By Sean Broderick and John C. Ellis, Jr.

[Editor’s Note: Sean Broderick is the National Litigation Support Administrator.  He provides guidance and recommendations to federal courts, federal defender organization staff, and court appointed attorneys on electronic discovery and complex cases, particularly in the areas of evidence organization, document management and trial presentation. Sean is also the co-chair of the Joint Working Group on Electronic Technology in the Criminal Justice System (JETWG), a joint Department of Justice and Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts national working group which examines the use of electronic technology in the federal criminal justice system and suggested practices for the efficient and cost-effective management of post-indictment electronic discovery. 

John C. Ellis, Jr. is a National Coordinating Discovery Attorney for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Defender Services Office. In this capacity, he provides litigation support and e-discovery assistance on complex criminal cases to defense teams around the country. Before entering private practice, Mr. Ellis spent 13 years as a trial attorney and supervisory attorney with Federal Defenders of San Diego, Inc. He also serves as a digital forensic consultant and expert.]

Most federal criminal cases involve discovery that originally came from a cell phone. CJA panel attorneys and Federal Defenders have now become accustomed to receiving “reports” generated from Cellebrite.[1] In this blog post, we will talk about the valuable information that may be contained in those Cellebrite generated reports and what form of production you can get the reports in. Spoiler alert: we suggest you request that you receive those reports in Cellebrite Reader format and not just default to the PDF format that you know and love.

We are going to cover:

1. the basic concepts behind the forensic process that law enforcement uses when using Cellebrite UFED to extract information from a phone,
2. what is a Cellebrite generated mobile forensic report (which Cellebrite calls extraction reports), and
3. the pros and cons for the potential formats you can receive Cellebrite generated reports in.

Though there are a number of forensic tools that law enforcement may use to extract data from a phone, the most common is Cellebrite. We are going to discuss Cellebrite, but know there are others (e.g. Oxygen, Paraben, etc.). Many of the processes and principles that apply to Cellebrite will apply to other tools.