Icac-task-force

In a world grappling with the pervasive and deeply concerning issues of human trafficking and fraud, law enforcement agencies are facing a monumental challenge. To combat these crimes effectively, they need advanced tools and technologies that can help them uncover critical evidence and bring the perpetrators to justice. ADF Solutions, a leading provider of digital forensic and investigative solutions, has emerged as a crucial partner in the fight against these heinous acts.

[Reston, VA] – ADF Solutions, a global leader in digital forensics and media exploitation solutions, is delighted to announce its sponsorship and exhibition at the Crimes Against Children Conference (CACC).

The U.S. Department of Justice launched the ICAC Task Force program in 1998 to help law enforcement learn how to prevent, combat and investigate Internet Crimes Against Children.  ICAC Task Force training is scheduled regionally across the United States each year. 

The ICAC conferences are announced each year and include training and events held in:

Online sexual exploitation of children or OSEC is the sexual abuse of children that may be streamed over the internet and the abuser receives payment for the content.

Today's access to technology and the Internet is unfortunately making it easier for cyber criminals to commit crimes can oftentimes go undetected. It is the job of ICAC Task Forces, high tech crime units and police leaders to find the most effective ways to fight cybercrime and protect children.  

Digital forensics is the science of recovering files, artifacts, and evidence from digital devices including mobile phones, tablets, computers (including Windows, Mac, and Linux), external drives, drive images, and other media storage (USB flash drives, memory cards, etc.). 

ADF Solutions has long been the standard in on-scene forensic examination of digital devices for all types of investigations. Our law enforcement customers are routinely called on to handle all types of investigations, including many that are disturbing in nature, such as child exploitation cases. Along with the stressful workload, law enforcement professionals are often portrayed in a negative light. Members of the Law Enforcement community are selflessly helping every day both in and out of the work environment. We would like to showcase the good work being done by the law enforcement community, beginning with ADF's current Digital Forensic Intern and member of the New York State Police (NYSP), Eric Lunser.

Investigating crimes against children has been at the forefront of law enforcement’s initiatives to dedicate the specialized manpower and equipment in order to battle this issue. It is not an easy issue to tackle as it manifests in many different ways and sometimes requires three or more specialized units working together to bring the offenders to justice and then another specialized unit to manage the offenders after release. On top of all the investigation time, we add digital devices to the mix, used to commit and perpetrate these crimes. When it comes time to conduct a search warrant, knock and talk, interview, or victim/witness statement, investigators need a solution to find the relevant data, minimize the number of devices brought back to the lab, minimize the impact to victims, witnesses, and innocent family members. 

The 2021 Northwest Regional Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Conference has returned this year. The conference is a multi-state, multi-disciplinary Internet Crimes Against Children event which provides training to prosecutors, digital forensic examiners, sheriffs, police investigators and ICAC Task Force members.  

Dates: October 6-8, 2021

Location: Redmond, WA

The 2021 Crimes Against Children Conference will be the 33rd annual conference organized by the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center (DCAC) and the Dallas Police Department. More than just another law enforcement conference, the event brings together child advocacy, child protective services, and law enforcement investigators.   

Dates: August 9 -13, 2021

Register for the CACC conference. 

Live sessions will be held from the 9th to the 13th of August, 2021 with content available to registrants through December 17, 2021. 

The 2021 National Law Enforcement Training on Child Exploitation training conference will be held online this year. This annual training event is designed to train and educate prosecutors, digital forensic examiners, investigators, and law enforcement professionals on specialized training in the subject of investigating and prosecuting technology facilitated Crimes Against Children. 

Crimes against children investigations can lead CSAM investigators to have to review thousands or even tens of thousands of images. Investigators need tools to help them find relevant evidence quickly. 

ADF Solutions, the leading provider of automated forensic software for investigators and lab examiners, today announced the ability for on-scene and lab investigators to leverage the facial analytics and age detection capabilities of Suspect Technologies to speed child exploitation and human trafficking investigations. 

Today's access to technology and the Internet is unfortunately making it easier for cyber criminals to commit crimes can oftentimes go undetected. It is the job of ICAC Task Forces, high tech crime units and police leaders to find the most effective ways to fight cybercrime and protect children.  

Digital Forensic Investigators and Examiners need to be able to find evidence quickly and one of the ways that ADF provides this capability is using PhotDNA. 

This week kicks off the 2020 National Child Protection Task Force Conference. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, NCPTF has moved the conference and training online as a virtual event with the focus on cyber response for missing child investigations. The topic is of vital importance since so many children around the world are online and at increased risk during the pandemic.

Child sexual exploitation and modern slavery are related aspects of human trafficking which result in the commercial exploitation of children and often being victims of Child Sexual Abuse Material creation as well.  

Digital Evidence Investigator Certified User Training is now available online as self-paced learning. This class was built to serve individuals and agencies that want the benefit of getting DEI Certified User credentials from ADF Solutions. 

Jim, we want to thank you for the time you’ve taken to chat with us about your work and about your expertise in the areas of white collar and cyber crime. It’s an area ADF is proud to support investigators in. Your work with NW3C covers areas of white collar cyber crime such as fraud, bribery, money laundering, and more. We’ve been proud to partner with NW3C before in our joint webinar and most recently in your Capture the Flag competition!

Gina: How did your background, and 25 years of service in the United States Marine Corps Military police, prepare you for what you’re doing now?

Putting Victims First. That’s the message that Richard W. Brown, the CEO of Project VIC International impressed upon me when I had the opportunity to speak to him about how and why he helped found the non-profit organization which helps law enforcement agencies around the world fight child exploitation. 

You first met LEO in September 2018 when ADF shared an announcement about the upcoming Crimes Against Children Conference in Dallas, Texas. We came up with the idea of LEO one day when our team was sharing stories about the many successes our Law Enforcement customers were having using our digital forensic software to quickly solve crimes. 

The Child Abuse Image Database (CAID) is the United Kingdom’s national system used by law enforcement to help fight the growing problem of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). The system helps police detect, flag and analyse illegal digital media images. 

Child pornography- more properly identified as Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). It’s appalling that there is a need for a definition for this kind of material. U.S. Federal Law defines child pornography as any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor- meaning any person less than 18 years old. 

The numbers surrounding pornographic images of children, and the child abuse that creates it, are so staggering that it’s difficult not to be disheartened. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), their cyber tipline received over 42.9 million reports by November 2018. NCMEC had also reviewed over 267 million images and videos, and identified over 15,800 victims of online child exploitation and abuse.

As communities search for new ways to employ wounded, injured, or ill special operations veterans, there's a new federal government program that offers hope. 

The program which provides financial support for communities seeking to further increase their effectiveness in the fight against child exploitation is run by the U.S. Department of Justice. Communities will benefit in two key ways: 

1. Employ wounded veterans paid for via federal grant money
2. Help communities fight the ever growing battle to stop child exploitation

The U.S. Department of Justice launched the ICAC Task Force program in 1998 to help law enforcement learn how to prevent, combat and investigate Internet Crimes Against Children.  ICAC Task Force training is often held annually within regions across the United States. 

COVID-19 Announcement: Due to the global pandemic, many conferences are being rescheduled. Please check the event websites before making any travel plans and stay safe.

The 2020 ICAC conferences are announced each year and include training and events held in:

The 2020 Northwest Regional ICAC Conference, has been announced for October 5-9, 2020. The conference is a multi-state, multi-disciplinary Internet Crimes Against Children event which provides training to prosecutors, digital forensic examiners, sheriffs, police investigators and ICAC Task Force members.  

The 2020 Crimes Against Children Conference in Dallas, Texas, will be the 32nd annual conference organized by the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center and the Dallas Police Department. More than just a law enforcement conference, the event brings together child protection, advocacy and investigators. The event will be held online this year instead of at the usual Sheraton Dallas Hotel location.   

Dates: August 10-13, 2020

Register for the Dallas CACC conference. 

COVID-19 UPDATE: This year's event will be held virtually. 

In this short How To video, you'll learn how to import and export an ADF digital forensic Search Profile. This allows investigators to create a Custom Search Profile on one computer and export it so that it is available to be imported into another installation on another computer so forensic examiners or senior investigators can create and share profiles with:

October 2019 kicks off with the 5th Annual Northwest Regional ICAC Conference, a multi-state, multi-disciplinary event designed to provide lecture and lab training to prosecutors, digital forensic lab examiners, and law enforcement investigators focused on the investigation and prosecution of technology and Internet facilitated crimes against children. 

In this short 5 minute video, you'll learn how to filter digital forensic scan results in ADF software. Filtering is available in any table while analyzing any of your scan results. In this how-to video, we'll look at:

Investigators can leverage ADF digital forensic software on the front-line to investigate and prosecute child exploitation cases

Most children in the United States now have access to internet services. The internet enables children to have access to vast amounts of valuable and educative information that facilitates their growth. However, the internet further exposes children to numerous dangers. Some of the risks children are exposed to on the internet include pornography, racist, sexist, violent, and demeaning information.

These risks prompted the formation of the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force program. The organization is a national network of 61 coordinated task forces that represent over 4,500 local, state, and federal law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies. The state and regional ICAC task forces are maintained and expanded by the ICAC program to address technology-facilitated child exploitation crimes.

When investigating crimes against children cases, Project Vic data sets and Digital Evidence Investigator^® (DEI) go hand in hand.

DEI and ADF's other forensic triage and investigation tools give investigators and examiners the ability to categorize image and video media fast -- which is paramount in the fight against child exploitation.

Whether you are an ICAC, CAC, or affiliate task force, DEI is the best tool to help you investigate CSAM / CEM and solve internet crimes against children. In the short 6-minute video below, ADF's digital forensic trainer is going to show you how easy it is to add Project Vic datasets or hashes to a Search Profile.

ADF Bret: Hi Brett, thanks for taking time to talk! My first question is, what’s with the extra “t”? I’m just kidding of course.  Growing up, one of my best friends spelled his name with two “t”s so we just refer to one another as Brettt so as not to offend one another.   

Brett:     A rose by any other name…

ADF Bret: You’re a digital forensic examiner providing private consulting and training to government agencies and you’ve also found time to write quite a few books, including Placing the Suspect Behind the Keyboard, Hiding Behind the Keyboard, and X-Ways Forensics Practitioner’s Guide, all of which have received nominations for Best Forensic Book of the Year.  How did you get started writing books for the forensic community and what (besides the money and fame) keeps you writing?

Brett:  Much like any author writing forensic books, I wanted to write the books that I wish were already written by someone else. I would have bought them if they already were written! My first two books were published within the same year, so they competed against each other for Best Forensic Book of the Year and the X-Ways book won. That was neat, and certainly having Eric Zimmerman as my co-author helped. I will keep writing books whenever I need a book that hasn’t already been written, so hopefully we get more authors writing books.

Of all the investigations that a law enforcement agency may undertake, there may be none as difficult to deal with as crimes perpetrated against minors. The proliferation of online child exploitation material continues to be an issue worldwide, from child pornography to the facilitation of human trafficking. Luckily, investigators are not having to combat this problem alone thanks to industry solutions like those provided by ADF Solutions and the organizations below.  

Following the recent ICAC Task Force Commanders Meeting, the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program announced the date and location of the 2019 National Law Enforcement Training on Child Exploitation. 

The U.S. Department of Justice launched the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program (ICAC Program) in 1998 as part of a national strategy to combat and prevent child exploitation.  ICAC Task Force training is often held annually within regions across the United States.  The exact dates and locations of these law enforcement conferences vary from year to year but below is a short list of the typical conference names and locations:

The Florida Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, along with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Child Abduction Response Team (CART) and Offender Registration and Enforcement once again hosted the Florida ICAC Training Symposium. 

ADF's New Forensic Software Empowers Investigators and Prosecutors

ADF Solutions, the leading provider of automated forensic software for investigators and lab examiners, announced today the release of new software versions 1.4 for Digital Evidence Investigator^Ⓡ, and versions 4.4 for Triage-Investigator^Ⓡ, and Triage-G2^Ⓡ software.  

"We are very excited to be the first digital forensic software to parse macOS Mojave log files natively under Windows strengthening our macOS support", stated Raphael Bousquet, CTO, and co-founder of ADF Solutions. "In our world of fast and efficient forensic analysis, we strive to reduce data noise for the investigator. The addition of picture and video classification is a great step in the right direction!"

A precise timeline view links user activities with pictures, videos, and files of interest so investigators can quickly build a digital forensic report to share with prosecutors or other investigators.  The new version leverages enhanced automation and enables investigators to run in-depth digital forensics scans quickly.  The highlights of this new release for the investigative and forensic community include:

This October kicks off with the fourth annual Northwest Regional ICAC Conference, a multi-state, multi-disciplinary event designed to provide lecture and lab training to prosecutors, digital forensic examiners, and law enforcement investigators focused on the investigation and prosecution of technology facilitated crimes against children. 

A criminal forensic lab located in one of the largest U.S. Federal agencies was working on an extensive child exploitation case and had seized 37 total hard drives that contained over 38 terabytes of data. The case was high profile and the forensic team had a short window of time to examine the contents of the confiscated drives. Technical resources were limited and imaging drives and conducting traditional forensic examinations would be very time consuming. With the amount of data that needed to be searched, the investigators realized that it could potentially be weeks before the examinations were complete and the case could move forward. In addition the case would require significant disk storage space to hold all of the images.

Coming off the 30th annual Crimes Against Children Conference in Dallas, Texas, conference organizers announced that the 31st annual conference is scheduled for August 12-15, 2019 at the Sheraton Dallas Hotel.  

With more than a dozen out-of-the-box Search Profiles inside Digital Evidence Investigator^® (DEI) and all the ADF digital forensic and triage tools, the ADF Digital Forensic team has created software that enables investigators and forensic examiners to capture files, artifacts, and the digital evidence needed in a wide variety of evidence collection situations. 

This week, hundreds of leading law enforcement officials from the US, Canada and Europe descended on the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC to participate in the High Technology Crime Investigation Association's annual law enforcement conference.   The event featured 72 speakers over the three days of sessions and training and was kicked off with an opening keynote from Chief Superintendent Jeff Adam, C/Supt. DG Technical Investigation Services for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Other notable speakers included representatives from:

• The National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) 
• Ohio Division of State Fire Marshal - Forensic Lab
• Naval Criminal Investigative Service 
• New Jersey Office of the Attorney General
• Virginia Department of Forensic Science
• Portland Police Bureau

The investigation began when law enforcement officials received a report that images that were consistent with child pornography had been uploaded to a social media platform. The images were immediately flagged, and investigators swiftly obtained a search warrant to gain access to the suspect's residence. Once inside the residence, members of the State Police Computer Crime Unit conducted an on-scene forensic examination of all electronic media, including computers, phones, and other electronic devices. This examination was conducted with the utmost care and attention to detail to ensure that all potential evidence was discovered and preserved. The examination proved to be invaluable, as it revealed a trove of images and videos of sexual abuse of an under age child, leading investigators to identify a resident of the household as the suspect. Through their tireless efforts, these investigators were able to bring a dangerous criminal to justice and protect innocent children from further harm.  

Using ADF Digital Evidence Investigator^®, investigators discovered images and videos of sexual abuse of an under age child and were able to identify a resident of the household as the suspect. Specifically, investigators located thumbcache images that resulted in identifying a female child that was being sexually abused and identified the suspect.

ADF is helping stop crimes against children by providing law enforcement with the right tools and training to combat internet crimes against children.  As part of our mission to help fight child exploitation, ADF is a returning sponsor of the Crimes Against Children Conference.  If you are attending, join ADF Digital Forensic Specialists (Rich Frawley), as he leads a lecture and lab training for participating law enforcement officers:

• On-Scene Digital Investigation Best Practices: From CyberTip to Court Ready Paperwork (Lecture)
• Solving Crimes Against Children with ADF Digital Evidence Investigator^® (Hands-on Labs)

Each participant will learn digital forensic best practices for child exploitation cases and receive an extended trial of our DEI software. 

Attend HTCIA Pre-conference Training in Washington, DC on August 19th where we will be hosting two hands-on lab sessions for digital investigators.  Conference attendees arriving early can register to attend one of two sessions:

• Directly Scanning a Suspect's Computer or Devices
• Child Exploitation Investigations Done in Record Time

The High Technology Crime Investigation Association's International Conference (HTCIA) & Training Expo is one of the oldest and most respected technology investigation and law enforcement conferences in the world.  This year, the event will be held in Washington, DC at the historic Omni Shoreham Hotel and will feature an opening keynote from Chief Superintendent Jeff Adam, C/Supt. DG Technical Investigation Services for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RMCP). 

Conference sessions include a variety of topics including: