SEARCH Trainers Provide Expertise at Two National Conferences

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Staff from SEARCH's High-Tech Crime Training Services division recently presented at two large national conferences, offering training and assistance in topics ranging from how to tackle online and wireless investigations to computer forensics.

Crimes Against Children Conference
The first event was the 21st Annual Crimes Against Children Conference, held August 17-20, 2009, in Dallas, Texas. It is sponsored by the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center and the Dallas Police Department, and is intended to provide professionals with instruction, information, and strategies to protect child victims and prosecute their offenders.

Attendance at this conference was over 3,300. The attendees represented the fields of law enforcement, prosecution, child protective services, social work, children's advocacy, therapy, and medicine who work directly with child victims of crime.

High-Tech Crime Training Specialists Keith Daniels, Lauren Wagner and Chris Armstrong presented workshops on MySpace investigations; using Google for investigations; Internet Relay Chat; cellular and wireless device investigations; and Knoppix.

Mr. Rich Harris, Director of High-Tech Crime Training Services for SEARCH, spent much of the three days fielding questions at the SEARCH information booth.

"People are very interested in the work SEARCH does. Many expressed their need for high-tech crime training and their frustration at the lack of training available," Harris noted.

HTCIA International Training Conference
SEARCH staff also presented at the 2009 International Training Conference: Mountains of Knowledge, sponsored by the Northern California chapter of the High Technology Crime Investigation Association (HTCIA), and held August 23-26, 2009, in South Lake Tahoe, California.

The attendance at the HTCIA conference included more than 450 law enforcement and corporate security investigators who meet regularly to share information and ideas on computer forensics, high-tech crime investigations, and litigation e-discovery.

According to Harris, "Both of these conferences provided us with a tremendous opportunity to teach many investigators the skills they need to do their jobs better. It is always very satisfying for me to see my staff in action; they all possess a vast amount of knowledge and are top-notch in their field. We had people from all over the globe attend these conferences and it's evident that the challenge for us is to keep pace with the increasing demand for our training."

SEARCH's High-Tech Crime Training Services unit provides technical assistance and training to local, state, and federal justice and public safety agencies nationwide.

SEARCH High-tech Crime Training Specialists conducted over 25 workshops for more than 500 students during the two conferences. SEARCH workshops were nearly always attended to overflow capacity.