Författararkiv: Jan Olsson
Kan man göra mobilsamtal anonomya
Grundläggande kriminalteknik – nyutgåva
Boken Grundläggande kriminalteknik utges nu i en ny helt omarbetad och utökad upplaga. Nya kapitel har tagits in om olika spår. Nytt är även kapitel om bränder, illegal narkotikatillverkning, brottsplatsundersökning vid miljöbrott, bomber och farliga föremål m.m.
Boken, som utges av Jure förlag, kan beställas genom info@forensic.se eller köpas i din bokhandeln.
Norge – Håndbok i Brannetterforskning
En ny handbok i brandorsaksundersökning har getts ut i Norge. Utgivare är Norsk brannvernforening.
Handboken är rikt illustrerad och till boken medföljer en DVD med många extra bildserier, videoklipp, rapporter, undervisningsmaterial m.m.
Boken kostar 600 Nkr + frakt och kan beställas via tka@brannvernforeningen.no – eller telefon *45 23 15 71 00 (Thor Kr. Adolfsen)
USA stärker kriminalteknikens betydelse i rättegångar
______________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2013 (202) 514-2007
WWW.JUSTICE.GOV TTY (866) 544-5309
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE AND NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY ANNOUNCE LAUNCH OF NATIONAL COMMISSION ON FORENSIC SCIENCE
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced today the establishment of a National Commission on Forensic Science as part of a new initiative to strengthen and enhance the practice of forensic science.
The National Commission on Forensic Science will be composed of approximately 30 members, bringing together forensic science service practitioners, academic researchers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and other relevant stakeholders to develop policy recommendations for the Attorney General. The commission will consider guidance on practices for federal, state and local forensic science laboratories developed by groups of forensic science practitioners and academic researchers administered by NIST.
“Forensic science is an essential tool in the administration of justice and needs to be continually evaluated as science progresses,” said Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole. “Forensic science helps identify perpetrators, convict the guilty, exonerate the innocent, and protect public safety. This initiative is led by the principle that scientifically valid and accurate forensic analysis strengthens all aspects of our justice system.”
“The Department of Justice and the National Institute of Standards and Technology have a history of successful collaboration,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Patrick Gallagher. “Through this initiative, we will work even more closely with the forensic science community to strengthen the forensic science system.”
The commission will have responsibility for developing guidance concerning the intersections between forensic science and the courtroom and developing policy recommendations, including uniform codes for professional responsibility and requirements for training and certification.
The new initiative provides a framework for coordination across forensic disciplines under federal leadership, with state and local participation. The Department of Justice, through its involvement in the commission, will take an active role in developing policy recommendations and coordinating implementation. The NIST-administered guidance groups will develop and propose discipline-specific practice guidance that will become publicly available and be considered for endorsement by the commission and the Attorney General. This coordinated effort will help to standardize national guidance for forensic science practitioners. Additionally, NIST will continue to develop methods for forensic measurements and validate select existing forensic science standards.
Specific criteria for membership will be announced in an upcoming Federal Register notice, and applicants will have 30 days from the publication of the notice to submit their applications.
As a non-regulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, NIST promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life. To learn more about NIST, visit www.nist.gov.
Skospårssäkring på tyg
Colorado School to Create Newest ‘Body Farm’
Bränd kropp identifierad genom fluglarver
Burn victim identified by maggots on body
WHEN Mexican police found a body in the woods it was burned beyond recognition, its DNA too damaged to be used for identification. Luckily, investigators were able to extract DNA from elsewhere – the digestive systems of maggots that had been feeding on the body. This is the first time that human DNA from a maggot gut has been analysed in this way to successfully identify a victim in a legal case.
Police suspected that the body was that of a woman who had been abducted 10 weeks earlier because they found her high-school graduation ring near the crime scene. But when forensic investigators failed to obtain a decent DNA sample from any of the body’s tissues, they turned to a team of pathologists at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León in San Nicolás, Mexico.
María de Lourdes Chávez-Briones, Marta Ortega-Martínez and their colleagues dissected three maggot larvae collected from the body and extracted the contents of their gastrointestinal tracts. The human DNA they isolated allowed them to determine that the body was female. They then performed a paternity test between this DNA and that of the abducted woman’s father. It revealed a 99.7 per cent chance that she was his daughter (Journal of Forensic Science, doi.org/jdv).
Although it is rare for a body to be so damaged that investigators would have to resort to this technique, there are other instances in which the process could be useful, says Jeffrey Wells of Florida International University in Miami. For instance, a maggot found in a car could be used as evidence that the vehicle had been used to transport a particular corpse.
The past decade has seen a lot of research on isolating human DNA from insects, says Martin Hall of the Natural History Museum in London, but it has only rarely been used in courts. Last year, DNA from the guts of maggots found on a headless corpse and on a head discovered nearby were used as evidence in a Chinese court that the body parts were from the same person (Tropical Biomedicine, vol 28, p 333).
Insects at crime scenes are too often ignored, says Hall. He hopes that the new paper will alert police and pathologists to their potential as crime-fighters.
Källa: New Scientist
Indien har byggt upp världens största biometriska databas
World’s largest biometric database
In the last two years, over 200 million Indian nationals have had their fingerprints and photographs taken and irises scanned, and given a unique 12-digit number that should identify them everywhere and to everyone.This is only the beginning, and the goal is to do the same with the entire population (1.2 billion), so that poorer Indians can finally prove their existence and identity when needed for getting documents, getting help from the government, and opening bank and other accounts.
This immense task needs a database that can contain over 12 billion fingerprints, 1.2 billion photographs, and 2.4 billion iris scans, can be queried from diverse devices connected to the Internet, and can return accurate results in an extremely short time.
The program – dubbed UIDAI – is lead by techno tycoon Nandan Nilekani, and is already a big success, as its effectiveness has been proved by a number of trials that allowed citizens to open bank accounts electronically, receive payments from the government directly into them, and withdrawing the money from them by authenticating themselves on a slew of simple devices.
According to BBC’s Saritha Rai, the database in question has an open source backbone, and it’s not locked into any specific hardware or software. The collected information – stored in a data centre in Bangalore – is secured by multiple layers of security, and it is transmitted to and from the database in encrypted form.
The 12-digit number each individual is assigned is unique and random, so it can’t be guessed. And the combination of photo, fingerprints of all ten hand fingers and iris scans of both eyes makes it practically impossible for someone not to get identified or to get identified as another person, especially after the three planned de-duplication checks are executed.
Using the latest biometric, cloud computing and connection technologies, this program is likely to become a great example for future ones dealing with even larger databases.
Identifiering av krutrester i avfyrad ammunition
New Forensic Method Could Help Police Solve Crimes
Jun 05, 2012
Forensic researchers at Florida International Univ. have developed a groundbreaking method that can tie a shooter to the ammunition used to commit a crime, giving law enforcement agencies a new tool to solve cases.
Through research funded by the National Institute of Justice and recently published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, chemistry Prof. Bruce McCord and doctoral candidate Jennifer Greaux discovered a new technique that identifies the chemical signature of the powder inside a bullet. This unique process can potentially link a suspect to the ammunition fired even if the weapon is not found.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LiL-vLcdl3w
The discovery comes at a time when the conventional method of analyzing gunshot residue is in danger of becoming less reliable, as weapon manufacturers remove lead — one of the three principle elements analyzed today — from their ammunition.
“Crime labs all over the country are faced with the reality that their only way to analyze whether a gun was fired by a suspect may become obsolete,” said McCord, a former forensic analyst for the FBI. “Our discovery is not only more accurate, but it can determine the type of gunpowder used in a crime even if the gun is never recovered.”
Currently, crime labs test the gunshot residue collected from a suspect’s hands and clothes for three elements, barium, lead and antimony. If that residue tests positive for all three and the particles have the correct shape, detectives conclude that their suspect either fired a weapon, held a weapon that had been recently fired or was near a weapon that was fired. But doubt remains — and if a weapon is never recovered from the scene, detectives have no way of using the residue to tie the ammunition to a suspect.
McCord and Greaux’s discovery changes all that.
Instead of testing for just three elements, the scientists focus on the smokeless powder that is found inside bullets to determine their chemical composition. Since each manufacturer has its own specific “recipe” for their smokeless powder, the process in essence defines the type of residue left behind.
“It’s easy to commit a crime,” said J. Graham Rankin, a professor of forensic science at Marshall University and fellow at the American Academy of Forensic Science. “This type of research is making it harder to get away with it.”
Source: Florida International Univ.