Governments recognize that full realization of the child’s rights is important for the long-term development of a certain nation.  In fact, it has caused a myriad of suggestions and schemes from law enforcers, legislators, and even businesspeople in a frantic attempt to protect every child against abuse and inequalities.

Yet, with the growing trend in technology, more and more people easily get away from punishments.  As they should be held responsible for violating the rights of the child, they can delete or trample virtual information in ways they thought could no longer be retrieved.

Thanks to the wonders of computer forensics, even the most sensitive information that has long been executed by some unscrupulous criminals can still be used as a solid evidence of prosecution.   

Generally, in order to establish facts in court, investigators use the science of forensics through technology and the different fields of science such as biology, psychology, and chemistry.

Nowadays, as technology advances to the next millennium, computer forensics is gradually setting a trend to unravel the mystery behind crimes where computer technology is involved.

Take the case of child pornography.  Most investigators find it hard to retrieve evidences especially if it involves electronic data.  Nowadays, child pornography are commonly disseminated through websites. Here, anybody can download pornographic materials such as video or graphic images for free or with corresponding charges.

Transactions from such websites can easily be deleted or erased from the computer’s memory.  With this, computer forensics is applied to extract data from the computer’s hard drive and other parts of the computer’s hardware.

Generally, there are three data needed to gather to establish verifiable facts that will lead to the crime — active, archive, and latent.  Information from active and archival data can easily be retrieved while latent data are those that had been overwritten (partially or wholly) or deleted. 

Various computer forensics tools are used to retrieve, analysis, and interpret data contained in a computer’s hard drive.  A special software is used to retrieve data that has been corrupted, deleted, or overwritten.  Examples of computer forensics tools used in analyzing files are EnCase and Forensic Toolkit.

To track down people who are involved in child pornography, emails and even chat history can be analyzed.  With specialized search warrant, the court can request email servers to retrieve data contained in the accused or defendant’s email account.  This action is deemed legal by law as long as police officers are present during the operation.

All of these things can easily track down a crime involving child pornography.  No evidence tangible at the time of execution of the crime is less valued because computer forensics can technically recover all lost data and present them as evidence to establish facts regarding such cases.

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