ETX 20 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Ballpoint Pen, Digital Forensics, The Techniques
Document Summary
Forensic science boils down to associations, and the significance of these associations. One"s dna found at a crime scene has a 1 in a billion chance of being incorrectly identified, so it is very significant. Key is to have a known sample from a person/crime scene/environment and then to test those known samples against evidence recovered at the crime scene -- Locard exchange principle: we come in contact with something, and then we leave trace evidence behind. Forensic associations -- four entities we are trying to connect through science. Capacity to make these associations depend on the validity of four premises: That many kinds of biological and physical entities exist in unique form or become unique. These entities leave corresponding unique traces of themselves. The techniques of observation, measurement, and the interference by forensic science are adequate to associate these traces back to the object that produced them.