This case study relates to the examination of a forensic image of the defendant's laptop computer provided by law enforcement officers in 2006. A number of photographs and videos of underage sex were discovered on the defendant's laptop by a computer repairer, who reported the matter to the police, resulting in the seizure of the laptop and criminal charges being laid in 2008. The 2 year delay from arrest to trial may be assumed to be due to the heavy workload of the agency involved.
The defendant's apparent disbelief that he had downloaded illegal, pornographic files onto the laptop and the insistence of his innocence prompted the defense team's examination to measure the reliability of the relevant information, thereby assisting subsequent legal analysis. The offending material had been placed on the laptop during 2004 and 2005, and the laptop had been repaired by the same computer repairer during this period, who evidently did not notice and...