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“Watch out for people that take so-called “notes,” when the notes NEVER EXISTED until needed”

To avoid possible false allegations, contemporaneous notes should always be timestamped in a trusted note-taking system so that the writer can PROVE when they were written.

This eliminates the allegation of ‘fake’ notes that were created “when needed”.

The US President, Donald J. Trump recently tweeted…

The key statement within this tweet is his claim that the “notes never existed until needed”.

Can we determine when these “notes” were created?

You may be surprised to learn that using popular word processing applications may leave this question unanswered.

However, it would be very easy, if they were created in an immutable system like Forensic Notes!

President Trump makes a valid and interesting point about contemporaneous notes and those that claim to have written them. Being able to independently verify when they wrote the note is a key component to their credibility.

Taking good notes matters.

PROVING when you took good notes matters even more.

This is why Forensic Notes was created.

Forensic Notes allows you to create notes while ensuring you can always PROVE when you wrote them.

From a technical perspective, every note is Digitally Signed and Timestamped, using the same technology used by major banks and government agencies.

Simply put…

After you write a note, it is made immutable (can’t change) and it includes the date/time of when it was written.

This is similar to the idea of placing the note on the blockchain, which is often in the news.

And like the blockchain, anyone with a copy of your notes could simply drag & drop your notes on our verification page to confirm the notes were the originals and unaltered.

As more information comes out on how these notes were written, we will see if the authors are able to PROVE when they were written. Perhaps they used Forensic Notes?

Interested in protecting your credibility?

Signup with Forensic Notes Today!

Capturing Evidence & Notetaking

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Table of Contents:

OSINT – There is a right way

Why Hunchly

Why Forensic Notes

The Guide

• Notebooks
• Notes
• What Do I Note?
• Sticky Notes
• Search & Capture
• Selectors
• Tags
• Contemporaneous Notes
• Reporting

Conclusion

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OSINT INVESTIGATIONS – The Right Way

OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) has gone mainstream.  Not long-ago OSINT was something tech savvy investigators did off the side of their desk.  As agencies became more aware of its value, OSINT became the domain of specialized OSINT investigators.  And today the expectation is that all well-rounded investigators need to understand and be able to perform their own rudimentary OSINT research.

With the vast amount of personal information individuals are posting about themselves (and their friends and family) online, no longer can you expect a few specialized investigators to capture everything on the Internet, especially as this information is volatile and can disappear just as quick as it goes up.

However, doing OSINT correctly is important.   Investigators and analysts are often tasked with conducting OSINT with little training and instruction into how that information should be documented, captured or later disclosed.  This is partly because many people, falsely, equate OSINT work as simply knowing how to “Google”. 

The other issue that arises, is that Open Source Intelligence, especially when completed for Law Enforcement purposes can cross the line from “Intelligence” to “Evidence”.   This is significant line to cross, as ‘evidence’ means your OSINT work may very likely come under court scrutiny.

Not surprisingly, this has led to case law requiring improved procedures and tools for conducting OSINT investigations.  One well known case in Canada is [R v Hamdan].

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Honourable Mr. Justice Butler
Supreme Court of British Columbia – Canada

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OSINT is important work and it requires execution in a purposeful manner.  This is where using Hunchly and Forensic Notes can improve and simplify your OSINT investigations and aid in your findings being accepted in a court of law.

Hunchly and Forensic Notes cover two vital elements that may come under scrutiny months or years after your investigation:

1. Ensuring your capture is a true and accurate representation of what you observed;
   
2. Contemporaneous notetaking.

Why HUNCHLY?

Conducting OSINT investigations can be tedious and time consuming, especially when you are capturing and documenting all your findings. 

There are number of questions an Investigator must ask and find solutions to, such as:

• How do I capture a wide variety of webpages (often with scrolling content)?
• What format should I save webpages in (PDF, HTML, PNG)?
• Should I capture every page I view?
• Can I trust that the software tools I find online are not transmitting sensitive information to third parties or organizations?
• How do I remember search terms used during my investigation and the search sites used?

This is where Hunchly comes in.

Hunchly is an incredibly powerful software tool that will save you time and eliminate the headaches and stress in trying to capture every detail of your on-line investigation. Hunchly is highly recommend by some of most renowned people in OSINT, including Michael Bazzell at IntelTechniques.com, and is the tool of choice for law enforcement agencies around the world.

There are other web capture tools out there that you will also find useful from time to time.   Hunchly, however, is quite distinctive in that it is a purpose-built web capture tool designed for conducting OSINT investigations. This becomes quite apparent when you begin to use Hunchly.  It not only does a great job capturing webpages, but it also helps you conduct your investigation and organizes your results for reporting and disclosure in court.

Hunchly is light-weight and runs as an extension in your Chrome web-browser.   Once installed, it’s a simple click to activate or deactivate the capture function.  When activated, it begins to capture every search you make and every web page you visit, with no further action on your part.  

This is more powerful and helpful than you might expect!

For example:

You are tasked with conducting OSINT research on a target in a homicide. The detective provides you with a name and possible associates, but states that no other information is known as the incident had just occurred.

As you research on-line you become overwhelmed with the amount of information you are finding and have no idea what might be relevant. The next day, you speak with the detective who mentions that sand was found on the body of the victim, to which you quickly say, “I saw a picture posted on the suspect’s Instagram account showing a picture of him by the beach”. Believing you have a key piece of evidence, you quickly log into your computer and navigate to his Instagram page, only to realize that you can’t find the picture. It has been deleted!

This is where Hunchly really saves the day. Remember, it captures EVERYTHING you view and does so in a forensically acceptable manner. Now, instead of losing that key piece of evidence, you can simply look back through your Hunchly history to find the information you already found!

Remember: the internet is a live and constantly changing source of information.

A Facebook post that was once publicly visible might suddenly become private (or deleted) by the time you decide to go back and review it.  Or perhaps the information is still there but you can’t remember the web trail you took and can’t find your way back to that key bit of information. 

Going back to the example above, what if the suspect had multiple social media accounts all with thousands of posts and pictures?

How many additional hours will you spend trying to find the potentially deleted images if you are not confident that it wasn’t an Instagram post, but rather posted on a different social account? Hours, days?

I can guarantee this will be the most frustrating hours or days of the investigation, not only for you, but also for the lead detective who will be likely looking over your shoulder for the big break in her case.

Life is too short not to use Hunchly!

In our OSINT Guide we’ll explore even more Hunchly features, including:

• How to highlight key information such as username, email, phone and address using “selectors”.
• Categorizing your findings with “tags”
• Disclose your captures
• Capture metadata
• Adding notes

This last feature, adding notes, ties into the next key concept of OSINT and note-taking.  

A great feature of Hunchly is that it allows you add notes to web captures. This is helpful to give context (for yourself or others) on how or why particular web captures are relevant. BUT don’t confuse this great note feature as your “investigative notes”.  Yes, Hunchly keeps a great record of OSINT data, but there is still an important need for contemporaneous notes.

This is where Forensic Notes complements Hunchly.

Why Forensic Notes

You may ask,

“Aren’t my web captures (screenshots) basically my notes?”

“Why do I need to take additional notes?”

The answer is that there is a lot more to OSINT than just what you saw and captured online, especially if you are going to end up in court.

First, you should be making notes about why you are even conducting the investigation in the first place. 

• Who requested that you assist in this investigation?
• What or who were you asked to investigate?
• Were you provided with any information to begin your search, such as names, usernames, birthdays, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, etc?
• Did you use any police databases to help determine or collaborate information you found online?
• What did you find online? 
• Who did you notify about your findings?

Notes are also about your own CYA. Consider this, what if you had discovered some key information that would have pushed an investigation forward, but months later it turns out no one ever acted on that information.  Whether honestly forgetting or trying to protect themselves, the investigator blames you, alleging that you never provided that information.  Having notes that show otherwise could keep you out of the hot-seat! 

So, if you are convinced that note-taking is an important part of OSINT, there’s good reason why you should be using a tool like Forensic Notes to take the BEST notes. 

When it comes to taking notes, hopefully it’s obvious that the old pen and paper way of taking notes is really unsuitable for OSINT (though it’s much better than making no notes at all).

Why?

Digital notes are easier to read for both you and others.  They are also more efficient and help you record information more accurately.   For example, consider recording URLs: 

Would you really want to copy that out by hand?

Probably not, and even if you wanted to, there is a very high chance you would record it incorrectly.  The power of digital note-taking can come down to this simple phrase: “copy & paste”. 

Copy & Paste will not only save you a lot time, it will ensure you don’t make typos and other errors when it comes to recording the content you view online.  

For OSINT, digital notes really are the way to go. So, the next question is, “Why can’t I just use Word, Excel, Notepad, etc?” 

It simply comes down to the strict rules for Law Enforcement surrounding acceptable note-taking – requirements that just can’t be met with typical word processing applications. 

For hand-written notes, you keep notes in a notebook and are forbidden from removing pages, using white-out, or leaving blank spaces.  This ensures that an officer’s notes can be shown in court to be unaltered and that no notes are missing from the notebook.  With a typical word processing application, you could change your notes days, weeks, years later and it’s quite possible that no one would be able to track or identify those changes. Well, unless you use a font that didn’t exist at the time you claim your notes were made.

The reason for this demand on Law Enforcement note-taking is that memory is fragile, and the more time passes, the less reliable it becomes.  That’s why it’s vital to take notes as soon as practical after an event, to ensure nothing important is forgotten or perhaps worse, remembered incorrectly. 

Before being allowed to refer to your notes in the courtroom, the judge will want to know if they were made contemporaneously.  Making notes days, weeks, or months later greatly reduces their reliability and any weight the judge or jury may give to them. 

With this in mind, individuals may feel tempted to “backdate” their notes when they realize they forgot to write something down.  This is where Forensic Notes keeps you honest while also ensuring you can prove your notes are authentic and unaltered from the time you made them.

Forensic Notes is designed to give users the ease of recording digital information (like complex URL’s) while maintaining the security and integrity of a bound paper-notebook. This security is provided by a process much like the blockchain, where every note is tracked and verified via its hash and timestamp. 

Lastly, the true power of Forensic Notes is that if you don’t want to change your current note-taking method, you can keep it and then add your notes, such as word-processing documents, directly to Forensic Notes to get access to the same verification features.  Simply upload almost any type of file to obtain the same security and authentication as making notes directly in Forensic Notes.

And if you aren’t ready to give-up the pen & paper, Forensic Notes also allows you taken hand-written notes with a stylus, on an Android tablet or an Apple iPad. 

THE GUIDE

In this Guide we’ll explore how to conduct an OSINT investigation using Hunchly & Forensic Notes to help ensure your investigation is documented properly.

To begin, we’ll need to setup both applications.

Don’t worry, it only takes a couple minutes to get both up and running – and they both offer free trials!

Get Hunchly Visit: https://www.hunch.ly/

1. Click on the “TRY IT FREE”
2. Enter your name & email and you’ll receive a trial license via email.
3. Follow the simple instructions to download and install Hunchly
   1. You may also need to install Chrome (if you don’t already have it).
4. You now have 30 days to try it out!

Get Forensic Notes Visit: https://www.forensicnotes.com/

1. Click on “CREATE ACCOUNT”
2. You’ll be brought to a pricing page where you can select “Start My Free 7-Day Trial”
   • Yes, it REALLY is free to try.
   • You won’t be asked for any payment details.
3. You’ll then be brought to the sign-in page.
4. Create your account by:
   • logging in via an existing Google or LinkedIn account.
   • OR
   • by clicking the “Sign up now” link. You will be required to enter an email and complex password.
5. You will need a phone number to enable to Multi-Factor Authentication – which is mandatory.
6. Follow a few more onscreen instructions and you’ll be brought to the Forensic Notes notetaking screen.

Let’s Begin an Investigation

Let’s conduct on Open Source investigation on Justin Seitz the creator of Hunchly.

Like a lot of things in life, it’s better to start with a blueprint of how you will approach your investigation rather than simply jumping in.

Having a blueprint keeps your work looking more consistent, which is both beneficial to you and others who may review your work. 

As you will see, Forensics Notes makes this process simple & easy to complete.

NOTEBOOKS

To begin, let’s create a folder structure that helps organize our notes.

Forensic Notes is built on the foundation of physical notebooks, but with some key advantages.

With a physical paper notebook, you might record multiple investigations in the same notebook (or be stuck with MANY notebooks!).   Your notes for various investigations could be scattered among different pages and even different physical notebooks.

This makes finding information for just that investigation difficult and time consuming.

With Forensic Notes, we recommend you create a separate notebook for each investigation.  This will keep your notes together and simplify disclosure or referring back to a specific note at a later time. 

Forensic Notes also allows you to create folders to help organize your notebooks that might be on the same topic / year / or other relevant categorization.

Below is one example of how you might organize and name your notebooks for OSINT investigations.

• Folders to organize/group notebooks by year. 
• Notebooks are named by File #, Offence Time, and Date Assigned.

You can always rename notebooks, and it’s easy to drag & drop folders and notebooks if you decide you want change the way your notes are organized – all without affecting the content of those notebooks.

NOTES

Once you have decided on a notebook structure, it’s time to start making notes. 

The simplest method would be to just create notes as you go and they will be organized in chronological order.  However, you have the flexibility to again name individual notes and organize them in folders.  As shown in the example below, you could organize your notes on various sources of OSINT information as well as general notes about the requests and conversations with other investigators.

If you want an overview how to quickly create notebooks and notes, and why they are different from your typical word document, watch the video below:

WHAT DO I NOTE?

So you have a blueprint for how to organize your notes, but what should you record in your notes?

To begin, you should document why you are conducting an OSINT investigation and what information you were given from the lead investigator or anyone involved with the investigation

This might include:

• who provided the OSINT request?
• the purpose of the investigation
• information provided on the subject of the search such as:
  • names
  • usernames
  • email addresses
  • phone numbers
  • known social media accounts
  • known websites / URL associated with subject

It’s good to note this information now, because as your OSINT investigation progresses, you will likely come across a lot of additional information.  If you don’t document now, looking back a few days later it might be difficult to recall the source of the information.

In the example below, we document that we have been provided with Justin’s first and last name, that he may be an author, and an associated email address.

Example:

STICKY NOTES

You will also want to review your own notes to remind you of tasks you may not have yet completed.  And if you are someone who loves sticky notes, Forensic Notes allow you to create reminders that you can clear once completed and are not included when you download your notebooks.

SEARCH & CAPTURE

Now it’s time to get searching and this is where Hunchly comes into play.

Instead of having to note every search and every page you viewed, which is a lot of effort, Hunchly can track this for you. Not only that, Hunchly will save a copy of every webpage you’ve viewed, so you can always go back and review pages you’ve visited. 

Let’s Watch How to Capture our First Webpage with Hunchly

If you followed along with the video above, you will have completed a simple Google search for “justin seitz”.  We immediately found some results that could possibly be associated to our subject, including a Twitter and LinkedIn account.

Looking closer at the Twitter result, we see that Justin’s uses a Twitter handle “@jms_dot_py”.  People often with use a username for multiple sites, so this will be a great term to search later.

SELECTORS

This leads to the next great feature of Hunchly – “selectors”.  Hunchly allows you add terms (names, usernames, URLs, email addresses, phone numbers, etc) as selectors to help Hunchly to track and identify that information if it appears on any webpage you access.

This can be helpful as you conduct your ONSINT investigation, as any “selectors” that appears on webpages as your search can be highlighted directly in your Chrome browser, ensuring don’t overlook key content.  And because every webpage you viewed is saved locally on your computer, you can also go back and search all the past pages you viewed again for those selectors or new selectors that you discover throughout your investigation.

In above example, by adding “jms_dot_py” as a selector we can quickly discover as we scroll through Google results that Justin also uses this username on two well-known sites, Medium and Reddit.

Okay, it’s time to learn how to use ‘selectors’ directly from Justin himself.

As you learn more about your subject, and add new details to your “selectors”, you will quickly see how much easier it is to find new sites as well keep track of the ones you have already visited.  In our example with Justin, we quickly can find a bunch of relevant information and great new selectors to add to our case:

• He is associated to additional twitter account @hunchly
• There is an associated website: www.hunch.ly
• He also has a website called: automatingosint.com
• Confirm email address: justin@automatingosint.com
• Claims to live in: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
• Has a Linkedin account: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seitzjustin/
• And another email posted on the Linkedin account: justin.seitz@gmail.com

Now you can add these selectors in Hunchly to ensure you are notified if they are found on other webpages you view.  

TAGS

As we go about searching all we can on Justin, we could capture hundreds or even thousands of webpages.  Trying to manual organize all these captured webpage results would be tedious and time consuming.  Again, this is where using a purpose-built OSINT tool like Hunchly makes our lives much easier.  Hunchly allows you to “tag” webpages to basically categorize them and make filtering and searching easier down the road.

For example, you might want to tag webpages with very general themes such as “Social Media”, “News Sites”, or “Search Results”.  Once you create tags, you can quickly filter all the sites you have visited from the Hunchly dashboard to show only webpages tagged as “Social Media”. You can also filter to include your selectors, so we could filter on all social media pages that include “seitzjustin”.

And then you could still use the Hunchly search function to add additional text to filter your results on.

As you can see, this becomes incredibly powerful (and necessary) as you begin to collect hundreds of web captures.

Learn more about Tagging & Filtering directly from Justin

CONTEMPORANEOUS NOTES

Hunchly does a great job capturing webpages effortlessly as you search.  You can go back to refer to those pages months or years later and review what you saw.  But as you can imagine, because every webpage you view is captured while you conduct your OSINT investigation, even with filtering and search tools, finding key information at a later date could be time consuming. 

The efficient approach is to take great contemporaneous notes as you search.  This is often the area where investigators drop the ball.  It is generally more fun to just keep searching and going from website to website.  But in the end, you need to be able to sum it all up and tell a concise story.  Note-taking is key, as it ensures you document the milestones of your investigation, and improve the quality of your final report. 

Your notes are also important to ensure you can accurately describe when and how you found information and what you did with that knowledge.

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Notes are the foundation of your investigation.

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For example, with Hunchly you can quickly capture a years’ worth of Justin’s tweets, but you may not actually review all those tweets until weeks later.  When reviewing those tweets, you discover a key tweet, that is highly relevant to your investigation and changes the course of the investigation.    If you make no notes, and simply rely on the dates of your web captures, others may assume you saw that information weeks earlier and failed to properly act on it. 

It is also important to remember that as an OSINT investigator you can easily stray beyond pure Open Source research and into a more invasive investigation.  For example, OSINT investigators are often tasked with exigent files where key information for resolving the situation are in the hands of 3^rd party ISPs.  Considering that these are life and death situations, you want to ensure you keep good notes about what companies you called, when you called them, and whether they assisted in providing the needed information.  Who and when did you pass on this information to?

No matter what the task, keeping good notes is part of being a good investigator.

Now, before we move on from note-taking, let’s discuss a notetaking feature in Hunchly, that serves a different purpose, but is very helpful for flagging and later disclosing key web data discovered.

Let’s refer back to the example of going through a year of tweets and finding only one tweet of interest.  That web capture will be quite long, and though you may need to disclose the entire history, you also really want to highlight the relevant tweet.  While viewing your capture in Hunchly, simply right-click on the screen and choose the option to add a note.  Hunchly will also take a new screenshot of whatever is currently being shown in the browser and then let you add a few lines of text to help give context on why this content is important.

This can be helpful to give context or remind you why a page was useful and works as a useful filter when building your reports.

Notes can be access via your Hunchly dashboard.

You are now done your investigation.  How do you provide your work in Hunchly and Forensic Notes to the lead investigator, your client, or disclose to prosecution & defense?

 REPORTING

Preparing for the disclosure of your work so others can use it is the last but perhaps most vital step. It’s important to be able to provide your work in a way that others can use to further the investigation for use in court.

Reporting for both Hunchly & Forensic Notes are both best explained by a couple short videos.

Now let’s explore reporting in Forensic Notes:

CONCLUSION

OSINT is an exciting field of work and study.  Hopefully this guide has given you some ideas on how to improve your OSINT investigations. 

Remember, if the information you collect doesn’t stand-up in the court room, all your efforts could be for nothing.  Hunchly & Forensic Notes are built with the goal of ensuring your success in documenting your investigational and presenting your evidence in court.

• under development

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Steps:

1. Open the Forensic Note ZIP Archive (.zip) that you downloaded from your account.

2. Open a File Explorer window and navigate to a folder to save your files.

3. Adjust both the File Explorer window and ZIP Archive window on your screen so that you can see both at the same time (you may need to adjust the size of each window).

4. Select all files including the Forensic Note, Timestamp Certificate and attachment(s) within your ZIP Archive (.zip).

5. Drag & Drop the files from the ZIP Archive into the second (2nd) File Explorer window you opened in step 2. Files will automatically be extracted.

NOTE: You will need to enter your ZIP Archive password when extracting the files. Once extracted, your files will NOT BE PASSWORD PROTECTED. Please ensure you’ve extracted the files to a secure folder that only you can access if your notes must remain private.

 

We are happy to help with any questions you have regarding Forensic Notes.

Kindly provide information below and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

 

1. Open a Forensic Note / Notebook within Adobe Reader or Acrobat and ensure that the “Valid Forensic Note” signature panel is displayed (see below). If Digital Certificate has not been trusted, go to Trust Digital Signing Certificate and follow the instructions before proceeding.

2. Confirm that the PDF has been Digitally Signed by DocumentSigning@forensicnotes.com

3. Confirm that the document has not been modified since the signature was applied.

4. Confirm that the signing time of the document approximately matches the time you have recorded within the Forensic Note or Forensic Notebook. To view the signing time of the Forensic Note, you must “Show Signature Properties…”.

Dates & Times – Why Approximately?

While validating a Forensic Note or a Forensic Notebook, up to three (3) different dates & times may be found which will all be valid if they fall within a couple minutes of each other due to how Forensic Notes are processed. Forensic Notes are processed in three (3) distinctive steps:

Step #1 – Database Save

Forensic Note information in saved read-only into the database. The date and time associated with saving the data into the Forensic Notes application is recorded and printed within the generated PDF.

Step #2 – Digital Signature Applied

A Forensic Notes PDF is generated which includes the printed date and time from Step #1. The Forensic Note PDF is then Digitally Signed with a Digital Signing Certificate. The date and time associated with the Digital Signature is recorded within the Digital Signature. This Digital Signature’s signing date can then be displayed within the PDF as the Signing Date & Time. (see Validate via Adobe Reader / Acrobat – Step #4)

Step #3 – Timestamp Generated

A one-way HASH of the Forensic Note PDF is sent to our independent and trusted third-party Timestamping Authority (TSA) which provides a timestamp of the Forensic Note or Forensic Notebook. The date and time associated with the timestamping is recorded within the Digital Timestamp Certificate and returned to the Forensic Notes application. (see Validate via Timestamp Certificate)

 

These three (3) steps are normally processed quickly resulting in minimal differences in times associated with all three steps. However, larger documents or heavy network utilization may result in longer delays between steps causing more significant time differences. As a result, times should approximately match within a couple minutes’ difference.

Each Forensic Note PDF has been Digitally Signed by DocumentSigning@ForensicNotes.com. As a result, any attempts to change the Forensic Notes PDF will result in a warning to the user when the Forensic Note is viewed within Adobe Reader / Acrobat as shown below.

Invalid Forensic Note – Document was changed

The above warnings indicate that the Forensic Note was modified in some way since it was originally saved and signed within the Forensic Notes application.

Valid Forensic Note

Digital Signature Not Trusted (Expected on 1st time viewing)

The certificate associated with the Digital Signature has not been trusted on the computer viewing the Forensic Note. This is expected when first viewing a Forensic Note on a computer for the first time.  For steps on how to trust the Digital Certificate associated with the Digital Signature, go to How to Trust Digital Signing Certificate.

Valid Forensic Note

Forensic Notes are timestamped by DigiStamp, an independent & trusted Timestamping Authority (TSA). DigiStamps’ Timestamp Certificate (.p7s extension file) is used to verify the date and time of your Forensic Note if the validity of the Forensic Note is ever questioned.

Steps:

1. Open the Forensic Note ZIP Archive (.zip) that you downloaded from your account

 

2. Locate the Forensic Note and Timestamp Certificate

 

 

 

3. Extract files from ZIP Archive into a regular folder

 

4. Go to: DigiStamp Timestamp Verification Tool

 

 

 

5. Drag & Drop the files into the DigiStamp Timestamp Verification application or press the “Choose Files” button to select your files from within File Explorer.

 

 

NOTE: Your personal information is not uploaded to the DigiStamp server.

 

~ Screen capture from DigiStamp site shown above (“Click to show instruction” clicked)

 

 

Verified Valid Timestamp

The following display confirms that the timestamp matches the Forensic Note. The date & time saved within the Timestamp Certificate is displayed within the DigiStamp confirmation application.

 

Invalid Timestamp

Timestamp Certificate does not match the Forensic Note

The following shows that the Timestamp Certificate does not match the Forensic Note provided. If the filenames match but the following information is displayed, then this could be an indication that the Forensic Note has been altered in some way.

 

Every Forensic Note and Forensic Notebook is Digitally Signed by a Digital Signing Certificate issued by Comodo, a Certificate Authority (CA). By default, Adobe Reader / Acrobat do not have knowledge of the certificate which results in the warning “At least one signature has problems” (as shown below).

To properly validate your Forensic Notes and Forensic Notebooks, follow the steps outlined below which will add the Digital Signing Certificate to your list of Truststed Certificates. The following steps only need to be completed once on each computer viewing Forensic Notes and Notebooks.

 

NOTE: The following instructions are for Adobe Acrobat Reader CS.  Other versions of Adobe Acrobat will have similar features and options.

Step #1 – Signature Panel

1. Click on “Signature Panel”

 

 

2. Click the dropdown menu next to “Validate All”

3. Click on “Validate Signature”

4. Click the “Signature Properties…” button

 

 

Step #2 – Signature Properties

The following menu shows the properties of the Digital Signature. As shown, the Forensic Note has not been modified since it was Digitally Signed.

 

1. Click the “Show Signer’s Certificate…” button

 

Step #3 – Certificate Viewer – Summary

The following menu shows further information related to the Digital Certificate.

1. Click the “Trust” tab

 

 

Step #4 – Certificate Viewer – Trust

The following menu shows that the associated Digital Certificate is not trusted.

1. Click the “Add to Trusted Certificates…” button

 

 

Step #5 – Add Trust Settings

This following menu allows you to set the Trust level for the Digital Certificate associated with Forensic Notes and Notebooks. To properly validate Forensic Notes and Notebooks, you only need to ensure that the following two (2) options are selected:

1. Use this certificate as a trusted root

2. Certified documents

3. Click “Ok” to save changes

Dynamic Content, Embedded high privilege JavaScript and Privileged system operation options do NOT need to be selected. These can cause potential security concerns in some environments and are not required for validating Forensic Notes.

 

 

Step #6 – Validate Signature

Now that the Digital Certificate is trusted within Adobe Reader/Acrobat, the Forensic Note or Notebook must be re-validated as it will continue to show errors until completed.

1. Click on menu icon next to “Validate All”

2. Click on “Validate Signature”

 

The Digital Signature will be re-validated now that the Digital Certificate is trusted.

 

 

Step #7 – Valid Signature

The Signature Panel should now show the following message:

“Signed and all signatures are valid”

 

 

View List of Trusted Certificates – Adobe Reader

To view the list of Trusted Certificates within Adobe Reader, following these steps:

1. Click “Preferences…” within “Edit” menu

 

 

2. Click “Signatures”

3. Click “More…” button within “Identities & Trusted Certificates”

4. View list of Trusted Certificates

 

The EEOC’s lawsuit charged AA Foundries, Inc., a local San Antonio manufacturer of ferrous castings and producer of foundry mold machines, with racially harassing its African-American employees in violation of federal law.

One African-American employee testified at trial that he filed an EEOC complaint because he wanted his children to learn not to be prejudiced against others nor for others to be prejudiced against them in the workplace.

AA Foundries Superintendent, the top plant official, not only used the “N” word himself, but admitted that it did not bother him that derogatory racial slurs were commonly heard in the workplace.

The superintendent also called adult African-American male employees “mother-f—g boys,” posted racially-tinged written material in the break room, and routinely slandered them referring to them as “you people” and accusing African-Americans of always stealing and wanting welfare.

After several employees filed racial harassment charges with the EEOC, a noose was displayed at the AA Foundries workplace. In response to employee complaints about this noose, the superintendent described such reports as “BS” and stated the noose “was no big deal” and that “you people are too sensitive.”

This type of conduct constitutes a hostile work environment, a form of race-based discrimination prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The EEOC filed suit (Civil Action Number 5:11-cv-792, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, San Antonio Division) after first attempting to reach a voluntary settlement.

2. Race Discrimination Settlement : Eclipse Advantage Lawsuit

Eclipse Advantage Sued by EEOC for Racially Hostile Work Environment and Retaliation

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit…that Eclipse Advantage, Inc., violated federal law by subjecting an African-American employee to racial discrimination and retaliation at its Aldi Food Service warehouse in Hinckley, Ohio.

The EEOC charged that Rodney Williams began working in a supervisory position with the company in August 2009, and shortly thereafter was subjected to racial epithets from his superiors and was demoted complaining about a racially hostile work environment.

Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on national origin, race, color, sex (including sexual harassment or pregnancy) or religion and protects employees who complain about or oppose such discrimination from retaliation.

The EEOC filed suit after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement. The EEOC seeks to eliminate these discriminatory practices and have Eclipse Advantage compensate Williams for his losses and provide equal opportunities to black employees.

Eclipse Advantage later settled the case by paying $60,000 in compensation to the victim, and undertook to prevent and eliminate further harassment and retaliation.

Phi Trinh, a hydroelectric-power supervisor, was discriminated against in the promotion process and the jury awarded him $947,290 for emotional harm and lost wages.

The jury also concluded that Mattie Bailey, a black communications manager, also endured workplace hostility because of her race and was not paid equitably for her work. Bailey was awarded $503,195.

4. Disability Discrimination Settlement : Benny Boyd Car Dealership to Pay $250,000 to Former Manager in EEOC Settlement

Benny Boyd Ltd. was forced to pay $250,000 in damages and back pay to former manager Randall Hurst to settle a federal disability discrimination suit, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced today.

The EEOC had charged the automobile dealership with disability discrimination law by denying a partnership to Hurst because of his multiple sclerosis, subjecting him to a hostile work environment and forcing him to quit as a result.

According to the EEOC’s suit, Hurst was wooed away from a lucrative job at another dealership by Benny Boyd to be the General Manager of its Lubbock location.

The EEOC alleged that the compensation package offered Hurst included a promise of partnership. After successfully operating the dealership for several months, Hurst was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and his medical condition was disclosed to the company’s top management staff.  Thereafter, the EEOC contended, the company failed to honor its promise of extending a partnership to Hurst, and he was told that the reason was his MS.

The EEOC also alleged that Hurst’s supervisor subjected him to demeaning comments about his diagnosis, including asking him, “What’s wrong with you? Are you a cripple?” and telling him, “You are on your last quarter, buddy, since you have MS.”

The company failed to take any remedial action to stop the unwelcome behavior, the EEOC alleged.

As a result of the continuing harassment based on his disability and the substantial loss of compensation due to the denial of partnership, the EEOC contended that Hurst was forced to resign in November 2012.

The EEOC filed suit after investigating the case, finding reasonable cause to believe that the alleged discrimination took place, and then attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process.

5. Hostile Work Environment Settlement : Swissôtel Employment Services L.L.C. and Swissôtel Chicago, Inc.

In this case, the EEOC alleged that charging party, who worked as a steward cleaning floors and washing dishes, was subjected to a hostile work environment due to his mental impairment.

His supervisor called him a “retard,” swore at him, and threatened to have him fired.  He also scheduled the charging party to back-to-back shifts something that was not required of other employees.

Despite repeated complaints to human resources department, the Defendant failed to take corrective action. The Defendant ultimately terminated the charging party in retaliation for having complained of discrimination.

The case was settled for $90,000 in monetary damages and injunctive relief.

6. Disability Discrimination Settlement : Luby’s, Inc.

In this case, the Commission alleged that charging party, a floor attendant with an intellectual disability, was subjected to a hostile work environment because of her disability.

Defendant, restaurant chain, had accommodated charging party by providing a job coach for her but when a new manager took over, he refused to repeat instructions, berated her, told her to “shut up” when she asked about her job duties, and got impatient and angry with her for working and speaking slowly.

The new manager also permitted coworkers to mimic her speech, tease her about stuttering, bark at her, and threaten to hurt her with a bread slicer.  Despite repeated complaints, no action was taken.

Charging party was further retaliated against and ultimately was forced to resign, i.e. constructively discharged.

Case settled for $90,000 in monetary damages and injunctive relief as well as attorney’s fees in amount of $60,000 to the Arizona Center for Disability Law, which represented her in intervening in EEOC’s suit.

7. Hostile Work Environment Settlement : Compensatory Damages Awarded To Seven Complainants Subjected To Hostile Work Environment

The complainants in this case filed an EEO complaint as a group, alleging, among other things, that the US Postal Service subjected them to a hostile work environment on the basis of sex.

Following a hearing, it was found that the Agency, ie the US Postal Service,  was liable for the harassment because it did not respond to the situation. The Commission found that Complainants’ emotional and physical harm were the result of suffering years of harassment by a male coworker.

The record established that all of the Complainants were diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder because of the harassment, and many had evidence of severe emotional and physical harm.

The Commission conducted a detailed analysis of each Complainant’s damages directly attributable to the harassment.

After taking into consideration the nature of the discriminatory acts, the severity of the physical and emotional harm suffered, and the many years the Complainants suffered the harm (sometimes seven years or more), the Commission awarded each Complainant between $45,000 and $75,000 in non-pecuniary compensatory damages.Leggett et. al. v. U.S. Postal Serv., EEOC Appeal Nos. 0720110039, et al., (July 12, 2012).

8. Hostile Work Environment Settlement : $50,000 Awarded for Sex-Based Harassment

In this case, the complainant was subjected to hostile work environment harassment because of her sex.

The complainant indicated that the hostile work environment affected her health and caused her a great deal of stress, as well as headaches, and an upset stomach.

She had trouble sleeping and concentrating, and experienced depression and anxiety.

The complainant stated that the stress negatively affected her relationship with her husband and son.

The complainant stated that she called in sick once or twice a month because she did not want to be at work because of the hostile environment.

The record also showed that the complainant was off work for approximately three months due to the stress of the harassing events.

The Department of the Army, which was her employer did not specifically dispute any of the testimony pertaining to the pain and suffering the complainant experienced.

Therefore, the EEOC concluded that the complainant was entitled to an award of $50,000 in compensatory damages.Bradstreet v. Dep’t of the Army, EEOC Appeal No. 0120112517 (June 27, 2012).

 

What is the EEOC?

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a Federal agency in the United States which enforces employment laws.

View our detailed article on how to submit issues to the EEOC and how the EEOC can help you.

Prove the Authenticity of Your Documents

The proprietary Validation Tool below will allow you to prove the date that your Forensic Notebook, Individual Forensic Notes, and Attachments were written and confirm that they have not been modified since they were saved within Forensic Notes.

Launch Forensic Notes Validation Tool
(opens in new window)

Test Forensic Note Validation

Below are three (3) files you can use to test the validation system.

1. Valid Forensic Notebook

• Forensic Notebook (Valid) — Right click, Save link As..
• ZIP Archive: All Files Included with Forensic Notebook Download

 

2. Valid – But Older Outdated Forensic Notebook

The following Notebook is Valid, but additional change(s) were made to the electronic version of the Notebook within the Forensic Notes application which results in the following Forensic Notebook being valid, but outdated (Yellow).

Changes may include the user adding a new Forensic Note or marking an existing Forensic Note as deleted.

• Forensic Notebook (Valid but Older Outdated) — Right click, Save link As..
• ZIP Archive: All Files Included with Forensic Notebook Download

 

3. Invalid Forensic Notebook

The following Notebook was modified within Adobe Reader and is therefore NOT valid.

• Forensic Notebook (INVALID – Changes made to document)  — Right click, Save link As..

Launch Forensic Notes Validation Tool
(opens in new window)

We get that a lot of people don’t get excited about note-taking, but for us, it has become a passion and a fundamental part of our daily lives.

Hopefully our story will inspire you to look deeper into your documentation strategies, whether it’s for your business, organization, or personal life.

Our Story

The story of Forensic Notes is born out of the frustration of trying to keep great notes in a field were note-taking is essential – Digital Forensics.

Ironically, in a field of high-technology, we were initially taking hand-written notes.

We quickly found ourselves frustrated, however, with trying to keep track of (or misplacing) notes for multiple ongoing investigations.

Not only was it hard to keep track of our notes, trying to read our own writing or recording long strings of digital data by hand was both tedious and tiresome.

It didn’t take us long to make the switch to using electronic notes using popular word processing and spreadsheet applications.

We immediately enjoyed the convenience of being able to read our own writing, spell-checking, searching key-terms, and being able to copy & paste data and images directly into our notes.

However, we started to get a nagging feeling that something was wrong with our method.

We had been trained in the strict rules of note-keeping when it came to pen & paper, which are focused on ensuring contemporaneous notes cannot be created or altered after the fact.  But to our surprise, there were no real rules or Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for keeping digital notes.

And because we were working in the field of digital forensics, we realized how easy it would be to alter these key electronic documents with no easy or reliable method to identify or track such changes.

Then we started to get worried.

If our electronic notes were not accepted in court, then obviously all our hard work was for nothing.

After searching for an acceptable solution and finding none, we asked…

What if we could build an electronic note-taking application that followed and mimicked the strict rules of the pen and paper?

And this was the birth of Forensic Notes.

Our initial goal was simple, replicate the benefits of a physical notebook while allowing access to the technological conveniences available in a digital format.

We already achieved our initial goal and many more.

But our story is far from over!

We are still making notes, and looking for ways to make the process easier, faster, and more accessible for the various ways other people want to make their notes.

And that’s Forensics Notes in a nutshell.

Want to know more about the product and the people who make up the Forensic Notes Team?

Read below.

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