Explanation
BACKGROUND: The Division of Police Digital Forensic Unit is in need of maintaining the current Cellebrite equipment and software licenses and purchasing additional Cellebrite Adapters and licenses to help extract digital evidence from cellular phones to solve crimes. Many crimes have some link to digital evidence. Due to this fact most divisional units are using the services of the Digital Forensics Unit to obtain evidence from cellular devices. The vendor TriTech Forensic is a third party provider of the Cellebrite Inc. equipment and licensed software 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 obtains 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. The Division of Police needs to transfer appropriated money within the Law Enforcement Seizure Fund. The funds will be transferred form 03 Contractual Services to 02 Supplies and Materials in the amount of $21,149.20
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 Police. Cellebrite is currently the only software solution on the market that can access and decrypt a majority of locked devices.
EMERGENCY DESIGNATION: Emergency legislation is requested due to the expiration dates on current subscription which will halt critical investigations including homicides.
CONTRACT COMPLIANCE: CC-002463 Expires...
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