U.S. government antitrust cases against AOL

¶ … technological advancement has participated in the increase of crimes related to computer in the United States and around globe. These crimes are more often committed by not only computer specialist but even by kids with some knowledge in computer. However, computer crime can be defined as any criminal act dealing with computer and network or hacking such as internet fraud, identity theft, credit card account theft, hate crimes and telemarketing (WB Chik, 2009).

In the case study of the U.S. And AOL, the jury acquitted all the three defendants against computer chargers which handed a sounding defeat to Corporate Fraud Task Force (CFTF) one of its most resounding defeats (Amy Kolz, 2007), because of unclear evidence to prove that the crime was committed. Therefore I would do forensic analysis to the said computer. First, would be to analyze computer hard drives and other storage media to determine if such information was stored in a particular computer (Jim Corbett, 2010). This would be achieved through analyzing active, archival and latent data of computer, by the use of highly specialized tool.

But, when such computer crime is committed through an email or other communication devices, I would therefore trace back the Internet Protocol (IP) of the original data, through public address of Internet providers and to the private address which leads to the MAC address the used computer. Therefore, it would present a convincing analysis and report to believe that the said computer was used to commit crime.

The prosecution would have used services of certified professionals, in computer forensic analysis from law enforcement agencies such as the Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI) and Secret service. It would have presented a professional point-of-view in forensic analysis on the computer crime which could have convince the jury and increase the prosecution testimony.

Therefore evidence-based computer forensics would be the best in examining, identification, collection of data which could be use before the court of law as evidence. In this kind of forensic investigation the data are preserved and store for use in the future. This data are in the form of ESI. First the data are recovered from the either hard disk or other storage media, then preservation is done to ensure that no information is lost in the process of forensic analysis. The investigator then carry out identification to determine the motif and kind of computer crime committed. After identification, interpretation and documentation is done to prepare the evidence and ensure that it is up to the standard. Before, such data are considered as evidence the rules of evidence are checked and the legal process.

However, with electronically stored information (e.g. email messages, digital images, network log files, etc.) can be found on computer hard drives, servers and other digital storage media (e.g. computers, thumb drives, DVD, CD-ROM, mobile phones). It includes any device that has a digital brain to store information. The computer forensics is used to create a digital picture of the ESI; therefore the examiner can later look for digital evidence on the acquired media and attempt to re-create a time-line of how the data was used in relation to the matter under investigation.

Computer forensics is a specialized service that provides and documents digital evidence for possible use in litigation. A computer forensic investigation is highly disciplined and the results can be repeated and proven to be accurate, which is crucial for any digital evidence to be admissible in court.

There are some previous cases, which the investigator never taken serious, therefore the cases were ruled out because of lack of proper evidence. For example in 1986, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley who was assigned to solve a vexing but apparently minor problem at the Berkeley computer laboratory. Berkeley was running two accounting programs which kept track of the use of Berkeley computers and billed their users. Because these programs were tracking the same information, their results should have been the same. Yet for some unknown reason, there was a $.75 discrepancy.