Forensic Text Research Articles

Validation in Forensic Text Comparison: Issues and Opportunities

It has been argued in forensic science that the empirical validation of a forensic inference system or methodology should be performed by replicating the conditions of the case under investigation and using data relevant to the case. This study demonstrates that the above requirement for validation is also critical in forensic text comparison (FTC); otherwise, the trier-of-fact may be misled for their final decision. Two sets of simulated experiments are performed: one fulfilling the above validation requirement and the other overlooking it, using mismatch in topics as a case study. Likelihood ratios (LRs) are calculated via a Dirichlet-multinomial model, followed by logistic-regression calibration. The derived LRs are assessed by means of the log-likelihood-ratio cost, and they are visualized using Tippett plots. Following the experimental results, this paper also attempts to describe some of the essential research required in FTC by highlighting some central issues and challenges unique to textual evidence. Any deliberations on these issues and challenges will contribute to making a scientifically defensible and demonstrably reliable FTC available.

The Rhetoric of Transparency: Telling Knowledge in Ancient Medical and Forensic Texts

Abstract: This paper investigates the role of rhetoric within ancient medicine by setting medical writings in dialogue with contemporary forensic texts. Reading across these two genres allows us to capture the shared ways in which early medical and forensic discourse mobilise rhetoric in response to the epistemological limits of medical and forensic practice. Both medical and forensic discourse frame factual and practical knowledge as the remedy to the slippages of words, but at the same time they need words to formulate and validate their tentative knowledge of those very facts. Select readings from the Epidemics illustrate the importance of a rhetorically structured narrative in response to uncertain scenarios. Much like the narrative of forensic texts, I argue, the case-histories of the Epidemics try to shape elusive realities through a rhetorical gesture that confers a precise meaning upon them. Rhetoric, the paper concludes, is not merely an embellishment nor a skill. It is, instead, a medium for the communication of knowledge and the negotiation of its limits, even in texts that at first glance seem, or claim, to be devoid of any rhetorical features.

Perception and understanding of information as determinants of the investigator’s professional competence

The experimental study is devoted to solving the problem of perception and understanding by investigators of the National Police of Ukraine of forensic information about offences presented in the form of texts. The expediency of forming the personality of a specialist investigator based on the competence approach is declared, due to which the contradiction between the professionalism of the individual and the professionalism of the activity is eliminated in the educational process. The purpose of the study was to establish correlates of understanding (sensemaking) of the forensic text by investigators in the process of its compression; personal factors that mediate the investigator’s understanding of official information in the text form of the presentation. The methodological tools were based on the method of structural and functional analysis and empirical methods, systematic, teleological, and dialectical approaches that allowed analysing the dynamics of text information transformation and changes in the parameters of its mental reflection in the subject’s thinking. The study established the dynamics of compression of experimental texts, features of the intensity of text compression depending on the time modes of working with it and individual characteristics of the investigator’s cognitive processes – perception, memory, and thinking. The highest intensity of compression of the expanded text and the allocation of significant information is achieved in the conditions of free time working with the text. It is proved that at the initial stage of understanding a text message, the ratio between the main and concretising elements of information is a criterion of competence, and at the final stage of understanding – the intensity of sensemaking. The indicators of text compression intensity are analysed and it is revealed that under the conditions of a given operating mode, the elimination of text elements occurs more intensively than in the conditions of free time mode. It is proved that the ratio between the intensity of compression and the level of text connectivity has direct proportional relationships at all stages of compression. It is established that the process of understanding is significantly influenced by typological features of conceptual and figurative components of memory and thinking. The provisions formulated in the paper will contribute to the search for more effective methods of professional and psychological training of future investigators and improve the psychological support of investigative activities

Semantic Analysis on the Police Lingo in the Narratives of BS LEAD Students: A Forensic Linguistic Study

This study looks into the terminologies (police lingo) in the write-ups of Bachelor of Science in Law Enforcement Administration fourth-year students to illustrate the categorical and descriptive meanings of the words used in the narratives, identify the errors in the usage, and find out inaccuracies in the application of mechanics of writing like correct spelling, capitalization, abbreviation, and punctuation marks. Twenty-six (26) (BSLEAD) students participated in this study. They were instructed to write a narrative report in one of their experiences in the field. Police lingo identified in the statements such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives, were singled out from the narratives. These words were analyzed to determine whether they clearly stated their intention and described vividly what they meant to say. Semantic analysis was done by giving the dictionary definition of the word in the first level (categorical meaning as to parts of speech) and the illustrative meaning of the word in the second analysis (descriptive meaning), hence, the police lingo in the narratives were explained and described as to their literal meanings and clarity of intention as used in the statements. Results showed that male and female respondents have a similar choice of police lingo in writing the context of utterances in the narrative reports. They also committed errors in writing mechanics such as punctuation, spelling, and capitalization. It is recommended that the BSLEAD students engage in language learning activities like conversation using English, reading forensic texts, and listening/watching investigative programs on the radio or television that use English as a medium.

Honesty in Language in Special Fugitive Scandal: Forensic Linguistic Studies in Broadcasting Talks Indonesia Lawyers Club

Forensic linguistics as a branch of linguistics that analyzes and examines language in legal products, legal processes, and legal evidence still needs to be improved in Indonesia, especially the study of language honesty in crime cases. Therefore, it is important to continue the study of forensic linguistics. This study aims to describe the veracity language in the special fugitive scandal. This research is a type of qualitative research with a descriptive qualitative research design that focuses on analyzing the level of veracity in language in the special fugitive scandal using John Olsson's Statement Analysis in Linguistic (SAL) model. The data of this research are oral data, namely forensic text narratives contained in talk shows about special fugitives. The data source in this research is the Indonesia Lawyers Club (ILC) talk show. The main theory used in this research is the study of forensic linguistics which is specified in John Olsson's theory of veracity language. The results of this research indicate that veracity in language in special fugitive scandals tends to have a high level of veracity.

Killer stance An investigation of the relationship between attitudinal resources and psychological traits in the writings of four serial murderers

individual’s set of psychological traits, or their psychopathology,impacts how they experience the world around them, and language offers resourcesthat allow for that experience to be shared with and communicated to someoneelse. That language can then be analyzed for patterns and their connectionsto the psychological traits. In a forensic context, such connections may givevaluable insights. There already exist psychological and linguistic approachesto the analysis of forensic texts, but the psychological approach largely lacksgrounding in linguistic theory and the linguistic approach does not typically allowconsideration of psychological characteristics. What this paper aims to provideis a step toward bridging that gap. In this paper we examine the system ofattitude from the Appraisal framework developed by Martin and White (2005) andadapted by Gales (2010) and Hurt (2020) applying this to the writings of four serialmurderers with documented mental health diagnoses. Significant patterns in theattitudinal resources were identified quantitatively and examined qualitativelythrough the lens of the psychological traits that comprised the authors’ diagnosesto determine if there was a relationship between them. Despite the obviouslimitation presented by the sample size, the results of this study suggest theapproach presented in this paper warrants further investigation.

Peran Konteks dalam Penentuan Makna Tersirat Teks: Kasus Tiga Teks Forensik Bahasa Indonesia

Freedom of expression in Indonesia has reached the best momentum after the reformation era for democracy develops very successfully to the right direction in the last two decades. One such freedoms is free media and this progressive opportunity often been manipulated by particular users. Thanks to the Indonesian government that has issued constitutional law to punish wrong doing of irresponsible users on electronic transation of information i.e UU ITE Number 11 year 2018 and UU ITE Number 19 year 2016. In this paper there are two research questions to investigate: (1) What linguistics strategy is applied to determine implied meaning of a text; (2) How socio-pragmatic contexts and intertexts play a significant role in analyzing the message. The objective of the research is to formulate a Forensic Linguistics perspective on determining implied meaning and message. The result is that implied meaning must be searched by employing lexico-grammatical structures and supported by socio-pragmatic contexts, namely, deictic, implicature and speech acts. It is concluded that in investigating forensic texts particularly to find out deep structure of meaning and messages behind the surface text, microlinguistics and macrolinguistics properties should be imposed in order to formulate language crime supported by linguistic evidences.

Textuality and Ambiguity of Forensic Texts Egyptian Supreme Court: A Model

Abstract Legal texts are a subfield of forensic linguistics involving the study of language and the law. This language is an arcane and often impenetrable category. The purpose of this present study is to identify the field of Legal Texts and distinguish their different aspects, moreover to discuss the distinctive field in homicide investigations in the Egyptian Supreme Court thoroughly. Therefore, this paper is supported by three cases from the Egyptian Supreme court. The paper analyzes the textuality with a focus on both the characteristics and criteria of forensic linguistics, linking text to context and types of ambiguity either lexical or structural features. Textuality integrated with ambiguity can constitute a totality of properties giving cohesion and coherence in any meaningful text. Textual analysis of these legal texts also involves understanding forensic language to gain information and providing cues to ways through which communication of social structures is understood. Textual analysis in legal studies operates at seven criteria of text. In addition to paying particular attention to specific lexical and structural ambiguity in forensic texts of cases under investigation. This paper aims to examine the textuality features and thematic structures embedded in the Egyptian Supreme legal texts, and to determine the most dominant causal factors of ambiguities in the Egyptian Supreme legal texts. All of these properties have consequences for research techniques to extrapolate the nature of legal texts and the relations involved between textuality and ambiguity.

Current Problems of Forensic Authorship Analysis and the Possibility of Their Solution with the Use of Computer Methods: Problems and Prospects

Active development of Internet communication in recent years caused an increase in the number of forensic text examinations aimed at identifying and profiling (i.e. inferring gender, age, personality, etc. of the author from textual analysis) the author of written texts. Despite the availability of proven methodological recommendations for the production of such examinations, in this area there are many unresolved problems associated mainly with the emergence of new research objects. In addition, the existing expert practice does not fully utilize the achievements of corpus, computer, and quantitative linguistics. In this situation, there is a gap between the "qualitative" and "quantitative" methods of textual authorship analysis, which hinders further development of both theoretical research in the area of authorship attribution and profiling and an increase in the level of objectivity and reproducibility of forensic authorship analysis. The paper represents some typical tasks solved by a forensic expert; describes the characteristics of the objects of forensic authorship analysis, and determines the main difficulties forensic experts face in the course of this analysis. The possibilities of using existing computer methods to solve these tasks are analyzed. It is shown that not all the existing computer methods are useful for forensic authorship analysis. We also highlight the ways of development of forensic authorship analysis related to further theoretical research in the field of idiolect using corpus data and natural language processing techniques.

Authorship Verification using a Graph Knowledge Discovery Approach

This paper presents an approach to solve authorship verification, a forensic text problem which consists in determining whether or not an unknown document was written by a particular author, from some samples of the author’s writing style. The core of the approach is the use of a graph representati on to extract relevant linguistic features based on network analysis techniques. The use of graphs provides rich data structures for representing lexical and syntactic aspects of texts, allowing the reinterpretation of centrality measures to extract linguistic features that do not depend entirely of stylistic elements of text documents. The proposed method is applied on the English language partitions of the clef PAN 2014 and 2015 author verification datasets, producing competitive results that outperform the state of the art baselines and are near (or surpass in one of the cases) to the best results reported so far, given the same training and test corpora. These experimental results showed that our interpretation of the four centrality measures: closeness, betweenness, degree and eigenvector allow to detect relevant patterns of an author’s writing style. In particular, words with high closeness which are part of some chunk phrases and words with high betweenness that are included in bigrams and trigrams, contribute in a more effective way to verify document authorship.

A New Approach to Forensic Text Comparison in the Framework of Integrated Computer Science and Linguistics Investigation

The article presents a new methodological approach to forensic comparison of large amounts of text to establish their similarity/distinctiveness. The proposed approach assumes interaction between a forensic linguist and a forensic examiner with specialized knowledge in the field of forensic computer science, which the effect of optimizing forensic workflow and maximizing objectivity of the resulting expert conclusions.

Assessment in Forensic Practice: A Handbook

HALL: Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL; Affiliate Associate Professor, University of South Florida, Tampa FL; Adjunct Faculty, Barry Law School, Orlando, FL Marcia L. Verduin, MD, Book Editor The reviewer declares no direct conflicts of interest but he has done work as a forensic psychiatrist and written chapters for other forensic texts for which he received no financial benefit.

Strength of linguistic text evidence: A fused forensic text comparison system

Compared to other forensic comparative sciences, studies of the efficacy of the likelihood ratio (LR) framework in forensic authorship analysis are lagging. An experiment is described concerning the estimation of strength of linguistic text evidence within that framework. The LRs were estimated by trialling three different procedures: one is based on the multivariate kernel density (MVKD) formula, with each group of messages being modelled as a vector of authorship attribution features; the other two involve N-grams based on word tokens and characters, respectively. The LRs that were separately estimated from the three different procedures are logistic-regression-fused to obtain a single LR for each author comparison. This study used predatory chatlog messages sampled from 115 authors. To see how the number of word tokens affects the performance of a forensic text comparison (FTC) system, token numbers used for modelling each group of messages were progressively increased: 500, 1000, 1500 and 2500 tokens. The performance of the FTC system is assessed using the log-likelihood-ratio cost (Cllr), which is a gradient metric for the quality of LRs, and the strength of the derived LRs is charted as Tippett plots. It is demonstrated in this study that (i) out of the three procedures, the MVKD procedure with authorship attribution features performed best in terms of Cllr, and that (ii) the fused system outperformed all three of the single procedures. When the token length is 1500, for example, the fused system achieved a Cllr value of 0.15. Some unrealistically strong LRs were observed in the results. Reasons for these are discussed, and a possible solution to the problem, namely the empirical lower and upper bound LR (ELUB) method is trialled and applied to the LRs of the best-achieving fusion system.

Propaganda as a Category in Forensic Text Analysis

The category of propaganda is considered in the paper as a linguistically definable notion. It is demonstrated that being a legal term, this category is significantly influenced by the semantics of the word propaganda as a unit of the Russian literary language. Presented is an analysis of various definitions of propaganda in their historical evolution, from the earliest record of the word in Russian dictionaries to modern lexicographic definitions. Polysemy of the lexical unit “propaganda” is analyzed. Special focus is placed on differentiation of propaganda from other forms of persuasive communication, particularly from advertising, including its political variety. Analysis of the meaning and use of the word propaganda is proposed as a way to objectivize the intuitive labeling of various statements as propagandistic. Our analysis resulted in a list of key properties of propagandistic discourse to be taken into account in the investigation of suspected propaganda of extremism and terrorism, namely, the existence of: (1) a subject of propaganda; (2) an addressee of propaganda, (3) a set of relatively simple and consistent points (describing the desired state of affairs) and supporting arguments; (4) opposing evaluations of the desired situation and its negative alternatives; (5) recurrent and persistent realization of the aforementioned set of points or its fragments in the discourse, with identical of slightly modified argumentation; (6) multiple texts produced within a certain period of time (i.e. the period of a propagandistic campaign); and (7) a practical possibility for disseminating information among multiple people (addressees).

Strength of forensic text comparison evidence from stylometric features: a multivariate likelihood ratio-based analysis

An experiment in forensic text comparison (FTC) within the likelihood ratio (LR) framework is described, in which authorship attribution was modelled with word- and character-based stylometric features. Chatlog messages of 115 authors were selected from a chatlog archive containing real pieces of chatlog evidence used to prosecute paedophiles. Four different text lengths (500, 1000, 1500 or 2500 words) were used for modelling in order to investigate how system performance is influenced by sample size. Strength of authorship attribution evidence (or LR) is estimated with the Multivariate Kernel Density formula. Performance was primarily assessed with the log-likelihood ratio cost (Cllr), but assessments of other metrics, e.g. credible interval and equal error rate, are also given. Taking into account the small number of features used for modelling authorship attribution, results are promising. Even with a small sample size of 500 words, the system achieved a discrimination accuracy of c. 76% (Cllr = 0.68258). With a sample size of 2500 words, a discrimination accuracy of c. 94% (Cllr = 0.21707) was obtained. Larger sample size is beneficial to FTC, resulting in an improvement in discriminability, an increase in the magnitude of the consistent-with-fact LRs and a decrease in the magnitude of the contrary-to-fact LRs. It was found that ‘Average character number per word token’, ‘Punctuation character ratio’, and vocabulary richness features are robust features, which work well regardless of sample sizes. The results demonstrate the efficacy of the LR framework for analysing authorship attribution evidence.

Register variation in malicious forensic texts

The study reported here examines a corpus of 104 authentic malicious forensic texts for register variation. A malicious forensic text is defined in this paper as a text that is threatening, abusive or defaming and that constitutes evidence for a forensic case. This corpus was firstly tagged with a set of situational parameters and then analysed using the same multidimensional model introduced in Biber (1988; 1989). The results of the study indicate that malicious forensic texts, similarly to non-malicious professional letters, are on average instances of the Involved Persuasion text type, which is characterised by linguistic features overtly expressing modality. The results also confirm that threatening texts tend to use more modal verbs than non-threatening texts. Furthermore, the personal knowledge between interactants was found to highly influence the level of information density of the texts, while the narrativity level of malicious texts was found to be affected by whether the text contains harmful content directed to the addressee or to a third party. These findings can inform and improve the authorship analysis of malicious texts and increase our understanding of the creation of language crimes.

Effective Retrival of Data from E-mail Corpus for Digital Investigations

In digital investigations the textual evidence is very important. It has a vast majority during investigations. All this is due to a very great deal of stored digital data which is linguistic in nature (e.g. human languages, programming languages). Some of the most important text-based evidences are SMS, chat logs, emails, word processing documents, spreadsheets, address books, calendar appointments and system logs. Here, the one who investigates is flooded with data and he has to spend valuable investigation time, scanning through the noisy search results and going through irrelevant search results. The current digital forensic text string search tools use matching or indexing algorithms for searching digital evidences at a physical level to locate specific text strings. All these are designed in such a way that it achieves 100% query recall (i.e. it finds all instances relating to text strings). Here the nature of the data set is given, which leads to a highly extreme incidence of hits that are totally irrelevant to investigative objectives. There is a text string search tool that fails to group or order search hits in a manner that considerably improves the investigator's ability to get to the relevant hits first or at least in a quick manner. Thus, the text mining has been taken up as a new initiative for digital forensics. This type of text mining approach will enhance the IIR (Intelligent Information Retrieval) effectiveness of digital forensic text string searching. Henceforth, the technology for text mining can be scalable up to large datasets in Gigabytes or Terabytes. Here the software that has been developed consists of text analysis, data extraction, and Meta data correlation and visualization features and Information retrieval. The main aim of the system that was developed is to analyze the various transcripts like SMS, Email and word letters, event logs and chat transcripts. There are specific keywords that are searched by the system, which are weighted by the user in compliance with domain specific analysis. The correlated data are ranked by the system and hence is displayed by the system. For the investigators to analyze further this helps it by providing user graphs and charts about the ranked data.

Clustering digital forensic string search output

This research comparatively evaluates four competing clustering algorithms for thematically clustering digital forensic text string search output. It does so in a more realistic context, respecting data size and heterogeneity, than has been researched in the past. In this study, we used physical-level text string search output, consisting of over two million search hits found in nearly 50,000 allocated files and unallocated blocks. Holding the data set constant, we comparatively evaluated k-Means, Kohonen SOM, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) followed by k-Means, and LDA followed by SOM. This enables true cross-algorithm evaluation, whereas past studies evaluated singular algorithms using unique, non-reproducible datasets. Our research shows an LDA + k-Means using a linear, centroid-based user navigation procedure produces optimal results. The winning approach increased information retrieval effectiveness, from the baseline random walk absolute precision rate of 0.04, to an average precision rate of 0.67. We also explored a variety of algorithms for user navigation of search hit results, finding that the performance of k-means clustering can be greatly improved with a non-linear, non-centroid-based cluster and document navigation procedure, which has potential implications for digital forensic tools and use thereof, particularly given the popularity and speed of k-means clustering.

Forensic text books: how to publish and perish, all at the same time.

In a previous editorial in Forensic Science Medicine and Pathology the mechanics of publishing research papers were discussed from the stand point of the author and also the editor [1]. The focus was on common mistakes that are made by writers in crafting their research results into a paper, with advice on how best to ensure timely and appropriate publication. The editorial did not deal with issues of plagiarism or dishonest research, nor did it mention the very real hurdles that authors may face when dealing with publishers and their associated companies. Nowadays the speed of processing and publishing papers and texts has been greatly increased with the evolution of word processors into computers, and the use of rapid online uploads. A paper can be generated relatively quickly once the data are compiled and journal review times are generally decreasing. Text books however, may present a completely different range of problems, and are now usually managed by quite separate sections of publishing houses to journals. Texts, by their very nature, are much longer and more complex than individual papers. They require far more time for copyediting and checking for errors, and this is particularly so for edited works where there may be dozens and even hundreds of individual contributors. The following examples are taken from the author’s own experiences with publishing texts and are used to illustrate the type of situations that may arise once a text has been written and submitted to a publishing house, and the sometimes unusual responses/requests that are made. It is also hoped that the advice derived from these situations will be of use to aspiring text book writers. The names of the texts have not been used to anonymize the publishers. Loss of material: Always keep originals or very good copies of figures, tables and text. This is less of an issue if electronic versions are accepted by the publisher, however sometimes hard copies are still requested. A publisher contacted me regarding 26 images in a book chapter that had somehow been lost in production. It was suggested by the publisher that the best way to deal with this to avoid holding up the production schedule was to delete them from the text! Agree on the size and length of the text: Although it would be a reasonable expectation that once the proofs have been corrected and returned to the publisher, that the text should go to the printers, this may not be the case. A text that had reached this stage was the subject of an email from the publisher who noted that although the text was 660 pages long, that 1,000 pages would be preferred. The suggestion that a few more chapters could be added at this late stage was resisted. Electronic submission: This is clearly a desirable and necessary part of modern publishing, however, electronic submission for multi-authored texts is often fraught with problems. Submission software may be cumbersome and figure images may only be able to be viewed one at a time, and each may take many minutes to download. Contributors may have great difficulty in navigating these sites and it is interesting that major publishers often seem to be well aware of the lack of usability of competitor’s sites, but not their own. I have had one experience where a publisher R. W. Byard (&) Discipline of Anatomy and Pathology, Level 3 Medical School North Building, The University of Adelaide Medical School, Frome Road, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia e-mail: roger.byard@sa.gov.au

Establishing a Question Answering System for Forensic Texts

In the field of criminal proceedings a large quantity of textual material is frequently confiscated or secured by criminologists for evaluating and conserving of evidential information or fulfilling any judicial investigation mandate. The search for specific information or finding of correlations between virtually countless documents is currently a time-consuming handcrafted work. The difficulties remain in the identification of evidential documents and valid relations between entities on the one hand and the adherence to time limits and data privacy-protection on the other.In this work, an integrated computational solution developed by the authors for supporting the evaluation process of forensic texts using computer linguistic technologies is outlined. The application framework under construction is designed towards a QA- system and especially being able to solve a specific criminal issue, and visualize issue-centred case-relevant relationships. For this purpose, several state-of-the-art techniques in the fields of text categorization and information/event extraction are analysed with respect to their suitability for the peculiarities of the considered domain. Subsequently, several approaches for solving domain- specific problems are introduced. The results of this study will form the basis for constituent parts of the currently developed framework.