I hope that the new Ohio investigators sent to Steubenville to investigate this case are familiar with these options. If the FBI is there, I'm sure they are.
Delete doesn’t mean delete. There are multiple ways and places to retrieve information, and I’m not convinced that the Ohio AG – up until last week – had the resources or know how to conduct this type of technical forensics. More time may be needed to do a thorough investigation.
1. When you delete something on a PC, it is still there. I won’t go into details.
2. There are electronic fingerprints and details left in numerous places – on firewalls, ISP providers, backups, etc. For the coaches or LE officials who some think might be working counter to this case, the “older” generation uses email, and there will be logs and such available from the ISP who provides the email server.
3. Facebook: a court order or legally admissible subpoena will open up the floodgates, with 3 or more months of messages, updates, “deleted” posts, “friends”, even people’s profiles you just looked at. For example:
http://masterpiratewarreport.tumblr.com/
4.
There are companies that store publicly available data from Facebook for 7 years! Social Intelligence is one company that is a pioneer in this area. They may also save Tweets!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/t...-becomes-a-new-job-hurdle.html?pagewanted=all
5. Have they looked at 2nd tier social sites like Tumblr?
6. Have they tried to restore deleted iPhone messages? Here is one example.
[video=youtube;7JC8KNxuTTA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JC8KNxuTTA[/video]
7. Have they checked and recovered home computers, which could have been used to back up and synch iTunes?
8. Have they done any iPhone Forensics?
iPhone Forensics & Data Recovery - Get Deleted Text Messages - YouTube
I hope that the FBI might be helping in some of these areas to nail some of the supporting jackals. (Not the kids who spoke up, or those who have been falsely accused.)