When Digital Forensic Research Meets Laws

Academic researchers in digital forensics often lack backgrounds in related laws. This ignorance could make their research and development legally invalid, or with less relevance in practice. To better assist academic researchers, the authors discuss related laws that regulate the government's investigation and summarize different requirements of acquiring data and evidence in different crime scene investigations. They show that certain strategies (including attacks against security systems) would violate relevant laws, and so law enforcement cannot use them to collect data. They recommend that researchers focus on crime scene investigations that do not need Warrant/Court Order/Subpoena for traceback related network forensics.