Digital Forensics Now
A podcast by digital forensics examiners for digital forensics examiners. Hear about the latest news in digital forensics and learn from researcher interviews with field memes sprinkled in.
Digital Forensics Now
AI as a Report Writing Tool: Accuracy Enhancing or Recollection Poisoning?
What's the real impact of AI on law enforcement documentation? Can digital forensics tools truly revolutionize our investigative processes? These are just some of the provocative questions we tackle in our season two premiere of Digital Forensics Now! Join us as we celebrate our one-year anniversary with reflections on the past year, exciting updates, and plans for the future.
The episode takes a deep dive into the ethical and practical implications of AI in law enforcement, sparked by a recent AP News article on police officers using AI chatbots for writing crime reports. We express our skepticism about AI's accuracy and discuss the vital need for human oversight. Examining AI’s influence on officers' recollection of events, this episode scrutinizes the potential pitfalls and ethical concerns associated with AI in policing. We also humorously critique some AI-generated descriptions of our podcast, shedding light on AI's current limitations and biases.
Don't forget to vote for your favorite difference makers with the SANS Difference Maker Awards!
In the latter part of the show, we shine a spotlight on Recuperabit, a forensic file system reconstruction tool, and Lionel Notari's invaluable contributions on iOS log files. We tackle the challenges of modifying third-party tools and discuss the broader ethical concerns of reverse engineering. As we wrap up, we celebrate our anniversary by announcing the winners of our prize draw and featuring the "Meme of the Week," which humorously highlights the financial struggles in our field. Tune in for an informative and engaging episode!
Notes-
Local Storage and Session Storage in Mozilla FireFox Part 1
https://www.cclsolutionsgroup.com/post/local-storage-and-session-storage-in-mozilla-firefox-part-1
SANS Difference Maker Awards
https://www.sans.org/about/awards/difference-makers/
Police officers are starting to use AI chatbots to write crime reports. Will they hold up in court?
https://apnews.com/article/ai-writes-police-reports-axon-body-cameras-chatgpt-a24d1502b53faae4be0dac069243f418
Magnet Forensics acquires Medex Forensics
https://www.magnetforensics.com/news/magnet-forensics-acquires-medex-forensics-strengthening-video-evidence-integrity-with-detection-of-deepfakes-and-generative-ai/
RecuperaBit Forensic File System Reconstruction
https://www.forensicfocus.com/interviews/andrea-lazzarotto-digital-forensics-consultant-and-developer/https://github.com/Lazza/RecuperaBit
The Logs of the Week
https://www.ios-unifiedlogs.com/unifiedlogoftheweek
Welcome to the Digital Forensics Now podcast, season two, episode zero. Of course, today is Thursday, august 29th 2024. My name is Alexis Brignoni, aka Briggs, and I'm accompanied by my co-host, the doctor of the proctors, the master tester that doesn't let bugs fester, the one that needs to get in gear with the things she needs to adhere to the one and only Heather Charpentier. The music is hired up by Shane Ivers and can be found at silvermansoundcom. Happy to get my butt in gear, huh. I mean that and everything else.
Speaker 2:All right, all right. Look, I just like that.
Speaker 1:it's like gear adhere, charpentier, it's kind of like, kind of rhyming vibe there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've got the rhyming going tonight.
Speaker 1:What's going on, girl? What's happening to you lately? What's the news in Hoover?
Speaker 2:Alabama and I am attending a training at the National Computer Forensic Institute, so I am coming to you live from my hotel room. Hopefully the internet will hold up and I won't disappear during the podcast, but we'll see. We'll see.
Speaker 1:I don't think people want to just listen to me babble for an hour.
Speaker 2:Well, if the internet fails, you just get Alexis tonight.
Speaker 1:I'll cut it short.
Speaker 2:I'm sure you can do it on your own if you have to.
Speaker 1:Well, look it's sounding good. It's looking good. So, first of all, you can see I have my awesome glasses because I got some brand new glasses, snappy glasses.
Speaker 2:Very nice, very nice, very nice.
Speaker 1:I also if Adam. No, not if Adam will. When Adam watches the show, he can't talk smack anymore. I got his shirt and it has a bunch of ones and zeros and I'm only going to say if you know, you know. So.
Speaker 2:I'm sure it's about. I should have worn mine.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, we could have been twinsies, but you know you, you play like that I ruined it.
Speaker 1:I went all plain well, at least there's more lights and more more uh frames behind you than usually there is, yeah, less neon lights, but so, yeah, so, so, yeah, so, um, I got my shirt and also I just came in not just came, but a few days ago I was in sacramento. Um, we had a little workshop, a day workshop, with the um htcia northern california chapter there in sacramento and what a great turnout like 20 something folks, folks from industry, like private sector industry, some uh law enforcement from there, and we talk about the LEAPs and mobile forensics data structures. We packed quite a lot Super active chapter. If you're in the Sacramento area, I would totally encourage you to join the HTCIA chapter there.
Speaker 1:I'm also a HTCIA chapter member, but in Orlando, obviously, where I live. But great, really active chapter up there in california. I highly recommend that you check that out. Um, and they, they were so you know a lot of hospitality. They took me to dinner the night before and they had to wheel me out in a barrel, in a wheelbarrow, from the restaurant so did you have a little bit better flight than your last trip, though?
Speaker 1:well, first of all, this's like now if I fly from the East Coast to the West Coast.
Speaker 2:I'm like wow, it's a really short flight. Didn't take you days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you have to fly across the world, just flying across country feels like nothing.
Speaker 2:It's all relative baby.
Speaker 1:That's how it is, anyways, but it's really good. Andrea Martinez is on the chat and jeremy's on the chat. Good to see you, um. So, yeah, no, it's been. It's been a good time. I got I'm looking forward to, uh a couple of online events. I'll be speaking at infocomf in um, in argentina, in la matanza, and, but not in person, sadly. It it's going to be online. And then everybody's gearing up for the ICAC in the northwest, I think right by Seattle Washington. Actually, I think it's in Redmond this year, redmond. So I'll be teaching a couple of sessions on ILEAPS and also participating in a panel there about mobile forensics and different things. So really excited about that coming up. So, if you're all listening, you're going to be at the ICAC meeting up there in Washington state. Hit me up, I'll bring some stickers, so say hi to me and I give you a sticker again as supplies. Last, if I run out.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to give you a hearty handshake, Anyhow that's what's going on.
Speaker 2:So also, we have a big anniversary this week, so on Sunday the podcast actually turned one year old on Sunday. We have now been doing this for a whole year.
Speaker 1:Can you believe it?
Speaker 2:It's crazy. I cannot.
Speaker 1:How many episodes? 20, what?
Speaker 2:There were 20 somethings for the first season. So now we're on to season two, starting today, but it's insane.
Speaker 1:And and I appreciate the folks that are alive, and also if you're listening later, we appreciate you. This podcast has been way more successful than me or Heather could have imagined. You know wildest dreams. Yeah, definitely, and I appreciate, appreciate, we appreciate the community being built around it, the encouragement we received and, uh, and yeah, we look forward to continue to build on that effort and there's a way you can do that, where you can actually proactively do that. So we'll talk about that in in in a section a little bit later, how you can support the podcast and make it available for more folks.
Speaker 2:So last week we talked about CCL Solutions, mr Skinny Legs script and our plugins and tool. I actually did a little live demo on last time's podcast, so if you didn't see that, check it out. But I just wanted to quickly mention that that demo that I gave the tool now has some updates. So there's now plugins for Coinbase, chatgpt, bing, duckduckgo and Mozilla, and Alex who created it tells me the command line interface has changed a bit and to check out the readme, because there's been some updates and changes to the tool, there's also a new blog out by CCL Solutions, by Alex, and it is about local storage and session storage in Mozilla Firefox. So it's part one of a two-part series and it goes through in detail the storage mechanism for mozilla, just like he did with the um, the chrome blogs, and it lays out how the data is structured in those um files that you can find on on computers yeah, I think, I think what you said, firefox right I said yeah, firefox yeah, I mean the.
Speaker 1:the world right now is Chrome-centric. We know that even Microsoft's browser is really Chrome Brave and all the others, but Firefox is still kicking it. I'm still a Firefox user. All habits die hard, but that's useful. You need to look at those. And we have cases, really well-known cases, where the examiner is focused on oh, this Windows must be this browser. It doesn't really delve into the other ones and the data is lost. So the format is different in a few ways. I haven't finished reading the whole thing, but again, it's a great resource. The document is a resource document you can use later. Hey, I got a Firefox browser. When you're going to delve in depth, then do that. Most tools I'm not going to say all, but most tools they're oblivious to this type of storage. If it's not SQLite history, they're like they ignore it. And local sessions and local storage and some of the underlying structures, b-level DB or whatever it is. We need to consider those. It's not if it's, we have you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely so. I'll put the link to the blog and the link to the Mr Skinny Legs tool on GitHub up in the show notes at the end.
Speaker 1:Yeah, always check the show notes. We have a whole bunch of links there and some stuff that we talked so you can follow up on your own later.
Speaker 2:Another thing that was announced is the SANS Difference Maker Awards stuff that we talked so you can follow up on your own later. Um, another thing that was announced is the sans difference maker awards. So nominations for the difference maker awards are open now and it's going to be open through friday, september 13th, at five o'clock eastern time. Um, the finalists for these awards will be announced in mid-October and then the Difference Maker Awards will be held at Washington Hilton in December, December 15th. So there's some categories that are open for these awards. There's article or book of the year, people's champion of the year. Diversity champion of the year innovation of the year so open source. Or product tool, podcast, live stream, video series of the year innovation of the year so open source.
Speaker 1:Or product tool podcast. Live stream video series of the year. I knew you were going to do that. Oh, I got a cough.
Speaker 2:What was that again? The what of the year again? What category? Podcast. Live stream video series of the year.
Speaker 1:I thought you were going to at least let me get to the end of the list. Oh no, no, I got some cough all of a sudden, but I'm good now Go ahead, please continue.
Speaker 2:Rising Star, team of the Year, practitioner of the Year, ciso of the Year, cybersecurity Company of the Year and Lifetime Achievement Award. So those are all of the different categories. You can go right over to the SANS website and I'll have the link in the show notes as well, but it's up on the screen now so you can go right over and nominate your favorite people favorite podcast, if you want, right on that website.
Speaker 1:Look podcast and live stream. You know, this just happens to be both. Look at that.
Speaker 2:I mean, what a coincidence.
Speaker 1:And all kidding aside, yeah, please, please, support and I'm not ashamed to actually ask folks, supporters of the podcast, the listeners or the viewers, as yourself, to nominate us.
Speaker 1:Right, those nominations are good, first of all, all because they recognize the work that's being done. But, from from our perspective as podcasters, live streamers, um, it's, it's a way of of getting more people involved, right, if people know the show exists, that they can participate, that we can collaborate, be in the chat and build more community, then it's better for everybody, and and and if not not only with with show, but also make your own shows. I don't think there's enough and you tell me what you think about this, heather but I don't think there's enough shows that are specific for digital forensics, because the stuff that I see is digital forensics, but it's more infosec, right, or red teaming shows and what's the latest exploit or what the ransomware? This is specifically for digital forensics and we give it a little of a tinge of kind of law enforcement based, because that's where our background is. I mean, I think that would be a really good thing to develop even more so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, I 100% agree with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what do people need to do, Heather, to support us in this way? Tell?
Speaker 2:us With the difference maker with this. Yeah, what they need to do oh, go right over to the website and um just fill out the nomination. I you have to go in and um choose who, who you want to vote for, obviously and then it asks you why there's like a whole section on on why, why we or whoever you're nominating, deserve the award exactly.
Speaker 1:I mean, you learned something new, you were able to get answers, meet with people, do whatever it is, you put it there and and hopefully that will get us nominated. So thank you, thank you ahead of time, everybody um, all right.
Speaker 2:So recently there was an article and I'm trying to think I was in AP News and the article kind of summarized is about police officers starting to use AI chat bots to write their crime reports and chat GPT. How there's actually an option for chat GPT to not just aid the officer in writing the report but actually writes the report for them. So AI writes the report. I see so many things wrong with this, but I'm letting you go first.
Speaker 1:Look, I mean so. So I mean, let's be clear, the way they, the way they're advertising it, is that the AA is helping, right, but in this case, helping which you're correct, helping is like here's your report, yeah, and the idea is that the officer will go in and try to finish that report and make sure it's good. You have to give me a second here because I'm like halfway, you can't speak. Hold on, okay, can you? Can you hear me still?
Speaker 1:yes I'm sorry, everybody all right. So it goes and writes the thing. So literally what the tool is doing is goes through that, that video and whatever the tool listens to, we'll make some how can I say this AI conjectures. I'm going to call it conjecture because I'm being, I guess, kind to the AI and putting it there for you and I see a lot of problems with that. Right, Look, can I get in my soapbox, Heather? Is this my soapbox?
Speaker 2:moment. It's your time, it's your time. It's your time, your time to shine.
Speaker 1:Well, it's not so much shine, it's me. Just, you know, I was going to say something, but I'm going to transcend from myself. I'm going to say defiling somebody's cornflakes, how about that? Making it undigestible? Look, this is the deal, okay, Is it? Look, I wear body cams, right, when I go out and do work, right?
Speaker 1:Is it cumbersome to go out after you're done with the op and kind of have your recollection, look at the video and do your report? Yeah, it's cumbersome, especially and I don't use them that much when you're an officer that's on the road. You're gonna be doing that a lot, right, so it sucks. I mean, did you get into this type of law enforcement work to write, uh, uh, body cam reports? Of course not. So, like I understand, like don't get me wrong, um, but, but this is a deal with this type of stuff. Uh, I'm gonna. I'm gonna explain my thought process, or at least my opinion, which, by the way, I mean we need to say this the opinions expressed in the show do not reflect the opinions or the policies or or whatever of our employers. Opinions are only our own and they're subject to change at any time.
Speaker 1:okay, thank you everybody that's our lawyers, and by lawyers I mean, uh, ourselves, okay, so so. So, after the disclaimer, this is the thing I remember when I was growing up and I used to be a church kid, right and in the mid 80s, early 90s, when I was growing up, there was this thing about preachers taking rock music or heavy metal music and they would play it normally and you hit the guitars in the song and then they would take it and play it backwards and back in the day. For the kids that are maybe listening listening, there was a thing called tapes and you remember the tapes you remember?
Speaker 1:oh, I mean, of course you're, you're my age, yes, I know you. I know you're in denial, but yes, you are. So you will go. And you could actually play the tape backwards, like and when it goes backwards, you know it sounds like like the words backwards, right and they would play it to you and they were like, do you hear that? And I'm like, no, I heard some garble. No, no, listen to it. What they recorded saying is and since it's like a religion, they would say you know, the devil is king or something like nefarious about evil. And you listen to it and you're like play it again. And then by the second or third time you're like you know what? I think? Yeah, I think I hear it too. You know, really, did you really hear it? Or or was your ear attuned to hear what they're telling you that you need to hear? Right, and and the article and we're gonna put put that article, the links in the show notes gives an example of how this officer is saying this is a great tool.
Speaker 1:I was doing my report and at some point an officer said I think it's the vehicle is color X, right, and he goes and this isn't the article. I did not even remember that. It's right, he said that, so I put in my report. So, okay, you only knew it because you heard it later, right, that that like, and that's that's a hard thing, because if you later come and say I took this actions that you see here based on things that I heard, um, did you really hear them? Or was it because of the recollection, and not even recollection because you were watching the video? It's because you're reading the AI transcript of the event, right? And that leads to my example a second ago about sounds, human nature and folks can look this up. There's a thing called pareidolia Hopefully I said it, pronounced it correctly Pareidolia. What is that, heather? Have you looked at the skies and seen like a bunny and faces at any point in your life, or seen, of course? I mean, yeah, who hasn't? Right?
Speaker 1:We have evolved with a sense of seeing meaning and patterns where sometimes they're not, and the reason for that? It's pretty obvious and clear, right? Imagine our ancestors, some primates walking on the savanna, and they come across something in the grass and they jump back, you know, thinking it might be a snake. And it happens not to be a snake, it happens to be a stick, okay, well, okay, I mean, I didn't need to jump, but I jumped anyways because it might be a stick. You know, I saw a stick where there was no stick. But imagine if humanity didn't develop that and they saw that thing and didn't jump and it happened not to be a stick. You know, you know well the ancestors that didn't have that sensibility of seeing snakes when they were actually sticks. They're dead, so they didn't procreate.
Speaker 1:So us, the ones that see snakes where there's a stick, we're the ones that got here. Right, does that make sense? But you can expand that to our thought process. It's part of our evolutionary brain, our lizard brain. We see patterns where there are none right Now. Imagine this Imagine that the AI listens to a sound and makes a determination that the sound means X or Y, and then you listen to the sound too, but then you read the AI report and you're like you know what? I think the AI report? Yeah, you know what? Yeah, that's what it is. Then whose recollection is this right? Is it the ai? So is it yours? Does that make sense, sense to you?
Speaker 2:that definitely makes sense. And then I mean, I know you're going to go here in just a second, but whose is it and who's testifying?
Speaker 1:I, I, I look. I don't want to say like a luddite or luddite, I think that's what it is. It's our folks that were kind of anti-technology for different reasons. We're not going to go into the term in detail, but I don't want to sound like a Luddite or looted Luddite, I think that's what it is. It's our folks that were kind of anti-technology for different reasons. We're not going to go into the term in detail, but I don't want to look, we're technologists, right, we love, we love our computers, we love technology, we love all these things.
Speaker 1:But also, as law enforcement, you know folks that work in this field. I'm really troubled by that type of views where the AI will go and listen or look at the video, look in quotes right, they don't have eyes, but you know what I mean Kind of look through it and make some determinations and you say well, the responsibility of determining what's correct and incorrect is going to be on the officer or the agent that's going through it. But that's the thing, right, that AI or that video through the AI is going's going to influence the investigator or the investigator, but the officer, not the other way around, like there is no discussion with the AI. I think you, you got it wrong. Let's, let's have a, let's kind of go through it together. This, that's not how it goes, and I think we're going to be offsetting, not offsetting, that's not the word. Offloading were offloading, sorry, offloading some of that responsibility to these automated systems. And you know it's like I actually have a comment here in the chat. Can you read it, heather, please?
Speaker 2:But what if your recollection is correct, based on the AI's conjecture?
Speaker 1:Well, it's correct, right, that's a good point, it's correct and that's the whole thing. Some of the decisions that we make as law enforcement officers, they cannot be viewed with the lens of hindsight after the event. You have to look at the lens of the moment and when we're actually doing this, we're doing it through a hindsight view to kind of support X action we did at the moment, and hopefully folks understand what I mean by that. If I make some decisions based on some facts at the moment, it should be understood and judged by those facts Coming up later and kind of like fixing those settings because I have more data that I did not have at the moment. To me it's troubling. I mean, does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely it's very troubling. So I don't know if anybody saw our post from the podcast last week, but we use AI to come up with the description for what the content of our podcast is each week, and last week's AI was so horrifically bad that I just left it because I thought it was funny and put in parentheses that that is not our description. It was the AI's description, but some of it I don't even know where it got some of the stuff it said. Like seriously, it made no sense to me. And then I was looking through our old podcast for an example to read here said I don't even remember what you did actually say, but the AI transcribed what you said as calling me a proficient steed checker of tool performance and the header of the Utah 46 World B with caps. I don't even know what you said.
Speaker 2:It wasn't that.
Speaker 1:You aren't, are you sure? I know you've been hanging out in Utah a lot.
Speaker 2:And I'm a steed checker, I mean I guess I have a new job.
Speaker 1:Is that where people sit on horses? Is that what it's called A steed?
Speaker 2:I'm not 100% sure what it is. I know you didn't say it, though.
Speaker 1:Look, half of those words are totally unknown to me. I don't. I don't think my accent would allow me to pronounce them correctly anyways.
Speaker 2:So yeah, just just an example of how how it can get it wrong. I mean, I think I, my personal opinion is ai's got to get a lot better and a lot more accurate before I would let it write any reports for me. And if I let it write a report for me ever, it would be checked 800 times before it went out the door.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and again, it's tough because the AI will influence us right, when we offload some of that responsibility to an automated system, we're not checking the automated system. The human nature is to let the automated system influence us, because I believe that the way we've been brought up, you know, this system is really complex. This system is really accurate. It's because they're not going to sell it as inaccurate, they're not going to sell it as hey, you know what. Ai sometimes has some crazy fantasies or illusions, you know. So just keep that in mind. Nobody sells the product like that you know, Right right.
Speaker 1:And I want to go back a second. So the chat is saying you know, the body-worn camera should not be used for report writing. It's solely based at the moment. And I want to make some point clear. What I'm trying to say and again, it's my opinion, not my employers you take actions and the body-worn cameras record those actions and they stand alone, right, and they're good to record what happened at the moment. What I'm mentioning is that then an AI comes and takes that recording and those sounds and makes an interpretation based on its own model of what's said and what's done. And that's different Because, if I'm looking at and again, body-worn cameras have some limitations because body-worn cameras have one angle.
Speaker 1:Body-worn cameras are not 360. They cannot get audio from maybe at the other side of the house or the room. So this will always be limitations of what is being recorded. But that records what the angle can see and what it can be heard, and that's it what it can be heard, and that's it. Adding that extra level of AI to add interpretation or to summarize it for you now, it's different. We're not talking about what I believe in the moment analysis, but what the AI believes that something was said or something was heard or something was seen and I don't look. How can I say this If human testimony is not the most reliable thing? You know, I don't think AI interpretation of audio or video is any better.
Speaker 1:And again, just off saying, well, let's have the AI give it a crack, give a crack at it and then have the human verify it, I'm worried that our biases will creep in, and that's something I said before on the podcast. We're so used to saying, well, we shouldn't have biases, and that's a lie. Everybody will have biases. The question is, what biases are we going to try to establish for ourselves? A bias in favor of truth? A bias in favor of honesty? A bias in favor of what the truth is or not? Right, because nobody's unbiased. We have to work on what our biases are and the rules I say rules, but the procedures of our field guarantee that those biases are kept in check. Right, and that's why it's a science, right, but I don't know.
Speaker 1:Again, this is a strong opinion now. Again, I can change tomorrow. I'm open to change. I'm open to change. I'm open to being shown that this technology is different or that there's some sort of procedural guardrails for it. Right, some rules, some regulations. Maybe this type of analysis cannot be used on officer-involved shooting, maybe it can only be used on a car, not even car stuff. That's not a good example but on some maybe non-felony cases again, I'm making this up you know where the stakes are not that high, and then maybe that would be a good tool for the type of intervention or law enforcement activity that's not high stakes. And what I mean by high stakes is, you know you're going to really limit the freedom of somebody or, you know, maybe the life of somebody in that scenario. So I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think the article did mention too that there's like a, not a disclaimer, but like a line in there that says this report was written utilizing AI. In the article, yeah, If I recall correctly. If I recall correctly, yeah. So I mean, if I were a defense attorney and the article or the the report submitted to court said that it was written by ai, I mean I would have a major problem with that. I would think the defense would have a major problem with that.
Speaker 1:Like wait a minute but, but I think the disclaimer is needed. I think, what do you think?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think it's needed too. Definitely, but I can see that being challenged a bit and maybe and maybe it should right um yeah yeah, the but disclaimer is needed and it should be part of discovery right in our field.
Speaker 1:we need to disclose and and I remember I remember back in the day when disclosing our tools was kind of like, no, we cannot do that because we don't want the bad guys to know what tools we're using. But now the latest rules of federal procedure require you in your documentation to list out all the tools and versions that you use, and I'm sorry just having the AI go through it for you. That's a tool. That is a tool and that needs to be disclosed, and disclosed. In what capacity was this done and how much weight that AI model has in determining what the evidence was or what the report said. And we're blazing new ground in that area. I'm just worried that we're blazing new ground as opposed to slowly, methodically.
Speaker 2:Let's make sure it works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're going really fast. Again, my opinion can change at any time. I'm open to new ideas and new thought processes, and I love being proven wrong. I love being proven wrong. The more wrong I am, the happier I am, because that means I learned something, that means I grew, so I'm all for that.
Speaker 2:So other news Magnet Forensics has acquired MedEx Forensics. They've acquired another company. So if you don't know what MedEx Forensics is, it's a business that's dedicated to verifying the authenticity of digital media files, identifying deepfakes, synthetic media and AI generative AI. So MedEx is joining Magnet and they will be building on their existing partnership, because they already had an existing partnership before the acquisition. They are also going to have well, magnet's going to have an add-on where Med-X I believe it's going to be part of Magnet Griffi, so there'll be an add-on with Med-X's video authentication platform in Magnet Griffi. So there'll be an add-on with Medix's video authentication platform in Magnet Griffi.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's something I. I mean, we saw the writing on the wall and usually what happens with Magnet is they have a partnership with some company and then a few months later they buy them out.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or they're joined, like in the case of Greykey. It wasn't so much they were bought out, but the parent company, which is what's it called Teterabar Bravo, I think it is. Yeah, toma, I think Toma, sorry, toma, I got all my Greek letters now. Toma Bravo then decided to buy them both and then kind of put them together Medics, and again, I haven't used their technology, but I heard you know their presentations. Always forget his name. He's such a great dude, he's a great great.
Speaker 2:Brandon Epstein.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Brandon Epstein. He gave some awesome presentations. Basically how that technology is used.
Speaker 1:I like a lot how he mentioned that, based on their study of how media is generated by YouTube or Instagram or different platforms, they can look at a video that's been shared or moved around, but by looking at some embedded things, it has and again, it's all proprietary, their own stuff and they can tell you oh yeah, this was originated or encoded in YouTube or in this other platform, and then you can go into that and get more information, possibly some timestamps I say timestamps, but frames of reference of when this happened. It's pretty amazing technology. I will say something it's got a little mini soapbox. This is good, this is needed. I still believe, as of today, the big differentiator in the field it's not so much the parsing, even though that's important, it's the acquisition capabilities. Uh, you wanna, you wanna be a big player in in this field. You gotta, you gotta get the data out, because, uh and we've talked about this before 85, 95 percent of our work alone it comes from where heather yeah it, is it computers?
Speaker 2:sorry, you caught out for a second.
Speaker 1:I didn't hear what you said no, it's okay, our workload, is it computers mostly, or what is it?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, no mobile devices. It's mobile devices, right yeah?
Speaker 1:so if you have a company that does a parsing product but you're not extracting out stuff, you're gonna be behind. All right, I say behind, but you know you're not gonna be a big player in the space and I would like to see players, big players like them. They are a big player, they have a great product. But continue to focus on the extraction and accessing access capabilities, because if we get to the data, then we can do stuff with it in different ways. Right, but if we don't get to the data, then if I cannot pull that deep possible deep fake from the device, then having this capability does me no good If I cannot get to it to process it right, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:So I still believe that's a big differentiator and more companies should invest in that, because I believe again my opinion there's not enough competition and that's why prices are going a little bit, getting a little bit out of hand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's definitely definitely true. So there's another tool, another new tool we read about Recuperabit, forensic File System Reconstruction. So it's on a GitHub and it's I don't know if it's Andrea or Andrea Lazzarato, and I'll put the link to the GitHub here, but it's a software that attempts to reconstruct file system structures and recover files. So the article says it's currently only supporting NTFS, but it attempts to reconstruct the directory structure regardless of missing partition table, unknown partition boundaries, partially overwritten metadata or quick format. I want to demo it on a future podcast. So we'll definitely have to do that. I didn't have the timer capability while I'm down here in Hoover, but I'm going to try it out and demo it on a future podcast and hopefully everybody will go over to the GitHub and give this new tool a try.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm looking forward to your testing. I remember I mean, this type of capability is not new, right? There's been products doing this for over decades. But I like that he's coming up with a whole bunch of cool stuff and again you can go look at it and get it and and download it. It's in the GitHub. So again, another tool in your toolbox, and I'm really interested in seeing those and hopefully more support for different file systems. So again, the work that he's doing and this open source space, I appreciate it. It's a good, good, good, good, good, good work 100%.
Speaker 2:So we've talked about Lionel Montari's work on the podcast many times. I'm going to go with, like the king of the logs, of the log files.
Speaker 1:He has tons of blogs on the log files, the iOS log files. You have tons of blogs on the log files, the the ios log files, folks so this is a really specific sub sub uh genera of logs yes, the ios.
Speaker 2:Sorry, let me add that the ios log files, um, actually, somebody asked me just the other day for um an answer to something about the ios log files and I just sent over the the link to lionel's blogs because they're excellent. But he's going to start doing blogs of the week and the first one dropped on Monday and it was iOS Unified Blogs Save your Conversations with Siri. So we'll put up a link to that log of the week, but definitely check out his full page because there's a ton of good material on that blog.
Speaker 1:I mean people ask me, what are the unified loves good for? I mean, like, well, you want to know, there's a big resource, and that's something I really like. I love when people specialize like that because it becomes a resource for the whole community. It's like the francis cooter right, he's really focused, like like doggedly focused on photossqlite, and that's amazing because then we go there, use that, validate and we're like 20 steps ahead. Right, we don't, we don't all have to reinvent that wheel because there's there's, we got somebody that specializes in that. Now we have here a specialist.
Speaker 1:Lionel is a specialist on ios unified logs and he shares that with the community. So now we go use it, we validate it and everybody quickly grows and I wasn't aware of how useful those logs were. I mean, I kind of knew a few things, but his specialization on them has been for lack of a better term a blessing for everybody. So there's a lot of, like Kevin is saying in the chat, there's a lot of goodies there in that Unified logs. So if you're doing iOS forensics, you should definitely definitely look into that, and there's different ways of getting those logs out, different tools for doing that, so you don't have to have a really expensive tool set to get the benefit of working with those unified logs. So it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2:All right, I'm going to attempt to share a photo, but I only have one screen, so bear with me.
Speaker 1:um it has not when. When we travel, that's what happens.
Speaker 2:We can't carry our reminders with us my testing on this earlier was not going well, so let's see here.
Speaker 1:Uh, okay we had to press send button.
Speaker 2:There we go there we go, boom, take it away so what was it last week?
Speaker 1:I think a week ago. So Jen.
Speaker 1:Kaiser, he's such a good guy. He has actually sent or made a couple of artifacts for one of the leaps or a couple of the leaps, I think it's iOS. So he's a collaborator. So I appreciate him, you know, collaborating to the community. He does that and he was talking about how he was. Uh, he developed a system to make a third party well-known tool in the space better, right, and making that those changes we, which he thought were needed, and I believe it as well. The post is there on the screen but I'm not going to read it. The point is that, for his use case, the tool was not doing the best job it could, so he made some changes to make it do what he needed the tool to do right. And that's a benefit, a benefit for everybody, a benefit for the community.
Speaker 1:Well, for lack of a better term, this company, which will go unnamed, decided to be a bully and reached out to his employer and said either you take this out of your repo and take it out forever or we're going to cancel the licensing agreements for the whole company. And this company is a worldwide company and the company put pressure on Jan and uh, the company, you know, put pressure on, jan told him hey, you need to take this down, and he did, which, again, of course, he did right, um I, why I would? I would have done the same thing now, um I I. This example is one company, but let's be real, uh, I I want to talk about this because I think it's emblematic of the on the industry as a whole and I I think it's really, uh, sad and a little bit maddening. It makes me a little bit mad Because, look, the whole space is based. Maybe you can get the other picture out.
Speaker 1:I made a post giving some thoughts about this event. I didn't link them together at that point, but I'm linking them now. I made a post with a little meme about describing this situation that we're in, where you have these companies that work in the space and you see somebody working with your tool to make it better or do something with it, and you immediately see it as a threat, right, and the meme shows a little flower, kind of smiley, happy, saying, like a little face, saying making products for profit by reverse engineering others' intellectual property, and they're really happy, right, and then the next image is the flower screaming and mad saying when someone does the same to your product to make it better for free. And look, the space is built on these vendors and there's more than one, obviously, and just this scenario is for one, but it applies for everybody when you take iOS and you reverse engineer it and you get stuff out of it or you literally exploit it, and then you look at the contents of that product and then you try to make sense of it within your tool or Android. At least with Android you can say Android is a little bit more open source type of thing, so I guess you can kind of you know that's not us, but Apple products.
Speaker 1:You reverse engineering intellectual property that belongs to somebody else, but then you want to say that people shouldn't work with your tool and do stuff with it for free, when you're taking some other product as a base and making money out of it, a profit out of it, right, and that kind of bothers me a little bit. I mean, do you think I'm off base by this type of situation or what?
Speaker 2:No, I definitely don't think you're off base. I think I mean, if he created something that makes a tool better, call him and say, hey, can we use this? Can we work this in some way? It's not like he was. He was making money off of it. It was out there for free and it made the tool better. So I don't understand. I don't really understand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not like he's making profit by reverse engineering their tool right like, like they do when they they I mean the industry. When the industry reverse, reverse engineers ios and makes money out of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's a bad look yeah, if there's something out there that can make it make it look better or make it work better for everybody, get a hold of them and let's work together. I don't know, just my thought on that.
Speaker 1:I don't like bullies. I do not like bullies, I'm sorry, I don't like bullies and I think the industry needs to do better. Some other vendors in the space try to do that consistently reach out to the community, reach out to open source projects and try to bring them in in different ways. And again, I understand there's always some limitations. It's a business. They need to protect their intellect, their own intellectual property, and we understand that. Um, but you don't to go and be a bully, um, I I don't. I don't appreciate that. And this is the thing at some point you might be able to to bully clients around because you are pretty much irreplaceable in some sense. But there will be a day when you might not be irreplaceable.
Speaker 1:And then what Brands are built? Not so much on the product, but they're built on what the product makes the user feel, how the user feels about the product, and this is as clear as day. People buy overpriced Macs, not because there's no other computers in the world, not because they're necessarily better. It's because a Mac says something about you and about how you work, and maybe you're just used to that right. Just used to that right. But if Apple started to take their brand and take their clients for granted and bullying them.
Speaker 1:People will look for options when they feel that they're not being a pre. What they feel is not how they would like to feel. Does that make sense? And it might sound silly and maybe it is, but what the tool does sometimes is not as important as how you feel. By the use of the tool and bullies. At some point karma is going to get you. And again, again, again, again, again. This is spoken to the whole industry. This is the one company that will be on mention spurred the topic, but this applies to all industries in the field and everybody needs to look inside and say am I being a bully with developers? Am I being a bully with my clients In order to get an advantage, a temporal advantage, over the competition? Am I sacrificing my position in the future? Am I sacrificing my goodwill with my vendors and users and industry observers in months and years ahead? Right, that is just as important as the one little thing that you're trying to prevent or to allow. I think Look, too many soapboxes today.
Speaker 2:So many soapboxes I put too many into one show, huh.
Speaker 1:It's your fault, you know it's your fault.
Speaker 2:A little bit, a little bit.
Speaker 1:You're triggering me every five minutes. I tend to do that, yes. Thank you, heather.
Speaker 2:Well, we can move on to what's new with the leaps. What do you have that's new with the leaps for this week?
Speaker 1:Yes, so, yeah. So let me share something, and we talked about this briefly, I think. Last episode Heather Barnhart, she and her colleagues, the good people at Celebrite and some people that work there. They came out with a blog talking about message retention and for the longest, message retention in iOS was contained. It's a little bit of a refresher from last week. They are contained in the comapplemobilesmsplist with that capital M, Believe it or not. There's one with lowercase m, Okay, and it was kept within that plist in a key called keep messages for days and depending on what the value was, it could be forever, a year or 30 days, right or never, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, interestingly enough, in iOS 17, that changed. Those entries might still be there, but they're not valid. They're not considered anymore. You have to look and go and find the SS keep messages key to look for those values. And I was kind of struggling with some of that code but thankfully, kevin Pagano he's in the chat and again, he's one of my right-hand mans and I'm so glad that I have a couple of right hands now. Really good people dedicated. But Kevin is one of the OGs, right. He came out with some code to take into consideration. It's really nice because now iLeap shows look, if it's iOS 16 or below, it's going to be these values that you need to consider. If it's iOS 17, it's going to be these values to consider. So we give you both and you can make those determinations based on that. I'm always, I'm always. I want to see more rather than less, and the way he approached it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, within the code. I think it's pretty good. So thank you, kevin, you know we love you. Yes, thank you, kisses to the newborn and you're doing a good job, man. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2:There's another new one too in the ALEAP, so Yogesh actually added SMS backup and MMS backup files for an ALEAP. The Android backup now uses this format for storing SMS and MMS data, so that has been added to ALEAP.
Speaker 1:And if you're going to talk about OGs, jokesh is the OG of the OGs Because this project I started it and he actually became a co-author of the project and he's been really busy. He's a really in-demand information security specialist in Australia. He's killing it. So he hasn't had the time to really kind of delve with the community as he used to do, um, but his work, uh, you know, lives on through these projects and also every so, every so often he goes and he's so kind that you know my assumption is he had a need for it and he decided to share through the leaves to the tool. So, uh, so you'll get you. We also appreciate you.
Speaker 1:The project wouldn't exist without you. I wouldn't have learned so many things without your tutoring, your mentoring. So I, I I appreciate your guys to pieces. Uh, lots of respects and, you know, hopefully at some point he can come back and be as active with the community as as as he used to be. But again, he has a lot of stuff going on. So it's totally understandable and, as always, wish him even more success.
Speaker 2:Kevin's working on stuff right now. It looks like Another update fix coming tonight, so we have more things to look forward to in the leaves.
Speaker 1:It's a project of love. It's a project that, geez, we talk about it in every episode, but I'm not going to stop talking about it because I was at the Sacramento and people told me yeah, we use the tooling, we use it in these cases. We had a case where the turn by turn of the Google Maps, not Google Maps, but yeah, Maps yeah.
Speaker 1:Turn by turn. It was made a big difference in my case. In front of the jury and giving me all these examples or discussing how can we give some support now for things they need, and what a great platform, what a great community. So thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the students down here will be installing it. I'm not sure if they're doing it tomorrow or next week on the second week of the class, but they'll be installing it and trying out the leaps down here too. So you'll have some, some new users, and one of my favorite things about the leaps is if you find something and you need it supported, it can be supported without waiting for some you know big a release of the tool. You just add the support.
Speaker 1:That's my favorite thing look, I, I want to believe that us, I say us, the community, developing these tools, we are um changing the, changing the, the space. And I say that because recently we're talking with, with josh he made me aware, josh hickman, again great friend, he works at celebrate, great subject matter, expert on mobile devices ios and android.
Speaker 1:What a beast. He's great. He was telling me hey, look, now in celebrate, what we're doing is we are, instead of waiting for the big release, all the supports we have, like some like incremental releases that will be coming out more often, right?
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's good. So now the coding engine, or however they call it, will allow these updates as they come out and you don't have to wait for a big release at the end of the quarter or whatever the release schedule is. And and kevin was saying we're having this conversation and kevin was saying, whoa, just like the leaps, like we incrementally add stuff. So I'm like you know what? I think the community should take credit for that pushing the vendors to yeah, send those.
Speaker 1:If you got, you got something good, send it out. Right, don't wait to have 10, 20 things. Send it out. Make it incremental, so so people can benefit from that. And uh, I think the speed of the community doing that is pushing the space to also do that. And if if that's the case, is that, is that were the case? Uh, I'm happy about it. If that was not the case but it's still happening, I'm also happy about it, so that's a good thing I like this comment too.
Speaker 2:Too. Ian Whiffen, the dude over Celebrate Decoding in PA, is a monster.
Speaker 1:Ian has the respect of this podcast and the respect of us as individuals. I was listening some time ago to him testifying at a court and I couldn't get. I could hear that testimony 20 times.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was really good you have another update to the leaps right Meta.
Speaker 1:Yes and no.
Speaker 2:I'll say why.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, as you all know, so we got RLEAP and I was surprised how popular RLEAP has become. We don't mention it a lot because RLEAP is really more law enforcement centric. What RLEAP does is returns. If you're law enforcement and you have a search warrant for cloud data or for Snapchat accountancy Snapchat is an example Instagram the vendor will provide you that data in whatever format. It could be JSON, it could be HTML, which I hate. It could be a PDF, which I also hate, but the problem is that it changed constantly heather.
Speaker 1:I had just finished doing updating all the meta insta parsers and like in two weeks they changed it and I'm like all the hours I spent and it's HTML. So I have to ingest this humongous HTML and start effing with it. And when I had it in a pretty good spot, they changed it. And I'm like you crazy people, you know how about you give me some JSON instead? You know what I mean. So yeah, it broke, but not only us, it broke for everybody.
Speaker 2:It'll be back after a lot more hard work.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, I don't have sample data now. I need to get some. Actually, that's not true. I think an examiner in front of me in my agency kind of pointed me into some.
Speaker 2:Now I need to get time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah, I also need time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't have any extra time.
Speaker 1:Well, I feel discouraged because I just spent so many hours doing it and then it all went down the drain in a matter of two weeks and that is kind of like I need to kind of rebuild my batteries. Yeah, take a minute to my batteries to charge and give it another go, because, oh my goodness, but that's the reality of this field, which also guarantees that we will never be out of work that's true, it will change and we need to fill the gap.
Speaker 1:Us as examiners I say us, I mean everybody that's listening and or watching we fill those gaps between what's coming out new and when vendors actually catch up to all those things. So that's good stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we are almost to the meme of the week, but oh wait, ian's listening. Thank you, I'm listening intently, but also shoveling rock. Okay, a whole project. Are you in?
Speaker 1:prison. You know, like back in the old movies they were kind of cutting rocks and I'm kidding. Ian, I'm kidding Ian. Actually, the fact that Ian is listening is again it's. How can I, how can we say this, heather? I have a sense. Actually, the fact that Ian is listening is again it's. How can we say this, heather?
Speaker 2:Thank you, yeah, it's a surprise. Thank you, man.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you listening to our humble podcast, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:Actually Ian's listening, Let me tell him I was in my class the class in Sacramento, Ian, I was actually using your tool to look at level DBs with the class and people were really blown out by your tool Mushi, Mushi. I want to say Mushi, but no, it's no S in it, it's Mushi. So we're using Mushi to look at some of the level DBs and going through how that works and I don't think there is any other free tool with a good GUI because most folks like graphical user interfaces that's accessible and so useful as as mushy on that. So if folks are not familiar with mushy, it's a great tool viewer. It supports many formats, seg B's ones and twos, which are not supported pretty much nowhere. He has a really nice graphical user interface to support those different ways of looking at that data. So again, we appreciate him making that effort to making that available to the community and it's free, which is awesome you can't, you can't beat that, it's free and uh yeah.
Speaker 1:So, as I always say, I bet he will agree 100 money back guarantee.
Speaker 2:So yeah, go check it out. So we would be to the meme of the week now. But this week, uh, we posted up that it was our one year anniversary of the podcast. So, um, I had asked people to like and share our posts and whoever did their name was going to get um put into a drawing for some swag, like. Whatever I have for you. I'll mail it out when I'm back from alabama, but I'm going to just share my screen here because I put everybody's name that shared our posts into a wheel.
Speaker 2:I love the wheel graphic I get excited about it, like, oh, look at that, I just have to find it now here. Where are we? Okay, right here, this should do it.
Speaker 1:Let's look at the wheel. I don't see you anymore, okay, no, but I see it, and it has our logo in the middle. I don't see you anymore, okay, no, but I see it, and it has our logo in the middle. Yeah, I put our logo. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2:I love it, so I'm going to spin it three times and pick three winners Woohoo, here we go. Here goes number one.
Speaker 1:Drum roll. Sorry D for Dan.
Speaker 2:You needed to share the post. Who won? Richard Ingress? All right, who?
Speaker 1:who won? Richard ingress. All right, I think I have it on my linkedin. Yeah, you know him. Yes, you do absolutely all right, congrats, richard.
Speaker 2:You're getting some sweet swag. All right, let's spin again.
Speaker 1:Let's see here who won.
Speaker 2:Brian Hempstead.
Speaker 1:It's like we know everybody.
Speaker 2:I know Brian too yeah. All right, let's see.
Speaker 1:One more.
Speaker 2:Let's see. Oh yeah, let me tell you this is totally random.
Speaker 1:We did not put our fingers on the scale right this is how the program works. Look at that of the kevin. You won.
Speaker 2:You won. You won Fair and square. All right, I will send some stuff to the three of you when I'm back in New York, so it'll just be an extra week. Sorry about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and thank you everybody for sharing the post making people aware of the show and for listening and watching Again. We appreciate it. Here are rants, at least my rants, because Heather rants, because she, you know, she's not, she's not like that I think I have one where I ranted well, at least not in public.
Speaker 2:Yeah, true, um, so now we are to the meme of the week. So this week, let me go grab that. If I can share my screen. I don't know what just happened, so bear with me.
Speaker 1:Bear with me, I'm finding it, we'll find it, we'll find a meme.
Speaker 2:Ah there, let's see if I can do it.
Speaker 1:All right, there we go. Describe the meme for us Heather. What are we seeing?
Speaker 2:So the meme of the week has a very, very large stack of cash with the word software, a sort of smaller stack of cash with a 50 that says hardware, and a smaller stack of cash with a 20 that says training.
Speaker 1:If, you're in this field. You know this is true. Sad but true.
Speaker 2:you know this is true that but true, yeah, the accuracy of this picture is spot on Spot. On Spending a lot of money on the software, not so much on training and hardware.
Speaker 1:People are training. You have a stack of $20 bills for training and I'm like, look, there's a $20 bill and underneath it there's $1 bills.
Speaker 1:Oh and, by the way, when you're done, make sure there's some money left over so you can bring that back. Don't spend it all, and I would be a little facetious about it, but obviously I made this meme. So what is part of this is me seeing this price increases kind of go off the roof in a sense, and I'm sorry, but I got triggered again. Look, our business is a public service business, right, we're here to protect the citizens, to defend the defenseless and to apprehend the guilty. So this is not our business not to make a profit. Now, I understand that providing a service to a business that's not for profit requires money, which requires them to make a profit. I understand that. I get it. But, for example, if you want to work and find abused children and free them from their abuse or their slavery and all that, all right, just having a program, and again I'm going to say it and then I'll say sorry later. I'm going to say it's how I thought it. Well, we have a scholarship for departments to send one officer to be trained and use of the tools. Or we're going to send some licenses to some third-party non-governmental nonprofits to show our commitment to the cause. That's fine, but I'd rather have a tool that takes into consideration the price points, takes into consideration that the money comes from the citizens to provide a service to citizens. It's from tax money. It's not a money tree, it's taxes that come out of that. To provide a service to citizens. It's from tax money. It's not a monetary. It's taxes that come out of that to protect the citizenship. And a commitment to be effective in the mission is not by giving a few licenses out for free or training five or six people a year. If you bring those prices down across the border, everybody's capable to do more save more, find more, release more, defend more, protect more of the citizens that need it.
Speaker 1:And you might say to me and that's why you make free tools, because you are a really bad businessman, you will go broke and that's true. I accept that criticism. But at the same time I think the industry needs to take into account who are we serving and where's the money coming from and what are the uses. And just because you believe you can squeeze more money out of it because it's needed and then try to sell or PR yourself into how committed you are to the mission, people will see through it, and at least the people in the industry, that work in this industry, like ourselves, we see through it. Right? If you're charging me and again I'm not picking one company Notice that I use examples that are broad, so I'm not a bully.
Speaker 1:If I'm going to be a bully, I'm going to be a bully against everybody. All right, you know we want to serve and these tools are needed and you need to make a profit, I agree. But don't, don't, don't kid, don't, don't try to then kid, you know, not lie, but try to portray yourself to my face that you're something else. Actually, I would rather, I would rather. I would rather you have be totally transparent and greedy about it and say it's a business, we're here to make money and to maximize it to all our capable means. And I said like, okay, I can see that, I can understand that right, but you really want to be? Show your devotion to the mission across the board, make it more accessible and more folks will be saved, More folks will go free and more guilty will be able to be judged and carry the responsibilities of their actions. And again, this does not reflect my employer. It's just me talking my thoughts. So take it for what it's worth.
Speaker 1:I know Heather doesn't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole, obviously.
Speaker 2:I didn't know the meme was going to turn into another sofa. I really set you up this week.
Speaker 1:Oh, you, you, you, you, you, you, you you. I mean Heather. I know. You know you don't want to touch the topic with 10 foot pole, but I'm going to force you. What do you think about?
Speaker 2:it. Yeah, I mean it's a good meme the software, the software. It takes the whole budget. Um, the training? I mean you're getting training but it's going to be overlooked or reduced because of the cost in other areas. And I agree 100% that if you're going to support a cause, make it easier for the people who are actually doing it and working toward the costs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, and I feel that if it's government work it's going to be more expensive as opposed to and maybe I'm wrong, right, I don't know what private industry pays for the equivalent tools. I don't know what that means and how that works, but I think what we're seeing across the board in government work is that budgets are getting tighter for obvious reasons. And then what do you cut? You're going to cut on hardware, you're going to cut on training, and that's tough because some of the software depends on the hardware. Right, the proper use of the software depends on the training. And especially, these vendors now are kind of pushing out again another soapbox moment.
Speaker 1:They're pushing out their own training about the tool as a necessary item to properly be able to testify about the tool or to show that the tool does X and Y, and I think that's just another way of taking that cow and trying to squeeze more out of it, and I don't believe that's true. I mean, would I love to be certified in all vendor tools? Absolutely. Do I need to to use them and actually to even find when they don't work and correct them? Of course not. Right the tool doesn't make me an expert. Right, the tool doesn't certify me. I certify the tool. The tool doesn't do the examination, I do the examination.
Speaker 1:A tool is a tool. The hammer doesn't build a house. The nails don't build the wall right. The saw doesn't make the palace right, it's the person. And this concept of tooling plus training is what actually makes the house. And having courts believe that. I think we should, as agencies and practitioners, we should move away from that. It's good to have. But this fallacy as well if you're not certified in ILEAP, you could not even talk about it and your testimony should be suspect. I think it's a disservice to the science of the field.
Speaker 2:I think maybe you should start some training courses on ILEAP and ALEAP. You've got time for that, don't you?
Speaker 1:Sorry, I mean I'm kind of doing it ad hoc. Ask for the training. And again, a lot of credit to my agency. For example, I'm going to the ICAC to teach the tool and my agency supports me on that.
Speaker 1:So I can not be more grateful about my bosses and my Tampa division. They are. They really see that this will help around the country and they support me on that and I'm blessed because not everybody has that benefit to say, yeah, go out and make the world better with these things that you have done. So I'm grateful for that. But I hope vendors also in the space, especially because this is not about the folks that are doing the grunt work like us right in those companies. I'm talking about, you know, ceo, board members, people up there they actually reassess and think what are we doing here and who are we doing it for and for what purposes and who are we doing it for and for what purposes?
Speaker 2:And hopefully that guides their thought process as we move along as a field and as a way of let's be honest making money as well. All right, that's it. We're at the end Boom. Thank you so much for everybody that listened or that watched tonight live.
Speaker 1:Thank you everybody. Thank you, heather. Now I need to get some nerve pills to calm myself down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sorry, rhyal Jalop, I'll bring some relaxers or something, some Xanax no those need to be prescribed. And we don't do that here in this podcast. At most I'll have to take some Tylenol.
Speaker 1:Okay, there you go. That's the only thing I can take. Anyhow, no for real. Thank you everybody, uh all the folks in the chat. Um, there's some, some good comments. We didn't put them up on the screen, um, but we read them and we appreciate them and, uh, hopefully we'll be back in in a week, a week and a half, or the other week, a week over, um, to keep talking about what's happening. Anything else for the good or the other?
Speaker 2:week, a week over to keep talking about what's happening.
Speaker 1:Anything else for the good or the other Heather?
Speaker 2:That's all I have, thank you.
Speaker 1:That's all we have everybody, so see you next time. Peace. Thank you, we'll see you next time.
