When the Cops Come A Knockin’Assisting Law Enforcement with

Social Media Investigations

JJ GoulbourneIT Manager – BLRL

Deputy Sheriff – Lawrence Co. Sheriff’s Office

• Social media is a valuable investigative tool when seeking evidence or information about individuals or cases including missing persons, wanted persons, gang participation and recruitment, and crimes perpetrated online such as cyberbullying or identity theft.

• A vast amount of information about criminal activities is available online through videos, photos, and text posted by criminals and witnesses. The most recent IACP social media survey found that 86.1% of agencies use social media for criminal investigations

• As an IT Manager or IT Professional in your Regional Library or School District, you may be called upon to assist law enforcement with their investigation.

Objectives

• During this course of instruction, attendees will:

• Be introduced to several, most popular social media networking sites

• Become familiar with numerous criminal acts perpetrated by individuals in the criminal community on some of these sites

• • Become familiar with numerous tools to aid an Investigation when assisting with a

criminal investigation where social media was used in your library or school

• Become familiar with the policy and procedures for requesting data from Facebook in support of a criminal investigation

• Discuss the need for written policy and guidelines for any Library or School

assisting LE with Social Media Investigations.

• Under no circumstances will any information concerning a User’s or Patron’s information or usage be released without a Court Order or Subpoena (Investigative or other).

• REFERENCES

• Missouri Electronic Data Protection, Amendment 9 (August 2014)

• There is one exception………………………

History of Social Media• Social Media first emerged almost 20 years ago:

• 1999 – “Friends Reunited” was on-line social network

• 2006 – Twitter launched; Facebook opens to the public; Google has more than 25 Billion pages

• 2009 – ¼ of the world population is on the Internet

• 2011 – 200 Million FB users; 65 Million Tweets each day; 2 Billion daily views on YouTube

• 2013 – 225 Million + users on LinkedIn; 500 Million+ users on Twitter; 1 Billion+ users on FB

•

• Social network services are increasingly being used in legal and criminal investigations. Information posted on sites such as MySpace, Orkut and Facebook has been used by police and university officials to prosecute users of said sites. In some situations, content posted on MySpace has been used in court to determine an appropriate sentence based on a defendant's attitude.

• The U.S. DOT National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has made federal grants available to States to train law enforcement officers to use social media sites to identify events that may result in impaired driving or consumption by minors.

• As of 2012, Michigan spent over $4.5 million through this program, and has trained over 100 local police officers to use social media sites to identify and target events.

• Yet, there are still some agencies that have not taken advantage of this opportunity.

• Too often, investigators and analysts overlook or underutilize this valuable resource. Social networking sites are virtual communities.

• As in any large community, criminal organizations, fraud, violent crime, and victimization exist.

• Investigators need to understand these communities along with the tools, tricks, and techniques to prevent, track, and solve crimes.

• Current trends include social networks based around live streaming video, like TinyChat and SnapChat, and mobile social networks like, Foursquare, Vibe, and Vine.

• Facial recognition and Internet caching now makes it possible to locate an online image posted years or decades before.

• The meshing of geolocation, metadata exploitation, social networking, and mobile devices allow investigative techniques not previously available.

• While there are over 1,000 social networking sites on the Internet, Facebook is by far the most populous, with over 1.23 billion profiles. It has a larger population as the US and UK combined, making it the third largest country by population.

• There are over 350 million images and 190 million status updates loaded on Facebook every day. In this session, we will cover topics including Facebook security and account settings, Facebook data retention and interaction with law enforcement.

• Recent additions and changes to Facebook, such as the Poke application for iOS devices, Graph Search, and Archive, make is more important than ever for investigators and analysts to fully understand this community.

Malicious Use of Social Networking Sites

• There are some individuals who utilize social media for malicious purposes. This includes criminal activity as well as impersonation which can confuse the public who are seeking reliable information from your organization.

• As more of our communication and connectivity moves to social media platforms, personal and agency information is increasingly available to individuals with malicious intent. This information is increasingly being sought by criminals who seek to access critical networks, shut down websites, and commit a range of cybercrimes that threaten local communities and national security.

• Cyberbullying is bullying through technology and is a key safety concern for children and youth using social media. Law enforcement officers are increasingly confronted with cyberbullying complaints due to the prevalence of technology.

• This is an incident that could occur in your Library or school!!

• Missouri Revised Statutes• Chapter 160

Schools--General Provisions 160.775.1

Violent Extremism

• Social media is being used by extremists to identify, groom, radicalize, and communicate with one another. Extremists also post and share pictures and videos, propaganda, and other information across the Internet.

• Is it possible that these individuals could use your Public Internet Computers to communicate with and plot attacks ??

• YES!!!

Mobile Technology

• More and more people are using mobile technology to send and receive information, interact through apps and social media, and access the Internet.

• These mobile technologies have implications for law enforcement and schools ranging from community relations to emergency response to investigations.

• Officers often communicate on the go with the community through social media platforms by using their mobile devices. Schools and libraries communicate with the public in the same manner.

• *** In most libraries, Kindles and IPads are available for Patrons

TOOLS TO AID AN INVESTIGATION

• Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is a form of intelligence collection that involves finding, selecting, and acquiring information from publicly available sources and then analyzing it to produce actionable intelligence.

• Now that the Internet is dominated by Online Social Media, OSINT is a critical component of both criminal and national security investigations. Too often, investigators and analysts overlook or underutilize this valuable resource.

• Harnessing the social web has become an integral part of work for any investigator. So much information is being shared with smartphones and social media that it’s absolutely impossible to ignore. And the amount of data is growing every day.

• While there is no “magic bullet” or “secret sauce” to conducting these social media investigations, there are some tools that can help with the process.

• Reverse Image Search:

• With Google’s reverse image search, you can scour the Internet for any instances in which a particular photo has been published. It will find the exact matching photo or any similar photo that has been posted on Facebook, Instagram, blogs or anywhere else on the Internet for that matter.

• It’s not perfect, but it’s an incredibly powerful tool if you are trying to find social profiles of individuals or websites in the deep dark web.

• How can this help you? Most people don’t bother changing the profile picture for the various social networks they use, often using the same exact photo and posting the exact same pictures.

• Facebook Graph Search:

• Facebook is the thousand-pound gorilla of social media sites. Luckily for investigators, Facebook has done a really poor job explaining their privacy policies in plain English, leaving heaps of information available to the public, unbeknownst to them.

• Last year, Facebook announced Facebook Graph Search, which is effectively a search engine within Facebook to help find information more easily. So, for example, if you need to find someone with the name Lucinda who lived near Canton, Ohio, you would type “People named ‘Lucinda’ who live near Canton, Ohio” in the Facebook search bar.

• Simple as that!!!

• To find someone, you can use a variety of search terms, such as:• Friends of people named “first.name last.name”• Photos of people named “first.name last.name”• People who have visited “place name”

• Bonus tip: Even if the person you are looking for has blocked himself or herself from public view, you may be able to find him or her through family members.

• SPOKEO ©

• • Spokeo has been around the block for a few years. Its main benefit is that it can

search 60 of the top social media sites to determine whether a particular email address or person is linked to a social media profile utilizing an email address. This is especially helpful when the person may be using some type of pseudonym.

• Spokeo doesn’t always work. In fact, it rarely does. But when it works, it can be an absolute gold mine.

• This may come as a surprise to you, but not everyone uses his or her real name on the Internet. People use an alter ego, so to speak. While the person you are searching for may go by Tom Jones in real life, he may go by MrLions100 on the Internet.

• It certainly makes it more difficult to track down these people, but one thing we have going for us is that people are creatures of habit. Once they’ve got a username, they usually stick with it. So if a person is known as MrLions100 on Instagram, there is a good chance that he is known as MrLions100 on many other sites as well.

• That’s where Knowem comes in. With Knowem, you can search over 500 popular social networks to see whether that particular name has been taken. If you get a hit with Knowem, you’ve now got a whole new rabbit hole to go down.

• Instagram Search:

• If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Instagram, with more than 20 billion photos, is worth 20 trillion words. With more than 200 million active users, Instagram is a phenomenal (and growing) source for investigators. The trouble is that Instagram was built as a mobile platform, and unlike Facebook, it doesn’t have a very good “desktop” version to search and review with.

• That’s where a tool such as Instagram for Chrome can harness the power of searching Instagram on your desktop.

• - Download Google Chrome• -Install the Instagram for Chrome Plugin

• Another great tool from Google…….

Google cache………..

• Everyone loves the magic bullet or the secret sauce. But you know what? It’s not always that easy. Sometimes you just need some good old-fashioned time and sweat.

• The social web is not structured in a way that lets you click a few buttons and have everything at your fingertips.

• If you really want to know what someone has been saying in his or her 42,301 tweets, you are going to have to read them.

• All of them!!!!!!

An automated tool that does it all for you…….

Join the Social Media Party

• The only way you are going to become a good social media Investigator is to join the party. Know how people interact, get attention, post, like/heart/retweet, friend, etc. If you don’t know how the individual social media sites work, it’s really hard to know what their capabilities are.

Caveats……

• Policy:

• The development of sound policy is integral to efficient agency operations. As with many new technologies and issues, the use of social media requires a well-articulated policy that addresses the unique concerns and functions as well as the use by employees.

• Privacy, Safety, & Security:

• Social media raises unique privacy, safety, and security issues that should be of paramount concern to any Organization. These concerns relate to employees and the community.

• Library and school personnel must be mindful of their actions and able to educate the community about these issues.

• Legal & Legislative:

• Social media is altering and expanding the way the courts look at issues such as First Amendment rights, records retention and public records laws, and other federal and state statutes.

• Case law dealing with these issues is emerging in state and federal courts nationwide.

In Closing………..• In Closing…….• There are hundreds of social media sites, each with its own intricacies.

And they are changing every day. There really is no magic bullet, but in order to have a better understanding of social media investigations, you really need to know how each of them works.

Available Free Trainingfor School & Library Employees

• http://nw3c.org/training/online-training/105

• Cyberbullying: Our Children, Our Problem

• National White Collar Crime Training Center

Questions………