The NFL has a job posting online for a Director of Digital Forensic Investigations to add to its security arm. The posting is longish and contains typical job-posting gibberish—"including but not limited to: conducting or coordinating, supervising and managing detailed and complex investigations involving alleged impropriety or criminal conduct by League and Club personnel"—not unlike typical resumé gibberish. Essentially, the NFL wants a supervisor to run a digital media surveillance department.From the job functions section:•Conducts data recovery operations in order to extract artifacts of evidentiary value, to include both hardware and software based data restoration and the decryption of protected files.
•Recovers and examines data from computers and other electronic storage devices in support of internal investigations, potential criminal matters and e-discovery efforts.
•Examines data from computers and other electronic storage devices in support of internal investigations, potential criminal matters and e-discovery efforts.
•Provides detailed reporting, in verbal and written formats, in order to support investigators and key decision makers.Prospective candidates must have a bachelor's degree and a minimum of ten years "experience in law," whatever that means. Candidates must also have appropriate certification for "performing digital forensic examinations." You can't just watch Scorpion on CBS and expect to get this job. Probably not, anyway.It's a little unclear what kind of authority this position has with regard to the recovery and extraction operations, or even what "recovery operation in order to extract artifacts of evidentiary value" even means. I'm not familiar enough to know if there is any specificity to this terminology, but a fairly common sense reading of it could be just straight-up hacking. A more reasonable angle would be inspecting phones, computers, etc. for evidence of whatever wrongdoing is alleged.It's not at all curious that this listing comes on the heels of the DeflateGate scandal and the texting between Tom Brady, John Jastremski and Jim McNally that Ted Wells found so incriminating. However, it is just the tiniest bit curious because what if, like Brady, a player (or other "League and Club personnel" we're going to pretend will also be investigated) refuses to make available whatever electronic device the director deems necessary to the investigation? Does that hypothetical individual get tagged with obstruction or failure to cooperate, like Brady? Maybe that's when they move on to hacking? If the director says a particular electronic device is required, is that assertion appealable, and if so, to whom? Goodell?This is a natural outgrowth of NFL corporate authority; the league is very much its own company town with cops and even shady detectives running around exercising powers that the NFL bestowed upon them by virtue of being the NFL.h/t Aaron Nagler
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•Recovers and examines data from computers and other electronic storage devices in support of internal investigations, potential criminal matters and e-discovery efforts.
•Examines data from computers and other electronic storage devices in support of internal investigations, potential criminal matters and e-discovery efforts.
•Provides detailed reporting, in verbal and written formats, in order to support investigators and key decision makers.Prospective candidates must have a bachelor's degree and a minimum of ten years "experience in law," whatever that means. Candidates must also have appropriate certification for "performing digital forensic examinations." You can't just watch Scorpion on CBS and expect to get this job. Probably not, anyway.It's a little unclear what kind of authority this position has with regard to the recovery and extraction operations, or even what "recovery operation in order to extract artifacts of evidentiary value" even means. I'm not familiar enough to know if there is any specificity to this terminology, but a fairly common sense reading of it could be just straight-up hacking. A more reasonable angle would be inspecting phones, computers, etc. for evidence of whatever wrongdoing is alleged.It's not at all curious that this listing comes on the heels of the DeflateGate scandal and the texting between Tom Brady, John Jastremski and Jim McNally that Ted Wells found so incriminating. However, it is just the tiniest bit curious because what if, like Brady, a player (or other "League and Club personnel" we're going to pretend will also be investigated) refuses to make available whatever electronic device the director deems necessary to the investigation? Does that hypothetical individual get tagged with obstruction or failure to cooperate, like Brady? Maybe that's when they move on to hacking? If the director says a particular electronic device is required, is that assertion appealable, and if so, to whom? Goodell?This is a natural outgrowth of NFL corporate authority; the league is very much its own company town with cops and even shady detectives running around exercising powers that the NFL bestowed upon them by virtue of being the NFL.h/t Aaron Nagler