Explanation
BACKGROUND: The Division of Police Digital Forensic Unit is in need of purchasing Cellebrite’s Hardware Premium Unlocking Device and Services to extract digital evidence from cellular phones to solve crimes for the citizens of Columbus in a more efficient and effective manner. As the world evolves, law enforcement has to reimagine its approach to solving crimes and dealing with violence, and using digital evidence will assist in this goal. Most crimes have some link to digital evidence. Due to this fact most divisional units are using the services of the Digital Forensics Unit to extract evidence from cellular devices. Currently, the Digital Forensic Unit cannot decrypt the newer iOS and Android phones with current forensics software, thereby making high-level evidence extractions unattainable. The current method to gain access to the newer phones is to retrieve the pin code from the owner, suspect, or victim; which rarely happens.
The vendor Cellebrite Inc. has the equipment and licensed software called Cellebrite Hardware Premium Unlocking Device and Service sold exclusively to law enforcement. The equipment is an on-site solution that caters to both iOS-Apple and Android phones. It is currently the only software solution on the market that can access and decrypt a majority of locked devices. With this hardware and software the Digital Forensics Unit detectives gain an evidentiary advantage by having the ability to unlock and decrypt more phones and extract more evidence to solve crimes. This evidence includes accessing: 3rd party Apps, stored passwords and tokens, chat conversations, location data, email attachments, system logs, deleted content, and much more. Cellebrite also offers free unlocking services at their facility.
BID INFORMATION: The Division of Police requests to waive competitive bid provisions of the Columbus city code to purchase this equipment due to its compatibility with other equipment owned by the division of P...
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