Hi, I'm not really very knowledgeable about computers so forgive me if I use the wrong terminology!
A difficult story but with hopefully an easier question. Last year devices were seized from our home by the police following intelligence relating to alleged illegal activity. The devices were examined by a forensic police officer but they did not find what they were looking for. One of the devices had the free CC Cleaner installed on it.
However their report refers to the free CC Cleaner as 'sophisticated deletion software' and 'anti forensic software' The police are alleging material was there but deleted by the CC Cleaner up to and including the night before seizure.
Is it possible that a free, hugely popular software can hide things permanently from the police?
It simple deletes files with an added capability of securely overwriting those files. Something that has been around for literally decades.
It's a task users could also have done manually but CC just automates it so to speak.
As to 'anti-forensic software', it sure is. CC's main objective is to remove crap from the very locations where software, browsers, OS's etc keep 'history' records of things the user and PC does.
CC's end result is the removal of crap and the hiding of tracks.
I'm more alarmed as to why the police, forensically, couldn't retrieve any data.
CC (with secure overwriting of files) is good but nothing is perfect. Data, or traces of, can still be recovered with the proper amount of time, resources and motivation.
I don't think they are trying hard enough.
But the workings of CC would be my least concern if I had police knocking at my door, seizing hardware for evidence.
Honestly, we can't really give legal advice here. There are too many factors in play, including the jurisdiction where the alleged crimes occured.
In general recovery can occur on even the most sophisticatedly cleaned PC, depending on how much time, money and effort the law enforcement agency is willing to put into it.
At most, your lawyer/counselor could argue that ccleaner is a junk cleaning/space freeing software that could be on any number of the jurors'/judges' computers and is used, by its userbase, primarily for non-nefarious purposes.