Small Scale Digital Device Forensics - Evidence from Mobile Phones and GPS Units May Surprise You! By: John Carney, Esq. Tel: (651) 695-1757 Email Mr. Carney Website: www.carneyforensics.com

A. Mobile Phone Market Penetration and Growth in U.S.

Skyrocketing Subscribers¹

• Today, there are more than 262.7 million wireless subscribers - 83% of the total U.S. population. That equates to 2,869 times more subscribers today than in January 1985.
• The wireless industry saw almost 20 million new subscribers added in the last 12 months (July 2007 - June 2008).
• More than quadrupling, in the last decade (June 1998 - June 2008) the number of wireless subscribers has increased by more than 300% from 60.8 million (June 30, 1998) to 262.7 million (June 30, 2008).
• Engadget Mobile reports a study from mocoNews.net predicting 100% mobile phone penetration in the U.S. by year 2013.²

B. Text Message Usage in U.S.

1. Text is the New Talk: More than 384 billion text messages were reported by carriers this year [2008] between Jan. 1 - June 30, versus 295 billion voice calls. That is 22 billion more text messages than for all of 2007. Text messaging is doubling every year.³
2. Over 90 percent of handsets in the U.S. market are capable of sending and receiving SMS communications.⁴

C. Mobile Phone Prevalence and Use in Criminal and Drug-related Activities

Digital systems are found in a number of casual consumer tools, including cellular telephones. Their prevalence in society is matched by a growing presence as evidence in civil and criminal court cases. The current survey research in the U.S. suggests that cell phones and their potential evidence may be found in over half of all violent crime and even more substantially in drug crimes in some jurisdictions.⁵

A study from Europol and European Commission shows that over 70% of solved criminal cases in Europe involve phone forensics. In the U.K., Sweden, Germany, and France, it is over 90%.⁶

A search of "cell or cellular w/3 telephone or phone" within reported United States District Court opinions over a ten-year period shows dramatic growth in the number of cases in which these devices were considered to be relevant to legal proceedings. This is detailed in Figure 1.⁵

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John Carney, Esq. helps lawyers, investigators, and companies obtain insight into their cases by retrieving Digital Evidence from social media, mobile and smart phones, and personal computers using the latest technology.

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