then the GPS receiver may hold evidence of phone calls that took place while riding in the vehicle. If a terrorist misused such a device, then the amount of potential digital evidence that could be in the device is enormous. Let us now consider the kidnapping of General James Dozier by the Red Brigade in 1981 [1]. If such a situation happened today, a GPS reciever in the suspected kidnapper's vehicle might provide all the locations that the car visited. These numerous locations might hold the key to where the kidnapped person might be held.

Paraben is a company that makes a program called Device Seizure 4.0. This program is very useful for acquiring the data on various types of PDAs, cell phones, and GPS Receivers. I was able to use Device Seizure 4.0 to obtain some information on previous trips and favorite places from the Garmin Nuvi 1300. Since a terrorist group could purchase and possibly use a variety of handheld electronic devices, then it would behoove all law enforcment agenicies to have one person with such a program to be able to examine any such seized devices.



References
1. URL Accessed on December 27, 2010 http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/program.pl?ID=274898
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