Question

Audio Forensic State potential weaknesses. Justify your assertion using 2–3 paragraphs per weakness?

Audio Forensic evaluate the risk associated with the technology you described. Evaluate the potential weaknesses you described?

This is my Bi-Weekly Assignment on Audio Forensic topic, need to write potential audio forensic weaknesses and risk?

Answer 1

Audio Forensics

Introduction: Audio forensics refers to the use of audio information by scientifically analyzing it in order to aid legal proceedings in a court of law or for other official purposes. The topic is seen often in movies and serials but there are still some apprehensions regarding its accuracy and trustworthiness.

Risks and Weaknesses:

• While DNA or fingerprints of a person never change, the voice of a person can change due to various reasons. The person can alter his voice willingly or it may also change due to age, stress, illness, or drugs.
• The quality of a voice recording depends on the equipment. Noise can be introduced in the recording due to echoes and reverberations, the limited bandwidth and even electrical network frequency of the power grid.
• There is considerable improvement in the technology for enhancement of these audio evidences. Enhancement includes finding the source of the noise and then isolating it from the recording to make cleaner. However, there is little that can be done to make the signal more intelligible and transcribe it.
• Many a times, these recordings contain ambient/surrounding sounds as well. Some parts of person's voice will always match the characteristics of the surrounding sounds making it impossible to remove the noise without altering the required human speech.
• Even when the recording is improved, the final results of the cleaning and enhancement are usually open to interpretation. Most often, the reports are studied by an expert who gives his comments. This introduces the probability of human errors.
• Many a times it is difficult to replicate the situations and create an exemplar recording due to the inherent possibility of gaps in the narratives of the involved parties. Such a scenario makes audio forensics redundant.
• Lack of experts is also an issue. The audio evidence firstly goes to the police (or any other person) who might deem it unfit to be used in the criminal proceeding after just a cursory hearing. Many such pieces might be discarded due to unavailability of experts who might comment on their usability.