The Scientific Working Group on Digital Evidence (SWGDE) brings together organizations
actively engaged in the field of digital and multimedia evidence to foster communication
and cooperation as well as to ensure quality and consistency within the forensic
community.
If these are your interests, we would like to welcome you to our site. We hope you will find
the information found within to be of benefit.
Mary Horvath, Chair Federal Bureau of Investigation
James Darnell, Vice Chair US Secret Service
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Announcements
- The September 2019 Meeting announcement, with hotel and travel guidance, has been emailed out to all members and approved guests. If you are a member or approved guest and did NOT receive the meeting announcement, please email the Chair. Anyone planning to attend the meeting must RSVP by September 4th. If you are new to SWGDE and would like to attend, you must first submit a Guest Attendance Request* located on our Membership page. *The funding window is now closed and we are only accepting new guest/membership applications for those who do not need funding/can self-fund. - New documents from the June 2019 meeting have been posted.
Membership
SWGDE is actively
encouraging new membership! Learn about attending a meeting as a guest or
applying for membership.
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Newest Publications
SWGDE's most recent published documents are:
SWGDE Best Practices for Mobile Device Evidence Collection and Preservation, Handling, and Acquisition
SWGDE General Photography Guidelines for the Documentation of Evidence Items in the Laboratory
SWGDE Technical Overview for Forensic Image Comparison
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Provide Feedback
SWGDE seeks feedback from the DME community on our drafts for public
comment:
SWGDE Core Technical Concepts for Time-Based Analysis of Digital Video Files
SWGDE Best Practices for Digital Evidence Acquisition from Cloud Service Providers
SWGDE Best Practice for Frame Timing Analysis of Video Stored in ISO Base Media File Formats
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Myth of the
Day
A ‘duplicate original’ is a myth.
Category: All DME Myths
If a copy of the original data has the same hash value, that copy can be considered a “duplicate original” and is identical to the original. A hash value can be calculated on a file or any other set of data. A hash value is a mathematical algorithm that generates a hexadecimal output value (alpha-numeric text string). Any change in the data will produce a change in the resulting hash value. Essentially, the hash value of data can be considered the “fingerprint” of the data. Two common hash algorithms currently in use are MD5 and SHA. The use of these algorithms to support "duplicate originals" is described in "Unique File Identification in the NSRL" available at http://www.nsrl.nist.gov/Technical_papers.htm.
