Anyone looking for a primer on Internet Investigations will want to read the white-paper written by Todd Shipley of Vere Software called “Collecting Legally Defensible Online Evidence: Creating a standard framework for Internet Forensic Investigations.” It provides some very good fundamental points on the collection, examination, analysis and reporting of online evidence. The document was produced by a software company but it is vendor neutral and couched in U.S. case law. The references in the back of the paper are also very useful.

I would suggest that the framework provided in this document, augmented with some of the more recent developments in the legal and academic communities dealing with this field (such as protection of the identities of third-parties who are captured or referenced in on-line evidence that are not parties to the “offence”, developments in the law with respect to evidence obtained from social networking sites and Web 2.0 platforms, privacy concerns in different jurisdictions internationally (admittedly as a Canadian I always like to see Canadian content included) etc.) would be very valuable….any takers?

Also, can we solve the debate once and for all? Is it “Internet Forensic Investigations” or “Forensic Internet Investigations”? My vote is for the later.