2007 James Kent

Name
Instructor
Course
Date
2007 James Kent Forensic Report
The exercise of acquisition, assembling, analyzing, investigating and cataloging digital data on a computing device for court presentation is known as computer forensics. Devices with a capability to store information digitally could possess evidence in Internet browsing history, emails, documents, photographs, and folders. Contents of files, emails and folders or subfolders reveal the history of all activities in the data. Action on items ranges from when a user opened a document or webpage and timelines of modifications. This report highlights the child pornography case of James Kent, an Assistant Professor for Public Administration at Marist College in New York, U.S.A.
In 2007, Professor Kent’s is given a new computer for use in his office following a malfunction of his old computer device (Johnson). There is a transfer of all the hard drive files to his new processor from the previous computer. While running a virus scan on Kent’s computer, an employee notices folders and subfolders containing photos of children posing provocatively in swimsuits and lingerie. When the college administrators confront Kent about the images of the children, he denies awareness of the pictures. The college approaches the New York police department, for a forensic investigation (Johnson). Investigator Barry Friedman scrutinizes Professor Kent’s hard dive with the Encase Software. Encase software examines allocated space and unallocated space.

Allocated space holds information in ‘Saved items’ and ‘Recycle Bin’ while unallocated space comprises of deleted items in the allocated space. These deleted items are not accessible to the computer user. Therefore, even if Kent had deleted the items, they would still be retrievable. Computer forensics recovered a program, Real Player, which retains a history of videos played. Investigators discovered the creation of a substitute profile for Mozilla Firefox that gave Professor Kent access to websites containing child pornography (Johnson). Over 13, 000 photos of girls between the ages of eight to nine years were available in Kent’s folder. The pictures and videos contained female children stripping and sexually obscenely acts as coerced by adults. James Kent received three-year imprisonment for possession of 141 counts regarding the thousands of various still photos and videos of children portraying multiple suggestive sexual acts (Johnson).
Encase software revealed the child pornography data was downloaded and preserved in James Kent’s computer. The forensic report was proof that indeed Kent was knowingly in possession of child pornography documents despite his earlier statement of not acquiring the items. The Professor’s browsing history of child pornographic sites was persistent, and he methodically stored and labeled folders of sexually explicit photos of children. To present forensic evidence in court, it must be consistent, and while retrieving data, no action should alter the information.

Work Cited
Johnson M. Alex News, U.S. “Viewing Child Porn On The Web ‘Legal’ In New York, State Appeals Court Finds.” U.S. News. N. p., 2018. Web. 25 Apr. 2018.