Classification of electronic documents as objects of judicial technical-criminalistic examination of documents
The article deals with the classification of electronic documents as objects of technical and forensic documents used as evidence in the materials before the courts. Classification of electronic documents helps to use them as evidence to promote the collection, testing and handling of evidence in the investigation and prosecution of cases. Electronic documents fully apply to the generally accepted traditional division into direct and indirect, primary and derivatives, indictments and acquittals, personal and real, official and private, procedural, and not procedural. Since the object of technical and legal documents is forensic material document, for the classification of electronic documents as objects of judicial forensic technical documents the type of media is important: internal ( PC memory, servers, computer networks, electronic archives) and external (disks, flash memory cards, floppy disks, plastic, paper, tape). By the source of existence there are electronic documents created by the user and the computer system (i.e, electronic medium). By the content electronic documents can be files with text information, graphics, animation, background, or video images, as well as information specific machine codes and symbols. As for protection of electronic documents they are open and closed. By material media there are documents that exist in physical form of computer information (external memory devices: magnetic and optical discs, magnetic tapes and magnetic cards, flash memory, etc.), in the random access memory of an electronic computer, peripheral, computer and network hardware. The stages of production of documents, including electronic ones, are divided into the original, duplicate, copy, and extract. When exploring the electronic document as an object of technical and forensic study one should pay more attention to its external form, distinguishing between documents and manuscripts produced by technical means. The handwritten form of entering information in the computer is relatively new. But for the foreseeable future these documents may be subject to forensic investigation. When classifying electronic documents as objects of technical and forensic examination, one should pay attention to them as to documents in general, and as to specific objects of forensic investigations. Two types are identified: 1) materialized electronic documents, 2) electronic documents, which are stored in electronic devices. The conclusion is that the objects of technical and forensic documents are only the first group of electronic documents, that is, those which were transferred to the physical media: paper, cardboard and plastic.