Conventional stalking cases can be messy in their own way, but they still fit within the realm of traditional policing. There is a physical aspect to the crime, and it’s susceptible to physical, real-world investigation.
Cyberstalking is a much more complex problem for law enforcement agencies. Because the offense takes place through digital channels, conventional methods and standards of evidence offer little guidance to investigators. Social media intelligence (SOCMINT) and other open-source data streams can potentially fill that gap, provided investigators are armed with the tools needed to exploit its potential.
Defining Cyberstalking
In a 2023 report prepared for the federal Department of Justice, the Rand Corporation defined cyberstalking as “…the use of any form of technology to conduct acts of surveillance, make threats, express intent to injure or harass, or intimidate a victim to the point of them reasonably fearing for their safety or feeling significant emotional distress.” The forms of technology used can include, but are not restricted to, telephones, social media platforms, messaging apps, or email.
The federal statutes that most cyberstalking cases rely upon were not originally crafted in the digital era. Most are decades old and have been updated through amendments in an attempt to adapt existing laws to the new digital reality. As the report already cited points out, this can create complicated conditions for bringing a case to court: a single cyberstalking incident may require prosecutors to make cases under multiple statutes, each with its own burden of proof and evidence. States have their own cyberstalking legislation, varying in scope, which may also address related crimes such as cyberbullying and online harassment.
Accordingly, prosecutions for cyberstalking (while growing) are relatively rare. The Rand report identified only 412 federal cyberstalking between 2010 and 2020. For context, the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated the prevalence of cyberstalking in the millions of victims per year as of 2019, the most recent year for which this figure is available. While this does not account for prosecutions under state law, it is unquestionably low in relation to the crime’s prevalence.
The Difficulty of Investigating Cyberstalking
The low number of prosecutions is a reflection of the numerous difficulties inherent in prosecuting cyberstalking and online harassment. Those difficulties include the previously cited limitations of federal cyberstalking laws and the corresponding patchwork of disparate state laws.
A representative sampling of other complications include:
- Significant under-reporting of cyberstalking. Multiple factors account for this: victims may not realize that the messages they’re receiving rise to the level of criminality; they may fear retribution from their stalker; or they may simply feel that engaging with the legal system is unlikely to result in a successful resolution of their problem.
- The difficulty of tracing malicious electronic communications, which are often anonymized or pseudonymized, back to a specific individual.
- The ephemeral nature of digital communications. Victims may reflexively delete threatening messages to help minimize trauma, and on some platforms, perpetrators may have the ability to recall, delete, or edit incriminating messages. If a perpetrator deletes an account, that may also cause content associated with the account to disappear.
- The policies of online platforms which may skew toward individual privacy to the detriment of law enforcement.
- Questions of evidence quality and chain of custody, given that screen captures and other images are easily fabricated or altered. The recent arrival of functional generative AI tools, capable of creating convincing images, videos, and “cloned” voices, muddies those waters further.
- The uneven availability of specialized skills and tools needed for successful online investigations, especially among less-resourced LEAs and those outside of major population centers.
- The difficulties facing prosecutors in bringing such cases to trial, given the burden of proof required, may prevent otherwise-promising cases from ultimately resulting in charges and a conviction.
How SOCMINT Can Aid in Cyberstalking Investigations
The use of social media intelligence (SOCMINT) tools and similar open-source intelligence-gathering products can provide valuable assistance to LEAs undertaking cyberstalking investigations.
In this context, social media can be thought of not simply in terms of well-known apps like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, but more broadly as any platform providing a means of both group and private communications. Such an expanded definition encompasses less-obvious apps and sites such as private enthusiast forums, the comments sections of video sites, gamer-oriented chat platforms, and even dating apps.
Collectively, these platforms account for a large percentage of the potential venues for cyberstalking and therefore represent a significant area of inquiry for investigators. Powerful new software tools designed to offer data collection and/or analysis can be useful in such cases, especially when support from the LEA’s internal IT staff is unavailable or limited due to staffing or budget constraints.
Let’s look at a few specific use cases.
Uncovering Connections Between Accounts
Often the stalker is known to the victim, but the actual stalking and harassment is carried out through the use of so-called “sock puppet” accounts. These anonymous or pseudonymous accounts give cover to the stalker, providing plausible deniability and keeping these illicit activities at arm’s length from their legitimate online interactions.
Spokeo for Law Enforcement provides a tool to chip at this attempt at obfuscation. Investigators can use its intuitive interface to search usernames provided by the victim, possibly tying public social profiles with the username back to the phone or email address used to open the account. The search will also return the publicly available details of any other accounts connected to the same email or phone number. Making these connections can expose a pattern of stalking and abuse that might otherwise be obscured by the multiple accounts involved: tracing the actions of those sock puppet accounts back to a single point of origin establishes the presence of one malicious actor.
Exposing Lapses in the Stalker’s Operational Security
The phone or email associated with a stalker’s accounts can be useful in their own right, even if they lead to a “burner” phone. At a minimum, Spokeo’s search results can report which carrier the phone is linked to, and provide a rough geographic location associated with the phone line. Collecting any usernames, telephone numbers, and emails associated with the stalker and searching them all on Spokeo can tease out connections that would ordinarily be hidden.
If stalkers incautiously create a new account using one of their own devices, searching that email, username or number may bring investigators to the name of a real person. At this point, all of the pseudonymous accounts associated with the cyberstalking become evidence that can establish the presence of a concerted, continuing online assault on the victim. This is necessary to meet the requirements of federal and most state cyberstalking legislation and represents an important step toward a successful prosecution.
Connecting Cyberstalking to a Known or Suspected Individual
In some cases, the victim may know or suspect the identity of the cyberstalker, or someone with knowledge of the situation may provide investigators with a tip. In this instance, searching the potential perpetrator’s name and known phone numbers or email addresses can yield any additional numbers or emails associated with that person. Here again, any lapses in OpSec by the perpetrator can be detected by searching those numbers or emails in turn, in search of further previously unknown accounts.
The most fruitful of these are often the social media accounts linked to the person, phone number, or email. Some of these are the perpetrator’s public, daily-use accounts, which the perpetrator may deliberately avoid using for stalking behaviors. However, other accounts linked directly or indirectly back to the person of interest may prove to have been utilized for cyberstalking purposes. These connections are difficult to tease out without the use of a potent data search/analysis tool like Spokeo for Business.
Detecting Self-incriminating Activity on Social Accounts
Not all cyberstalkers are intelligent or technically inclined enough to practice good operational security. Some may in fact brag about their activities in trusted settings, counting on the obscurity of a given account or its pseudonymity to shield them from the attention of law enforcement.
This is arguably one of the deepest areas of strength that the Spokeo for Business product offers investigators. Spokeo searches 120+ individual platforms, many of them not typically considered to be “social media.” A self-incriminating boast on a chat platform or public form can become useful evidence, once Spokeo demonstrates a link between that pseudonymous account and your suspected perpetrator.
Even in scenarios where Spokeo’s search results don’t rise to the standard of verifiability required for in-court evidence, they may provide a basis for search warrants, geofencing warrants, or subpoenas to phone carriers or social platforms. Those, in turn, can yield the information needed to make a case.
Lowering the Technological Burden for Investigators
To this point, we have focused on specific uses of Spokeo for Business as a SOCMINT tool, but now it is appropriate to take a larger and more general view. Its greatest advantage lies not in its excellence in a singular aspect of investigations, but its capacity to place meaningful social media investigations within the reach of LEAs and individual investigators, regardless of their prior skill sets and the LEA’s own IT resources.
Conducting manual searches of even the top handful of social platforms requires a significant investment in investigators’ time. The investigators, in turn, must be familiar enough with each individual platform to master its search functions and unique peculiarities. Extending that level of grueling manual search to over 100 separate platforms is simply impractical, or requires a level of IT support that may not be manageable.
Spokeo for Business, on the other hand, provides both intuitive and easy-to-use search tools for the investigators themselves; and simple but powerful management tools for those supervising the investigations. Spokeo’s onboarding, training, and support are all excellent, but most investigators should find themselves able to use the product with minimal coaching. Freed from the necessity of learning multiple new skills in order to simply access the necessary information, investigators can focus on putting the pieces in place that will ultimately result in a successful prosecution.
Securing the SOCMINT Tool You Need
A final difficulty for LEAs seeking SOCMINT help in cyberstalking cases is that they come along irregularly, especially for smaller forces. This militates against any significant spending on software tools, which can be difficult to justify when other priorities are more urgent.
Here, Spokeo for Law Enforcement’s flexible subscription plans make perfect sense for LEAs of any size. Smaller forces can take out lightweight subscriptions suitable for limited use, while better-resourced departments with deeper IT budgets can opt for heftier plans and take advantage of advanced features like the product’s powerful application programming interface (API), which enable the easy transfer of data between Spokeo for Law Enforcement and your existing investigative tools and databases.
By empowering investigators to harness SOCMINT and other open data sources, Spokeo for Law Enforcement can also accelerate or streamline other forms of investigation, which are profiled ongoingly on this blog. For further details, to arrange a demonstration of the product, or to secure a no-cost trial of the product in your own department, reach out to our team through the contact information on our Law Enforcement page.
Sources
Rand Corporation: Cyberstalking: A Growing Problem for the US Legal System
Cyberbullying Research Center: Cyberstalking Laws
Bureau of Justice Statistics: Stalking Victimization, 2019
Is It a Crime? Cyberstalking Victims’ Reasons for Not Reporting to Law Enforcement; Erica R. Fissel; Soc. Sci. 2023, 12(12), 659; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12120659