History of the NTRCFL

In January of 2000, in the shadow of a very large computer seizure case, the Dallas Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas developed a strategy for overcoming the tremendous backlog of unexamined seized computers and digital evidence.

Taking lessons from their counterparts in San Diego, California, the concept of the Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory (RCFL) was taken to the next step in its evolution.

Local, state and federal agencies were invited to contribute personnel to the endeavor for an extended period of time. The FBI undertook the responsibility of training each new examiner and providing computer hardware and software to each new examiner. Since the inception, the field examiners have been certified and re-certified as CART (Computer Analysis Response Team) field examiners by the FBI Laboratory.

Currently, the RCFL and CART Programs are under the FBI’s Investigative Technology Division (ITD), Digital Evidence Section. All current certification is by the CART Unit. Other units in our section include the Cryptographic and Electronic Analysis Unit, Forensic Audio, Video and Imaging Analysis Unit and the Forensic Support Unit.

All examiners, regardless of agency, are members of the FBI’s CART Unit. Cases are assigned without regard to the examiner’s agency. In other words, an FBI field examiner may be assigned a local fraud case and a local officer may be assigned an international terrorism case. Each person assigned to the NTRCFL has the same security clearance, training and equipment.

In March of 2001, the NTRCFL was officially inaugurated with attendance by the U.S. Senators from Texas, Phil Gramm and Kay Bailey-Hutchison, then FBI Dallas Division SAC, Danny Defenbaugh and the acting US Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, Richard Stephens as well as other dignitaries from throughout the state and region.