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The Hermeneutics of the Hard Drive: Using Narratology, Natural Language Processing, and Knowledge Management to Improve the Effectiveness of the Digital Forensic Process

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Date Issued:
2013
Abstract/Description:
In order to protect the safety of our citizens and to ensure a civil society, we ask our law enforcement, judiciary and intelligence agencies, under the rule of law, to seek probative information which can be acted upon for the common good. This information may be used in court to prosecute criminals or it can be used to conduct offensive or defensive operations to protect our national security. As the citizens of the world store more and more information in digital form, and as they live an ever-greater portion of their lives online, law enforcement, the judiciary and the Intelligence Community will continue to struggle with finding, extracting and understanding the data stored on computers. But this trend affords greater opportunity for law enforcement. This dissertation describes how several disparate approaches: knowledge management, content analysis, narratology, and natural language processing, can be combined in an interdisciplinary way to positively impact the growing difficulty of developing useful, actionable intelligence from the ever-increasing corpus of digital evidence. After exploring how these techniques might apply to the digital forensic process, I will suggest two new theoretical constructs, the Hermeneutic Theory of Digital Forensics and the Narrative Theory of Digital Forensics, linking existing theories of forensic science, knowledge management, content analysis, narratology, and natural language processing together in order to identify and extract narratives from digital evidence. An experimental approach will be described and prototyped. The results of these experiments demonstrate the potential of natural language processing techniques to digital forensics.
Title: The Hermeneutics of the Hard Drive: Using Narratology, Natural Language Processing, and Knowledge Management to Improve the Effectiveness of the Digital Forensic Process.
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Name(s): Pollitt, Mark, Author
Applen, John, Committee Chair
Bowdon, Melody, Committee CoChair
Dombrowski, Paul, Committee Member
Craiger, John, Committee Member
University of Central Florida, Degree Grantor
Type of Resource: text
Date Issued: 2013
Publisher: University of Central Florida
Language(s): English
Abstract/Description: In order to protect the safety of our citizens and to ensure a civil society, we ask our law enforcement, judiciary and intelligence agencies, under the rule of law, to seek probative information which can be acted upon for the common good. This information may be used in court to prosecute criminals or it can be used to conduct offensive or defensive operations to protect our national security. As the citizens of the world store more and more information in digital form, and as they live an ever-greater portion of their lives online, law enforcement, the judiciary and the Intelligence Community will continue to struggle with finding, extracting and understanding the data stored on computers. But this trend affords greater opportunity for law enforcement. This dissertation describes how several disparate approaches: knowledge management, content analysis, narratology, and natural language processing, can be combined in an interdisciplinary way to positively impact the growing difficulty of developing useful, actionable intelligence from the ever-increasing corpus of digital evidence. After exploring how these techniques might apply to the digital forensic process, I will suggest two new theoretical constructs, the Hermeneutic Theory of Digital Forensics and the Narrative Theory of Digital Forensics, linking existing theories of forensic science, knowledge management, content analysis, narratology, and natural language processing together in order to identify and extract narratives from digital evidence. An experimental approach will be described and prototyped. The results of these experiments demonstrate the potential of natural language processing techniques to digital forensics.
Identifier: CFE0005112 (IID), ucf:50749 (fedora)
Note(s): 2013-05-01
Ph.D.
Arts and Humanities, Dean's Office CAH
Doctoral
This record was generated from author submitted information.
Subject(s): digital forensics -- narrative -- natural language processing -- narratology -- knowledge management -- XML
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005112
Restrictions on Access: campus 2018-11-15
Host Institution: UCF

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