For months now we have watched Nancy as she wheels out her increasingly unlikely panel of experts. To the best of my knowledge there are only two that even are remotely involved with the case, Bounty Hunter and large hat wearer Leonard Padilla, who seems to have contracted a bad case of leprosy with both the prosecutors and the defenders. Too many theories that don’t match reality. The second so called  expert is Lawrence Kobelinski, who supposedly is on the payroll of the defense team, though not even Jose Baez would likely be stupid enough to put him on the stand. Kobi would scuttle any kind of defense in 2 minutes, the prosecutors would show a few Nancy clips and Casey Anthony would be off to the Big House.

A friend of mine was sort of offered a seat at the Nancy table, he wisely declined. He could see nothing good from the exposure.

In my mind there are experts on every street corner in the Caylee Anthony case. For the past couple of weeks they have been featuring John Lucich, who they introduce as a computer forensics expert and author of Cyber Lies. Lucich spend a good deal of time working in law enforcement, I believe it was 17 years, he loved to tinker with ‘evedentiary’ computers, and as a result became a self taught expert. On leaving Law Enforcement he set himself up as an ‘expert’, the kind of guy that bragged he could extract information that had been hidden or deleted This is Computer Forensics 101, and can be practiced at home by double clicking on the Recycle Bin!

In 2007 he released his (very less than successful) book Cyber Lies. This could have been a truly useful book, everyone should have a basic understanding of what happens to information stored on their computer. Instead, this was an expose book, if you think your spouse is cheating on you, John will reveal the tricks to the trade to entrap them.

It was a hugely humorous read, for the most part I am a kind book reviewer, and opted to mostly gloss over the fact that the contents contained nothing more than you could learn taking a short course at your local community college about using Microsoft Windows. What bothered me though, was that he had selected such a narrow audience. What could have been written as a potentially (though I use that term loosely) useful book for parents concerned about their children’s use of the computer, instead was turned into an expose style with Lucich giving the reader what I am guessing he assumed were naughty tid bits from his clearly sordid little existence.

Against my better judgment I was persuaded to interview Lucich.  I saved the best for last:

I recently interviewed a author who had written a novel about terrorism in the US. I asked her if she was concerned that she might be producing a plan that terrorists might follow. Her response was that she had asked the FBI and Homeland Security, and no problems were foreseen. Your book, while strictly speaking is a cookbook for looking, could easily be adapted for changing the information. This could create a whole new set of problems. Any Comments?

I do not see that at all. There is no where in my book where I show people how to modify anything or how to thwart the forensic process.
Remember, if someone is fooling with the data they are breaking a law in civil and criminal courts (spoliation). Computer forensics will show that they are doing this and they now have additional charges against them.

Umm, did I hear that right? It’s my computer, but I can’t fool with it? Oh, and when you show people where something is on a computer, and go to great lengths to explain the significance of the data, you have just provided the ‘cook book’, the delete and edit buttons do work!

Some expert! hell I’ll stick with Jan, Sean, and Pickles as my experts when I do radio shows about Caylee Anthony. At least these people have a clue!

Nancy, do everyone a favor, get one of your flunkies to grab the Yellow Pages and find some people that actually have a clue!

Simon Barrett

http://zzsimonb.blogspot.com

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