Document & Media Exploitation - more interesting than it sounds!

There's an article from Simson Garfinkel at the ACM Queue website here which I think many will find interesting (don't let the rather dull title put you off, it's a great read). It covers something called DOMEX which we're told is defined by the US Intelligence community as "the processing, translation, analysis, and dissemination of collected hard-copy documents and electronic media, which are under the U.S. government's physical control and are not publicly available". Essentially it's about the challenge of bringing relevant information or evidence to light in the face of various obstructions (large disk sizes, encryption, time constraints etc.) Simson calls for more work to be done with a view to improving or automating many of the processes currently carried out by forensic examiners and ends by discussing the wider implications of such improvements.

Oh, and there's another good article at the same website here about hard disk reliability. Both articles are well worth a read!