Digital detectives turn their skills to new cause: helping the innocent

Volunteer project helps clear wrongfully charged or convicted individuals

From cracking a criminal child exploitation case to dealing with corporate ransomware attacks, digital sleuth Deepak Sharma found himself in a midpandemic world looking for a way to lend his forensic skills to racialized and vulnerable people in need.

People without deep pockets who are facing criminal charges. Families searching for missing loved ones. The wrongfully convicted seeking exoneration.

Sharma, based in Waterloo, found charities that did that kind of work in the United States but they weren’t looking for volunteers from outside the country.

Meanwhile, in his own backyard, the brains at Magnet Forensics, a Waterloo digital forensics software company that makes tools mainly for law enforcement, were thinking along the same lines.

After George Floyd was murdered by police, the company — founded a decade ago by Jad Saliba, a former Waterloo cop who specialized in tech crimes — wanted to do some good around race and policing, and the erosion of public trust in the latter.

The company already had the trust of the agencies and digital investigators who use their tools, and it sensed that people with expertise would want to be able to share it, on a volunteer basis, with not-for-profits and other groups that support those without the knowledge or financial means to benefit from the power of the science.

Out of that was born the Auxtera Project, a not-for-profit administered by Magnet that offers its tools and volunteer digital examiners for free.

Sharma — who works for Coalition Inc., a San Francisco cyber-risk mitigation firm — jumped at the chance to be involved in Auxtera.

He’s now one of more than 30 North American volunteer examiners approved for the project.

“I was like, yeah, this is awesome,” Sharma said. “So I put my name in the hat, so to speak, and eventually got selected for it.”

The project is still in its infancy and has yet to do its first case.

Neil Desai , co-founder of Auxtera and VP of corporate affairs at Magnet, has started making cold calls to agencies like Innocence Canada, which takes on wrongful conviction cases. He’s hoping to spread the word amongst legal aid clinics and other non-for-profits working with vulnerable populations.

“We actually have this weird thing from a charity perspective. We have resources, we have supply, but no demand yet,” Desai said.

“When you cold call someone, they’re kind of like taken a bit of back. They’re just like, ‘Oh, you’re trying to give me something?’”

That something has the power to prove innocence, piece together digital puzzles and solve mysteries — and, it normally comes with a hefty price tag. While digital forensics costs are becoming baked into more and more policing and prosecution budgets, a full digital investigation for an accused can cost from $50,000 to well above $100,000.

In criminal cases, there is also a gap between prosecutions and the defence in their grasp of, and access to, digital forensics.

Digital forensic examiners, like Sharma, are certified, and their expertise and evidence, Desai said, is in the realm of “primary” evidence in courts, approaching the reliability of DNA and blood analysis.

For example, digital examiners using the software tools can both analyze the digital “ones and zeros” of the evidence to prove its authenticity and then help a jury understand that the data was lawfully recovered and that a chat or message exchange “actually happened,” Desai said.

“It’s not hearsay, where there’s greater risk in the pursuit of justice.”

It’s also, Desai said, a technology that “you don’t know you need it until you need it.”

Smartphones, smart devices, computers and apps contain a trove of data, including location and date/time information, that can help convict or clear a person.

In a notable case in Wisconsin, Magnet technology and a forensic examiner helped clear Douglass Detrie in the death of his girlfriend using Fitbit data that showed Detrie was too inactive at the time of Nicole VanderHeyden’s 2016 death to have been involved. Another man was convicted of the crime. Karmically, cellphone data in large part did the second man in. The case is under appeal.

Closer to home, pacemaker data helped clear Frank Cara, a Durham man, in the 2012 stabbing murder of his father. The data, unearthed in disclosure by his defence team, showed his father’s heart beat its last when Cara was elsewhere. The evidence got Cara out of jail, where he’d been held without bail for 10 months, and proved his innocence.

Magnet, which recently went public as a company, noticed a “desire from the community of users of our software to use this powerful skill set for good,” Desai said, “and a lot of them want to volunteer their time individually. But there’s a lot of things that kind of get in the way.”

With Auxtera, the red tape of running the project is taken up by volunteer employees, including project co-chairs Katie Pufall and Michelle Fox, who gathered for a picture for this story in the company’s COVIDempty headquarters within BlackBerry Technology Park.

Along one wall of the company’s lunchroom and common gathering area is a commissioned mural that spells out “Difference Makers.”

Another company motto — “Seek justice: Protect the Innocent” — adorns company merch, including everything from baby onesies to hoodies.

The company, in addition to Auxtera, offers scholarships to police services to establish digital forensic labs, and part of its mission, according to its recent prospectus, is helping globally to combat terrorism, human trafficking and child sexual exploitation.

“We are very proud that our digital investigation tools have been successfully used in cases around the world ranging from terrorism, human trafficking, online child sexual exploitation, cybercrimes and enterprise theft, resulting in justice for victims,” founder and former cop, Saliba, wrote in material filed with the prospectus.

“We are equally proud,” Saliba wrote, “when these tools are used to exonerate the innocent.”

“We are very proud that our digital investigation tools have been successfully used in cases around the world … resulting in justice for victims. We are equally proud when these tools are used to exonerate the innocent.” JAD SALIBA MAGNET FORENSICS FOUNDER