Quaternary privacy-levels preservation in computer forensics investigation process

Privacy preservation and computer forensics investigation are two contradictory information security directions. The privacy preservation principle stress on utmost protection of users privacy as privacy is a right, whereas computer forensics investigation attempts to unearth user data for possible digital evidences hidden within them. Although, a number of research efforts have been directed towards privacy preservation during forensics investigation process and consequently, forensics tools are in existence, most of them employ binary privacy levels, i.e., user privacy is either fully protected or not at all. In this paper, we introduce the concept of quaternary privacy levels and their protection mechanism in computer forensics investigation process. The privacy levels are identified on the basis of different entities and their participation roles during a computer forensics investigation process and represent different granule of privacy that can be enforced by the court of law depending on the nature of crime to be investigated. We also re-define the forensics investigation steps to regard different privacy levels for an investigation process.