Problems at Defense Forensics Computer Laboratory

The Defense Forensics Computer Laboratory has discovered this past August that it has inaccurately reported information in some of its cases. In a letter to the executive director of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board, the director of DFCL identified discrepancies in a previously examined case, including files being reported as from the wrong profile or username, recovered filenames being misreported as actual picture files, and several computer viruses being inaccurately reported. Examination of other cases worked by the examiner in question revealed similar problems in some of those cases. [NM: available at CAAFlog.com here]

DFCL tells the accreditation board that it has informed the relevant inspectors general and investigative agencies that may have relied on the affected examinations. I'll send the source documents to No Man for posting on CAAFlog.com.

This is reminiscent of the case of United States v. Luke, in which a USACIL technician gundecked DNA examinations. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in courts-martial.