In this episode of Forensic Fix, host Adam Firman speaks with Brent Jordan, a Crime and Intelligence Analyst Manager at the San Diego County Sheriff's Office. They discuss Brent's career path, the daily responsibilities of a crime analyst, the integration of AI in law enforcement, and the challenges faced in digital forensics. Brent shares valuable insights on the importance of training, patience, and continuous learning in the field, as well as his personal interests outside of work. If you want to be sure you are up to date with the latest in DFIR, don’t miss an episode!
Summary
In this episode of Forensic Fix, host Adam Firman speaks with Brent Jordan, a Crime and Intelligence Analyst Manager at the San Diego County Sheriff's Office. They discuss Brent's career path, the daily responsibilities of a crime analyst, the integration of AI in law enforcement, and the challenges faced in digital forensics. Brent shares valuable insights on the importance of training, patience, and continuous learning in the field, as well as his personal interests outside of work.
Takeaways
Brent emphasizes the importance of having the right tools for analysts.
AI is seen as a powerful tool but comes with responsibilities.
Law enforcement often lags behind in technology advancements.
Patience is crucial when dealing with digital evidence.
Continuous training is essential for both sworn and non-sworn personnel.
Analysts need to be subject matter experts in their field.
External training and vendor communication are vital for staying updated.
Digital evidence is becoming increasingly complex and varied.
Understanding the tech behind tools is necessary for effective use.
Personal interests and hobbies help maintain work-life balance.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Digital Forensics and Brent's Background
06:13 A Day in the Life of a Crime Analyst
11:58 The Role of AI in Law Enforcement
18:02 Challenges in Digital Forensics
23:47 Advice for New Analysts in Digital Forensics
29:58 Training and Continuous Learning in the Field
36:05 The Future of Digital Evidence and Technology
41:50 Personal Insights and Hobbies
Adam Firman (00:04.408)
So welcome to episode 17 of Forensic Fix, a podcast brought to you from MSAB, where we invite guests from the industry to discuss the latest news in DFIR, current issues, and a general chat about all things digital forensic and investigations. So I'm your host, Adam Firman a tech evangelist here at MSAB. So without a further ado, I'm delighted to say that today's guest is Brent Jordan, who is a Crime and Intelligence Analyst Manager at the San Diego County Sheriff's Office.
Now, normally, Brent, as a guest, I like to introduce my guest and give a bit of background. And I do a bit of detective work around your background. But with you, I've walked away with nothing. You are like a ghost on the internet, which is not surprising with your job. Now, I met Brent at Techno Security West this year, and it was great to hear of some of the great work that him and his team are doing at the industry. And Brent also told me a story.
about a previous roommate of his, but there is no way that I can include those details on this podcast. But if you're ever fortunate enough to meet Brent in person, please let him tell you about this story. Cause I guarantee you will walk away laughing. But so as I have failed miserably to give our listeners an insight, Brent into your career. And for those of you who aren't aware of you, can you give some more details about your
your career path and how you got into your current role? Yeah, yeah, purposely a ghost. Obviously with our industry, you don't want your information just out and about. So I've gone to semi great lengths to make sure and most of my analysts are the same way. We try to take a lot of our stuff down. Most of us aren't on LinkedIn, things like that. Social media is pretty pretty locked up.
but as far as my background, so currently the crime and Intel, analysis manager for, the San Diego sheriff's office, I got into this industry kind of, don't know if it'd be abnormal. but the analyst career path kind of started kicking up, I'd say 10 years ago, right? When I kind of got into this field, I was looking more to go on the, sworn side or a sheriff, a gun toad, however you want to.
Adam Firman (02:28.846)
to lay that out, but I kind of fell into analysis at one of our fusion centers, which we have out here. Those fusion centers were stood up after 9-11 to enhance communications between our three letter agencies, FBI, so on and so forth to the state and local departments, make sure that they're communicating. And so I was an analyst there for, I'd say about four or five years, moved around, worked different things, anywhere from, you know,
Deconfliction, making sure no one's working the same cases and individuals to the point where I was working largely charts on individuals crossing the border with a large drug load to some JTTF stuff, which is the Joint Terrorism Task Force stuff as well. And then from there, I got picked up with the Sheriff's Department and pretty much worked my way up through the chain into my manager role.
been there for, I would say, six, I think going on seven years there, working from anywhere from station work, which is anything your detectives and your beat cops are picking up, to gangs, to drugs, everything in between, working with an intelligence-led policing kind of group, which was about six deputies and a sergeant.
We'd go basically be problem solvers in areas if they had a large spike in a specific crime, we'd go in there, I'd analyze the crime, be the one taking the digital forensics, running that, creating the link charts, profiling, stuff like that. But yeah, that's kinda, after that I kinda promoted up. I say now that I'm no longer really an analyst, I just manage people.
But it's good things because I get to work with some good vendors and get them new tech and things like that for their day-to-day work, so it's rewarding in a different fashion now. I don't get to hunt bad guys. I get to make sure all my folks have the right tools to hunt bad guys now. And I suppose with that ground and that allows you to make qualified decisions with the vendors because you can't be sold a dud.
Adam Firman (04:46.776)
because you actually have done the job. Yeah, I think that definitely comes into play. know we've had past managers, you know, that didn't work their way through. So they don't know a lot of the tools. They know what they do and their capabilities based on, you know, a one-sheeter from the company or maybe, you know, secondhand information. So it definitely allows me to verify some of the software and things.
tools and techniques, even with that, knowing what, what we're going to be actually able to use and how to deploy it and things like that. Definitely. there's no point of vendor turning up and saying, saying to you, I've got these magic beans and you're to be able to see through it. I've been in those meetings. I've definitely been in those meetings where yeah, they're, they're selling you magic beans and then you have a few questions for them from a tech side and they're like, yeah, we're, we're working on that.
You can kind of edge your way through. But then again, you have the tech aspect and the knowledge to ask them the questions, to build possibly new things within their realm. And a lot of times people are willing to build stuff for you because they want a bigger, better product. that definitely helps as well. Yeah, no, that's a good relationship. then talking about magical beans and mythical creatures.
We're recording this on Halloween today, so October 31st So if I have to keep me in my mind, it's because it's after 5 p.m. Here in the UK as early for Brent But I've already got trickle treaters at my door and every time they're ringing that bell I'm quickly trying to press that mute button. So you can't hear me So yeah, just give the guys a bit of a background. So what so what does an average day look like for you then Brent? For me, I'll kind of
go through what my normal day is and then kind of what our normal analyst day looks like as well to kind of give a broad picture of it. My day to day is generally handling emails from our command staff all the way up to the sheriff, any concerns, whether that be stat polls or updates on cases, high profile cases, things like that, ensuring that we're always moving to the next thing. Right now we're using Power BI for
Adam Firman (07:11.362)
lot of our crime stat dashboards. And so we're really leaning into transferring that, making sure all that data and case management stuff is in place for them, as well as attending, know, briefings for any type of cases that are going on that might need more resources to it analytically, as well as just, we call them impact meetings, but to break it down pretty simply, all of our stations.
And a lot of our specialized units have monthly to weekly meetings, just kind of going over what's going on, make sure everybody's on the same page, those communications. So I'll sit in on those, add anything that I can give to those, or if there is a gap in software, or they're having, for this matter, they're having issues with breaking into new phones or anything like that, and then contacting vendors, hey, can we get this up and running?
or like I said, those new ideas or something like that to help those analysts on their day to day. So they're not thinking of how can I get around this obstacle. They're just bringing that obstacle to us, myself and I have two assistant managers that do an amazing job as well with me and working with them to make sure those obstacles are null and void. As far as the analysts, their day to day, if they're at a station, they're generally
Reviewing cases they're with their detectives if they're getting new phones in there They're looking at breaking those and we all know that's a long process. Yeah, and sometimes tedious So they're they're doing that while they're you know looking for and identifying suspects identifying associations, you know betting people down So they can go go hit warrants or if they're reviewing cases and they see a spike in say vehicle theft or
Whatever it may be assaults all the way up to a homicide they're gonna be digging in there and trying to find suspects for them based on a number of different data points You know, sometimes it's it's just looking at hey who just got out of jail that that kind of fits this bill You know that they're stealing cars now and this guy just got out for you know a stent for stealing cars so some sometimes as simple as that, but sometimes a little more detailed but you know creating a
Adam Firman (09:35.5)
the profile sheets for these people, link charts, taking the social media warrant returns for some of these cases. They're reading through those, trying to get more information. And then you have your CDR records, your phone records, coming back trying to see where people are to support possibly a case to the DA's office, the attorney's office. they're kind of all over the board. But we always say they're Jack and Jill's of all trades because
there's always something new they're training on and we're trying to get them up and running on. So yeah, I think I kind of encapsulated everything on that, but I think that's why I back in my sort of law enforcement days, that's why I enjoyed this industry because it is in constant flux. It's never the same any problems you solved last week and knew the following week. And when we met a tech note, there was a lot of talk at that techno show about AI.
And obviously you open this by saying you use power BI. Yeah. Is AI acceptable in law enforcement at the moment? So I think it's, on the verge. I think there is certain it's a gray area, right? Just as social media was for analysis and things like that, where it's going to be a gray area until we start, you know, having those faults or being told we can't use it.
We're going to be knocking at that door. Some departments and agencies are going to be walking through that door. know, everybody has their where they want to stop or where they feel it's not the gray anymore. I do think it's a very powerful tool and it's kind of the age old thing with this coming along. There's a lot of great responsibility that's going with it. So we tread lightly on it. I know right now,
we're looking at using it to kind of crawl through like search warrant returns. You know, these massive 10,000 page PDFs, if not more from, you know, whether it's a Google account or any type of social media. Because we can just ask it questions to crawl through there, what we're looking for and speed up that process. Now on the flip side, what comes into play is where is this information going? Where is it held?
Adam Firman (11:58.05)
That's always the biggest thing, right? Is it in a government cloud? Is it secure just to us? That comes into play. so we had to create an environment where that chat, for this instance, chat GPT is in a very secure borderline on-prem, in that sense, situation. So this case information and other things aren't just out in the world.
But we run into this a lot with different things. Like I said, social media, another one is license plate readers in every country and state and in the US is different. And for us, LPRs are kind of moving into the gray area again of whether we can use them or not or how long can we store the data and stuff like that. But once again, it falls back to what you were just saying. It's kind of one of the things I like about the job because you got to figure out how to adapt.
But I do think it is a big proponent to law enforcement moving forward, not only from an investigative standpoint, but also from an admin standpoint. Having things be able to dictate into a case saves a deputy time writing a report. it may capture more information because just we're human. We're going to miss things. And maybe that tech side can.
can make sure that we're not filling those gaps rather to make sure that we're as accurate as we can. To the point where I think I've seen softwares where they're taking the body worn camera and they're just basically dictating off of the video and audio and stuff like that. That saves a ton of time and it can create a lot more accuracy and things like that. But once again, it's...
Where is this going? How is it doing it? All these other questions come into play from a managing standpoint. Obviously, the deputy or the first line person is going to be like, yeah, just give it to me. I just want it. I want this to be easy. want this to go. So yeah, I think it's a great thing, but it's one of those subjects where you have to kind wade in really slowly.
Adam Firman (14:15.438)
Like getting into a hot spa or something, you know, you just you want to put a leg in first, you don't want to just jump in there. Yeah, so but yeah. Yeah, and it's also about validating, isn't it? You almost you can't rely on the results that give you that it gives you, you still have to go in and validate. Yeah, the trust and verify. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's not just Nintendo sort of push button is, yeah, you can use it to speed up like you say, and it's no different to use and vendor tools to
pass data from certain artifact types. You're trusting the tool, but you still go in and validate it before you use it as evidence. And I kind of go with, it's funny, but so we've all seen the old Tom Cruise movie Top Gun, right? Yeah. Where, and you're like, where is he going with this? But it's very much in the same sense how I explain it to the analysts is,
you know, in this, that movie, which was based on real stuff, you know, the fighter pilots started to rely on their tech too much and they didn't know how to just like know basic maneuvers and, and know the actual like trade craft. And it's the same thing is as we get more of this tech, we still have to be grounded in understanding where that's pulling, what it's doing, how it's manipulating the data and all those little pieces in between. Because if
If they're not trained in that manner, they're just hitting and mashing the easy button, but they don't know where it's coming from and the validation process falls through the floor and then you have people that don't know where it comes from. And then also, like we were saying earlier, if that tool or whatever that is, is per the state or per federal or whatever it is, said we can't use that anymore, we still have to figure out how to incorporate what we were doing there.
So having that ability to really focus on tradecraft and learn things from where they're coming from, what they're actually doing, how to replicate that without using the easy button. And then you get to use the easy button. Exactly. And then it makes it great and everybody's happy with it. But if you don't have that other side of it, I think it can be very concerning in the long run as some of these things move, change or leave us in that sense.
Adam Firman (16:39.392)
It takes me back to, and I don't know if you ever unfortunate enough to use in case in computer forensics, but I remember being on an end case course and then teaching you how to manually go through and like carve an MFT and sort of, so you're reconstructing this master file table and you're looking for bites at offsets and you sort of spend half a day doing that and you go off for lunch and you, you've got a huge headache and then you return from lunch and they say,
you've learned all of this, but now you can press this magic end script button and it does it for you. So you sort of learn the hard way and you learn the basics and like you say, you need that grounded. Yeah. And, and are you going to take everything away from it and keep it? No, but it gives you a great like baseline. And, and actually when you said that, I'm pretty sure it was a training from a MSAB. it was one of the first trainings that when we were onboarding years ago,
And we're sitting in a course and it was exactly that. They were parsing through things and explaining everything. And I'm just looking at the analyst's mouth just on the ground, you know, just, you're expecting me to do this manually? And everybody, but it is, but now you talk to them and they're like, yeah, because if I see an issue of something not going on, like I understand the back end enough to then ask the people that are the tech support.
what exactly I'm having an issue with. it helps that as well. But yeah, I definitely remember what I think everybody walked away with headache on that one there. They should have provided Advil at the at the door. So we've spoken how sort of AI and power BI is assisting you. What would you say is the biggest challenge that's facing people in this industry at the moment? I mean, I'll kind of go with the the the digital forensic side of everything on that sense.
You know, we're generally, and this goes for a lot of other things, but we're generally behind the curve of everything tech. You know, because we don't, you know, law enforcement in general is not going to have the deepest pockets. So a lot of the stuff you're going to roll out to government, military, stuff like that. And, you know, obviously some of that stuff can't come down, but we're not going be able to pay for these, these high end.
Adam Firman (18:58.264)
high-end things so it's not going be built for us first and so where it's built for us second usually. And then even when we do get hands on this stuff and these companies are doing great things for us, for the instance of cell phones, they're getting bigger, they're getting more encrypted, they're getting better security all the time. And we're generally one step to two steps behind them. it's not a, I don't think it's a vendor issue. I don't think it's a
you know, user issue in that standpoint. It's just these tech companies, you know, whether it's Apple or, you know, Samsung or whatever, they're business models to keep this the most secure thing for the person's privacy. But that then in turn is, you know, working against us on trying to break into these phone when we have legal rights to get into them, whether it's a search warrant or whatever the matter may be. So we're always that one step behind it.
which is once again you have to adapt and figure it out. But I'd say that's one of the biggest challenges is trying to keep up with how quickly tech is moving and trying to close that gap because that gap will always exist. And we understand that. But if you can close that gap as much as you can, we're going to take every inch we can get. But I would say that's the biggest challenge.
And like I said, it's mostly phones, but I mean, it's everything else that comes out of this. There's a hundred different things that are moving way further than us. Social media, some stuff is private, some things are getting stored in some weird country that deletes it and encrypts it every five seconds. So we deal with that and I think that's one of the biggest.
Biggest things outside of that. I think just You know we get handcuffed by I say handcuffs But we do by you know different laws and policies that are created But we work around them like we've been saying But that that I would say is the other one you know that we see is as a pretty big challenge on you know getting the right person arrested and getting them in custody for a period that
Adam Firman (21:22.456)
they're not going to just come back out and re-offend, know, and the flip side of that is, you know, are they getting rehabilitated in there? Are they just going in there? Are they doing this crime because they know they're only going to get a few days or just get a citation and walk away? So those are some other issues that we definitely have. But once again, we work around them, right? Yeah, we certainly do. And you make a good point because
Obviously you're based in the US. So when getting a warrant from Apple or Google is a lot simpler for you than it was for me. It used to take months to get any data back here in the UK. And the problem is there's so many of these secure messaging applications now. And like you said, we don't know where the data is being stored. And that is such a gray area at the moment that if it's on a user's handset, then surely
the lore of where that handset is should come into play. And yeah, I don't think anyone's got their head around this completely. No, and I think I once again, I think it's you have a large tech population that's very smart. And they know, they they know how to get around it before we even ask the question of where this is going, because they're creating it. We you know, we're not the ones creating this and sending it out and going, okay, we, you know, we would know where that store we know, but
You know, they're moving and moving this at such a quick pace and they're knowing those parameters that they need to put around their data or to secure it, whatever it may be, or to make sure that no one can get it even if they have a judge signing off on a search warrant or storing it in one of these countries and on a server in the middle of nowhere that no one knows exists. Exactly. It makes it really hard. But looking back at your career, Brent, if you could take
yourself back to day one in digital forensics, what piece of advice would you offer yourself? And my doorbell is going crazy with trickle triggers. No, you're good. I want to play by play of the costumes that are coming by the door. But no, answer your question, you know, as far as like digital forensics and stuff like that, you know, I would say, you know, patience is probably one of the biggest ones, not only for what we just talked about.
Adam Firman (23:46.766)
But really just these phones are getting very large, they're getting hard to break. And so you're sitting there and you're plugging this phone in and it's taking a while to download or break the security parameters. And people want these things and then they're unplugging it and plugging it. So I think from the get go is have patience with that. And then also once these things are broken, they are very large and crawling through it, have patience.
and really sit down and look through it and be organized. Everything that you're pulling off this phone is going to be, you know, is most likely going to be submitted to a DA or an attorney and could wind up in court and you don't know which one that is. And I think that was the biggest thing for me, excuse me, was understanding that, yeah, you're trying to get through this phone because you got another phone behind it.
And you're trying to work a few different cases and they're different and you're trying to keep them all organized or anything but have the patience to go through it time management organization because You know, you don't know which one of these you're gonna be sitting on it, know on the stand testifying to Yeah, this is how we did it. This is this is what we found on it. This is how I found it The timing of it everything like that is is very important because you know, I don't know
how many people have been on that test, but it is, they're going to try to pick it apart. if you prepare it's a lonely place, isn't it? It's a very lonely place. all you have is your prep work and maybe a few pages in front of you. And the way you prepare for that, just like in sports or anything else, when you get on the field, it's going to show whether you prepared or not. And I think it's one of those
really important thing is to be organized, have the patience to go through it, don't quickly go through things. I think that's one of the biggest things for me. And I'm trying to think anything else that I'd want to know. Just understand that phones are finicky. No phone, you could have the exact same phone from the exact same person.
Adam Firman (26:07.37)
And both are going to be different when they get broken into and they're going to have different problems. They're very finicky and it's just kind of, that's the tech side of it. Just like computers and stuff. just having that patience with it and organization. The other thing I would say is it's perishable. Just like anything, any other skills, it's very perishable. So if you're only getting a chance to get a phone every couple of months or
you know, six months, do what you can to get your foot in the door with whoever's getting phones to, to get these. If somebody already broke a phone, see if you can break it again to, you know, keep those skills up. And that's what we do in our unit is, you know, the new people, anytime anybody gets a phone, like that new person's going to wherever they are. so they can get hands on and, and, and really start to develop those skills and as well as not losing me from their original training. So, yeah, no, that's some.
some great advice and talking about sort of new people in the industry. What is your view on training within the industry and do you think like you work with sworn and non sworn? Do you think there's enough training early on in people's careers to sort of introduce them to like even device handling? Because there's BFU, there's AFU, there's all these different modes where now Apple has introduced the fact that you can remove
airplane mode from the control center and all these sort of things. Are people being taught those skill sets of how to handle digital evidence? And I think it's agency to agency. And it all kind of comes down to the setup on how that's done. So for us, all our analysts are trained and they are SMEs, subject matter experts in these matters. And most of them have pretty good relationships with their patrol and detectives. So they do have this rapport with them and training kind of continuously.
as these things change and grow. There is other agencies that work down here and I've talked to other people and they rely on either regional forensic labs or they have one person depending on if it's a small place. And so in those instances they have either a small lab or a small group of people, that's all they do. In those senses, obviously it's a little harder because if you only have a few people that
Adam Firman (28:34.604)
that everyday training is going to probably be missed. But sometimes it's dependent on the office and how many deputies they have, how many people they can actually resource to that. But I would say that having at least that baseline training and actually we usually work on bulletins, training bulletins over and over to accomplish this. But that
fresh new deputy officer that's going through training and has to learn how to do use of force, how to shoot their gun, how to talk to people, how to write reports. They have a numerous amount of things that they have to be trained in. The bare minimum where this comes into play is at least the knowledge of, like you said, an airplane mode. Get this thing in airplane mode, keep it powered on.
If you can get it into a Faraday bag, which not a lot of places are going to have them, but get it in some tin foil. If you don't have that, at least just give it to the analyst or for this matter, the lab, whatever it may be. Just those little techniques and to look for it, like, this is a huge thing for a future investigation. But I do think there should be always continuous training through sworn side.
They don't have to be the experts, the subject matter experts, but they do need that very base level how to handle it, how to get it to the right person, and what it means. Because if that's missed, there's a lot of cases that'll either go unsolved, unclosed, whatever you want to call it, or pieces of information that's going to connect it to other cases.
that link and relate aspect. You're gonna lose a lot of that. we are trying to get a more robust training for the digital forensics in their academy when they come in. And then the analysts as well are going to be talking to them every day, working with them. There's generally, when they're going through what's called phase training, once they're going out on the street,
Adam Firman (30:56.812)
They'll go through a training with the analysts and they'll go over a lot of stuff like trends in the area and stuff like that. But one of them is, hey, this is how you handle a phone. Do you have any questions on it? Because like we said, it's an important thing. Yeah. And how do your analysts remain up to date? Because we said at the start of this, this industry doesn't stop moving. No, we rely heavily on external training.
Luckily we have a few people that have worked, know, either SIG Intelligence in the military and have written stuff in training. So they help us a lot keep on the pulse. going out to trainings, like we went to the Techno Conference, there's always good information there for the analysts or, you know, if I'm attending, I'm bringing that back.
The other thing too is just keeping in communication with your vendors. And we have a few and we're always trying to engage them constantly on new stuff that's coming out. And sometimes it's us that are gonna find the new thing that's happening, right? We'll get a phone and we'll be like, hey, this isn't gonna work. And then calling the vendors that are also subject matter experts in this realm.
saying, Hey, have you seen this? Has anybody else seen it? and kind of using them as a communication cause they have a ton of other people that are possibly experiencing the same thing and then working together to, to figure out a way around it really. Yeah. And do your analysts have to go sort of really beyond what the vendor tools are providing very often, like going into unsupported apps and sort of those skill sets of coding and things like that. No.
We generally are going to I mean we'll talk to the labs and we'll talk to the vendors But I mean we're not we're not at a level of like doing chip ops and anything like that We do we are actually lucky. We're we're creating a position with our catch team Which is our commuter forensic team down here like computer crimes team down here So an analyst is going over there and they do some of that stuff so actually as you kind of talk about that we're kind of
Adam Firman (33:13.624)
trying to get an analyst in there to do kind of those very high level things with the phones as well as pretty much anything digital. know mostly we get phones and that's another thing we're going to enjoy about having that analyst go over there is because we don't always have deputies or officers grabbing the computers, grabbing the hard drives. Now, depending on what their scope is, obviously if they're
working child crimes and stuff like that or assault crimes. They're going to be looking for the flash drives. They're going to be looking for the hard drives. But your average deputy and stuff isn't going to be looking to grab the hard drive or the desktop computer or the laptop. we're hoping to kind of get that branched out. So we're grabbing those as well as when we do get the high level phones or whatever it may be, we have that ability to send that information over there.
Or the device and and hopefully get some of these chip offs and things a lot more manual Stuff to get the data off of these for the cases. Yeah, but You mentioned sort of phones and laptops, but you can go into a house now and grab the fridge and it's I know right Where is it gonna end? Yeah, I actually it's funny. We're renovating the house I was talking to you earlier about it and we were looking at fridges and for the new kitchen and I'm like
I'm like, this thing's like nicer than my computer at home. Like this thing's insane. And I'm like, where is this? And then I go into the, law enforcement brain. I'm like, okay, where's this data going? thing got a camera on it. Where's that going? Like how easy is that to act? So yes, there is a ton of things in our homes now that are capturing not only data, but can hold information. Like you can buy, know, get one of those to hold.
you know, files or whatever it may be. it's, it all adds, doesn't it? Because I go back to my law enforcement days and I think how many times digital evidence was involved in crime at the beginning of my career. And at the end, every single crime involves some piece of digital evidence. And we joke about the fridge and we like, even my washing machine tells me that my washing is finished. It would be really nice if a robot went and got it out and, you know, sort it out. But
Adam Firman (35:36.482)
But that helps show personal movement, doesn't it? Which could help show someone's innocence or... Yeah, we've used things like that before on cases where, yeah, you know, really odd ways to say, you know, either pattern of life or stuff like that. Like you can use it to that other side, you know. Yeah, the criminal aspect, they can use it to hide stuff and do that. But yeah, I mean, that'll tell you who's in the house and...
who's in the house, if they're moving. It's the same thing with vehicles now. That's a big one. Those things have so much tech into them now that it'll tell you if you download that, I think it's called an infotainment, but you download that and you can tell when a door opens, can tell when they turn the stereo on. You can gather a lot of this information and most of it's just noise, but you never know when one of those pieces of noise is gonna be your smoking gun.
So it's always about looking and ways to leverage that down the road that that can possibly help an investigation. but you have a trick or treat or you should go get it. I do, yeah. I did try muting, but he's running my battle three times now. You're good. But yeah, if you ever hear anybody wheeling a fridge out for a search warrant to download it, I want to hear about it.
He's not giving up. should have just put some candy on the front of my door and just said, help yourself and just please don't egg me. So if you weren't in sort of this digital forensic world, what other pathway in life do you think you'd have chose, whether it be in law enforcement or outside of law enforcement? What would have interested Brent? I mean, if you would have asked young Brent, he probably would have said I was just seeing, you know, go
go play for the NHL. grew up playing ice hockey and obviously growing up that was not my forte at the end of that. play, but yeah, would say other than that, my parents owned a pet pharmacy store and we rescued a lot of animals and stuff, worked with lot of really interesting people that had rescued exotic animals as well for these refuges and stuff.
Adam Firman (38:04.11)
And so I probably would have gone into something animal related which which sounds crazy because I'm working in law enforcement and that's it's a really odd detour but I Think it all you know boils down to you know being a part of the community and helping in some way I think that's that's also you know the other side of it that kind of connects the two but I probably would have been working with some something animal related because I just I grew up with horses and
Dogs and and all kinds of animals in the backyard and and stuff like that So I think I probably would have gone down that road You know since the NHL didn't didn't call me for some reason You never know they still might Yeah, well that they probably always looking out for a mascot. Yeah, right I can do that. I can skate in a mascot outfit. There you go. There you go
And just before we wrap things up, what random facts can you share with our listeners that nobody would guess apart from the story you told me at Tech I can tell the story, but I think we'd get kicked off Spotify. No, I would say, you know, I've listened to some of the other episodes and, know, we're very much nerds, right? We're big time nerds.
it would not come to a surprise that i i can you know i i don't mind getting computer and play video games i played d and d which is dungeons and dragons is super nerdy but i would say the the the thing that was that usually people peg me when i'm working with them from just a work standpoint that's the only way they know me they don't know that i i'd yeah i play you know i talk you know i also still play rugby
And so usually that's that blind sides people are like at your age and and you're you're you're you're kind of like a real nerd like you you you're playing this pretty violent sport But I would say that's kind of the biggest curveball I can usually give people it's pretty random and also in the states too because you he's not very big out here, so It's kind of a big curveball, but I love the sport
Adam Firman (40:25.23)
It is a very camaraderie sport if anybody has a chance if you're stateside and you don't get a lot of rugby There's there's a lot coming coming down and and I think we have a World Cup in the next like 10 years out here so so it's it's really really awesome sport and It's definitely a curveball for for what my nerdiness level is to be playing a sport like that Yeah, it's certainly if you like pain
Yeah, it's after games I question myself frequently. Yeah, I you know, I signed up and paid and trained to do this. It's kind of like like running a marathon. You're like, I paid to do this. I paid to do this But it's all worth it because just like a team at work, you know, when you've gone through it, like whether it's, you know, we had the civil unrest and stuff like.
you really get those team values and on rugby, like you have to have the person behind you watching out for you and knowing what they're doing and or else, you know, you're getting injured. And so it really is that team aspect of everybody has everybody's back on the pitch on the field and, it's kind of a cool feeling. So, yeah, that's probably a good switch off as well from sort of what, can be quite a morbid industry that we're in.
Yes, yeah, and if you haven't met rugby players, they're pretty morbid too but it's but it's it's definitely a Good thing, you know between that and still playing hockey. It's it's a nice breakup of work and it's good exercise too because yeah, let's face it We're talking about downloading these terabytes of data on phones and reviewing it from a chair. So that's stagnant
you gotta break it up. it definitely helps me from the work life balance of trying to keep somewhat in shape. And I say somewhat because, know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a fitness person. So yeah, I'm exactly the same. If you can enjoy doing something then as far easier. Yeah. Well, well, Brent.
Adam Firman (42:42.284)
I just want to say a huge thank you for joining us here on forensic fix on I'm sure the end listeners out there will have a hoop listen into this and they'll probably just be laughing at me Matt's house my doorbell has Wishing you a great rest of the day, but and I look forward to catching up you soon. Awesome Thank you so much for having me on and look forward to talking to you No problem. Thanks. Have a good night