Smartphones help catch a terror suspect

4-24-2013 National:

Editor's note: Gary C. Kessler is an associate professor of homeland security at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, teaching cybersecurity and digital forensics, and president of Gary Kessler Associates, a mobile device forensics and cybersecurity practice, training and consulting company. Kessler is a member of the North Florida and Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces.

(CNN) -- The Boston Marathon bombing investigation made use of crowdsourcing to collect photos and video from cell phones and surveillance cameras at an unprecedented level. These pictures were made public a little more than 72 hours after the explosions and the second suspect was arrested 29 hours later.

Forensics is the use of scientific or technical information to answer questions in a court of law. Digital forensics is the branch that focuses on the identification, acquisition and analysis of information found on digital devices: computers, cell phones, digital cameras or any computer-based system.

The concept of law enforcement posting photos of wanted individuals in a public place and asking for assistance is hardly new; walk into any post office and you will still see the FBI Most Wanted poster. Why the post office? Because it used to be the social center of a town, a place where the government and the people regularly came together.

Fast forward to 2013 and we have thousands of people taking pictures and videos of what everyone expected to be an every day event. Law enforcement agencies were able to use these images to observe the comings and goings of hundreds of people at a certain site at a certain time in order to detect a pattern of behavior with which to identify the two suspects. And most of this imagery came from private citizens.

Personal computers have been around for nearly 30 years. The Internet has been commercially available for 20 years. Mobile phones have been pervasive for more than 10 years and smartphones, in particular, for more than five. Computers, networks and cell phones have increasingly become the record keeper, instrument or target of criminal activity over the last few decades.

Smartphones are everywhere and offer the equivalent of a portable Internet terminal. Not only do cell phones contain a phone book, call history and text messages, but also Web browser history, email, Global Positioning System and other location information. And surprisingly high-quality pictures and video.

All of this information will be of value to investigators. They will want to know who the suspects might have been communicating with in the immediate aftermath of the bombings and, again, in the aftermath of their pictures being posted in the media. The larger investigation will undoubtedly examine their text and email messages, social media postings, Web sites visited and calls made over the last few months and years. This digital forensic evidence will help piece together patterns of behavior that could provide insights into the suspects' thoughts and deeds, and even provide new leads.

What does this mean for privacy rights? Consider that when a municipality wants to put up a new camera at an intersection, or purchase a drone, there is often a public outcry. Is the camera an invasion of privacy? Where will it be looking? How will the government use the data? How long will the data be kept? Will it be used to track my movements? At some level, these are good and important questions because this kind of discourse is necessary to frame our Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.

Yet, in Boston, a lot of the images came not from public-sector cameras but from private-sector cameras: our fellow citizens. Fellow citizens who voluntarily shared their information so that law enforcement could do its job.

Were these people violating the rights of others by sharing their pictures? Well, no, considering that the Bill of Rights was intended to protect us against a tyrannical government rather than from each other. Indeed, it is not clear that the government could have compelled these citizens to turn over their pictures just in case they might be useful; imagine persuading a judge to sign a search warrant on such pure speculation. ...continued... by Gary Kessler

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