Taking Advantage of Digitally-Captured-Signature (DCS) Technology for Everyday Casework: The Example of the Handwriting Laboratory of Cyprus Police

Digitally-captured-signature (DCS) technology has already been deployed in large numbers in both the government and the civil industry, coupling or completely replacing the traditional pen-and-paper signature. The vast adoption of this new technology inevitably leads to the necessity of its forensic (and legal) approach to secure its role as a ‘signature’, i.e. as a means of determining authenticity, something which has led to the development of forensic examination methods for forensic handwriting experts (FHE) to deal with DCS. Apart from this approach, DCS technology can be utilized to collect samples to be used as comparison material in cases where the disputed writing is in paper form. This paper discusses the options available to the FHE and introduces the adoption and adaptation of this technology from the Cyprus Police Handwriting Examination Laboratory.