How reliable are forensic tools?

Casey Anthony, women accused of planning and murdering her two year old daughter, could have been convicted to death according to charges based on a claim that she searched the internet related to the word “chloroform” 84 times. A chief programmer in a company that makes forensic tools for the police, John Bradley, said that Ms. Anthony visited debatablepage sci-spot.comonly once.

He came to a result of just one visit after modifications he made to his program “CacheBack”. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office used that program to check Ms. Anthony’s internet searches during which a number 84 came up. Mr. Bradley claims he has knowledge that, in the investigation by the Sherriff’s Office, another forensic program was also used, “NetAnalysis” which showed the right result of only one visit to web page. After acquiring that information and a doubt that “CacheBack” gives wrong forensic information he decided to make changes to the program. In that process he found out that both reports were wrong, in other words none of the forensic tools used by the police in that investigation gave accurate results, and if it did it was by mistake. A question of reliability on evidence acquired this way logically comes up, and Ms. Anthony was freed on July seventh. Whole story can be found at The New York Times web site.