French criminalist Edmond Locard is credited with establishing the “Exchange Principle”, which states in relevant part that a criminal offender necessarily leaves something at the crime scene, that if discovered will or can be used to identify him (Forensics). Nowhere is this both truer and less accurate than in the perpetration of crimes in a digital era. The increasing integration of technology into every facet of life and they myriad ways that people, both law abiding and criminally deviant, make use of technology has provided law enforcement authorities with a number of advantages, as well as more than a few obstacles in fighting crime. To be sure, the positive and negative of criminal investigations in a modern information society are based on both how people use technology and the way technology is built or administrated.
Law enforcement authorities are increasingly finding that social media provides as rich and useful source of information in criminal investigations. This benefit is based on the underlying fact that one of the essential aspects of modern information technology is its ability to allow people to connect and communicate with other. For example, more and more people are deciding to participate in some form of social media or become a member of at least one social network. Indeed, social media is the modern form of a family together, telephone call with a friend, and business meeting all in one. As a result of the intimacy between participants that social media can often engender, people, including criminals and potential criminals, are more than likely to say something publically on social media that would only say in private in person. Consequently, law enforcement authorities have begun analyzing social media for clues to help them solve crimes, identify potential criminal threats, and monitor known or ongoing criminal activity. Law enforcement can use social media to help solve crimes in two ways, namely, social network analysis (SNA) and as a communications platform (Fatih and Bekir). SNA refers to the examination of a person’s social media participation by law enforcement authorities for any information that might be useful in a criminal investigation. For instance, the people that a suspect has “friended” or “follows” on social network might be useful in determining accomplices, codefendants, or witnesses to a crime. Similarly, what a person posts on a social media website such as a comment about a criminal act or even a picture of an object or location, may provide vital evidence in a criminal case. Criminals and offenders, as mentioned, are as susceptible as anyone to post content on social media that they would not say or show, or even have the ability to express, such as a GPS tag in a photo, in person. Secondly, the simple fact that social media is a medium of communication provides law enforcement authorities with another avenue of obtaining information voluntarily provided by the public. For instance, as more and more police and law enforcement agencies establish their own social media presence, the public has increasing made use of their social media accessible to provide tips on crimes, send evidence, and inform authorities of crimes in progress. It is not out of the realm of possibility that one day, the primary way that authorities will be alerted to a crime is via social media. Still, how people use technology does not provide all the answers in every case.
The architecture of information technology makes it almost natural that an offender will leave some sort of material that can be traced back to him; the challenges for law enforcement authorities in finding these materials, however, is digital evidence’s volatility and quantity (Garfinkel). Nowadays, using information technology almost invariably requires some form of login information such as a password or other credentials. Similarly, every device whether it is a computer, smartphone or tablet has an address that it must show when it accesses a network such as the internet. Accordingly, it would seem that the computer that is used to commit a crime can easily be traced back to its physical location, and that once the computer is located, the person that used the computer can be identified. The reality is that it is not so simple. Even in the event that the computer was located. The information on it might be a problem. This is so because unlike other forms of evidence, digital evidence cannot be easily reproduced for use in an investigation or a court. First, digital evidence is extremely volatile. In other words, while digital evidence is highly accurate in the information it provides, it can easily be changed, altered or destroyed so that the information that it reveals is untrustworthy, useless, or unreadable. This can occur as a knowing action by an offender, such as destroying the computer; or it can be as a result of the improper handling by a law enforcement officer. Second, as computers become more powerful the amounts of information that they can store and process has also increased and continues to increase almost daily. This presents law enforcement authorities with obstacles of understanding where to search and how long it will take to find relevant information. Moreover, if the target information is located in a database or “the cloud”, while it might have been observed on a computer, its actual location may be “anywhere on the planet” (Garfinkel). Naturally, law enforcement authorities’ ability to find, access, and examine such evidence will be limited, especially, for instance, if the database is located abroad. Sometimes, however, the architecture of technology is useful in the “brick-and-mortar” world.
Technology has also increased law enforcement authorities to solve traditional, not-tech crimes like murder. According to Locard, since an offender always leaves something behind, the key to any successful criminal investigation is finding exactly what the offender left behind and properly analyzing it to produce actionable intelligence. Criminal and offenders, naturally, understand this principle and often go to great lengths to hide or minimize whatever traces that necessarily leave behind, or at least, frustrate the abilities of authorities to understand what they may find. Consequently, authorities have begun applying advanced technologies to assist in finding and analyzing physical evidence such as bodies (Osborne). At the Anthropological Research Center at the University of Tennessee, for example, researchers are studying the way a body decomposes in order to help law enforcement authorities determine the likely time of death of a discovered body (Osborne). Similarly, with biometrics, authorities can examine two hairs found on bones buried for years to determine who the victim was as well as the identity of the likely offender (Fatih and Bekir).
Technology is now an essential element of modern life. Not only has help global society achieve advances once only dreamed of but it has also allowed criminals and offenders to expand their activities and perpetrate harms at a scope never experienced before. One of the places where this is illustrated is in criminal investigations. On the one hand, authorities have been able to manipulate technology such as through social network analysis and biometrics to solves crimes that they may not have been able to before. On the other hand, the way that technology uses information, offenders have an easier time of corrupting evidence or avoiding detection by, in essence, hiding the needle in a world full of haystacks.
Introduction
Criminal investigations in digital age are both proof of and evidence against Locard’s “Exchange Principle”
Social Media facilitates criminal investigations
Social Network Analysis
Social Media as a medium of communications
The Architecture of Technology hampers criminal investigations
Digital evidence can be
Volatile
Significant
Technology facilitates the resolutions of traditional crimes
Anthropological Research Center
Biometrics
Conclusion
Works Cited
Fatih, Tombul and Cakar Bekir. “Police use of technology to fight against crime.” European Scientific Journal 11.10 (2015): 286-296.
“Forensics.” Criminal Justice. Ed. Phyllis B. Gerstenfeld. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2005. Print.
Garfinkel, Simson L. “Digital forensics: Modern crime often leaves an electronic trail. Finding and preserving that evidence requires care methods as well as technical skill.” American Scientist 101.5 (2013): 370.
Osborne, Mike. “Research on decomposing bodies provides important data for forensics.” Forensic technology, 2011. Web. http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?failOverType=&query=&prodId=OVIC&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&display-query=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Viewpoints&limiter=&currPage=&commentary=&disableHighlighting=false&displayGroups=&sortBy=&search_within_results=&p=OVIC%3AGIC&action=e&catId=&activityType=&scanId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010708234&source=Bookmark&u=burn46801&jsid=3c91d6fb95a800deddeaea5140179475
