It has now been over a decade since the Department of Justice published its report on Social Media and Tactical Considerations For Law Enforcement. At the time, this report was part of a series on emerging issues in policing, but that description is dated: Social media can no longer be considered a novelty within the world of law enforcement.
In mid-2013 (when the report was published), law enforcement agencies were still struggling to define how they would use social media, and on what terms. In the intervening years, many agencies have become adept at using these platforms to conduct outreach within the community and to control the narrative around their operations. Yet much of social media’s potential for investigations and intelligence-gathering remains untapped. Newer social media investigation tools, such as Spokeo for Business, can help unlock that potential.
The Challenges of Social Media Investigation
Users post a remarkable volume of information on their social media accounts. The majority of it is innocuous, but much can be incautious, revealing, or forthrightly self-incriminating; and even those innocuous posts can convey a great deal of useful information to the alert investigator’s eyes. The difficulty lies in bridging the gap between the investigator and a sea of raw social media data.
The challenges LEAs face in harnessing social media’s potential include:
- The sheer volume of overall information available (“noise”) relative to the pertinent information sought by investigators (“signal”).
- The number of social platforms, each with its own search tools and interface which must be mastered.
- The difficulty of tracing anonymous and pseudonymous accounts back to their owner.
- The difficulty of identifying a person of interest when the available information is incomplete, outdated or incorrect.
- The expenditure of time and labor required to manually search or monitor multiple social platforms on a regular basis.
- Cross-checking SOCINT against other sources for verification purposes, especially sources drawing on regulated data.
A further complication is the still-nebulous status of SOCMINT within the legal system. There is no overarching federal legislation governing or regulating the use of social media data in investigations, which means LEAs must continually monitor applicable legislation and court rulings within their individual jurisdictions to determine whether a given piece of social media-derived evidence will ultimately prove admissible.
Practical Tips for Real-World Social Media Investigations
Many of the difficulties inherent in making effective use of SOCMINT can be addressed through the use of emerging social media investigation tools like Spokeo for Law Enforcement. Just as stop-light cameras and license-plate readers have automated traffic policing and made it more efficient, social media tools can make the process of sourcing and analyzing social media data more efficient.
Let’s look at a half-dozen tips, strategies, or pragmatic efficiencies that such a tool can bring to investigations.
1. Obtaining Positive Identifications from Poor-Quality or Incomplete Information
Investigations often begin with poor-quality or incomplete information on their subject. This may include partial or misspelled names, nicknames, and online “handles” or pseudonyms. Legacy data providers are poorly suited to these applications, making social media an appealing alternative, but definitively connecting such imperfect information with specific social media profiles is a challenge.
Spokeo can make these difficult-to-establish connections between online personae and their real-life counterparts. Searching the usernames, nicknames, or partial names you have will in the vast majority of cases return a list of candidates and their real names. Investigators can quickly dismiss those from the wrong geographic area and then click through for a more detailed view of each potential subject.
Available details include prior addresses, probable family members, and any additional email addresses, phone numbers, or social media profiles associated with that person. A review of each individual’s social media presence can help establish which of the remaining candidates is likely to be the person of interest, at which point investigators will now be able to link those accounts and that partial name to a specific real-world individual.
2. Recognizing That “Social Media” is not Limited to the Major Platforms
The major social media platforms all have relatively well-established identities. According to Pew Research Facebook has more older users; Snapchat and TikTok users skew younger; and women are heavier users of Instagram and TikTok than men. Searching or monitoring accounts on those sites will frequently turn up useful information, but the world of social media goes well beyond the handful of major platforms.
Many of those are not necessarily platforms thought of as social media. The most-used platform in Pew’s research, for example, is not Facebook but YouTube. The video upload site offers both a chat function and comments on its videos, and its use for social interaction parallels its popularity in streaming. Pinterest plays a similar role among its users. Discord and Slack began by enabling chat between gamers and colleagues, respectively, but have evolved into more general social platforms. Even multiplayer games, dating apps, and special-interest forums can play this role.
At the time of writing Spokeo’s search draws data from 129 platforms, covering a wide spectrum of social media usage. Over time, as new platforms emerge and gain in importance, that number will continue to grow.
3. Streamlining the Social Media Search Process
Searching or surveilling the entire spectrum of social media is beyond the abilities of a single investigator, or even an investigative team. Every platform has its own search and reporting tools, and mastering them for even 10-12 sites takes time, skill, and experience.
To some extent, Google and other search engines can serve as a replacement for the respective platforms’ native search functions, by repeating a given search while specifying a different platform’s website each time (in Google’s case, by adding “site:[platform’s URL]” to searches). This provides a more consistent experience and allows investigators to build universal search skills, but doesn’t address the underlying issue that manual searches across multiple platforms are inherently inefficient.
A purpose-built social media search tool with a clean, consistent, intuitive user experience (UX) is a better option, and this is exactly what Spokeo for Business brings to the table. Spokeo was founded nearly two decades ago as a social media aggregator, and its deep roots in social media remain a strength. A single search on Spokeo for Business, which takes just seconds, consolidates data from across the full range of social media platforms into one easy-to-read report. Replicating those results through other means would be challenging at best, and may not always be possible.
4. Placing Your Person of Interest in Context
In the absence of detailed information about a suspect or person of interest, it can be difficult to establish their location, predict their actions, or understand their motivations. Those “soft intelligence” considerations often – and necessarily – take a back seat to finding evidence of a crime, especially in the initial stages of an investigation. They become a higher priority when attempting to locate and apprehend a suspect, as well as when trying to anticipate or forestall future criminal activity or attempted evasions of law enforcement scrutiny.
With the possible exception of a confidential informant who is close to the subject, social media is the best available source of information about the interests, associates, and activities of your investigation’s subject. This, in turn, can inform and direct investigators’ efforts.
Using Spokeo’s search tools to identify the subject’s social media accounts, then using those accounts to identify friends, family members, and associates, and finally returning to Spokeo for further detail on all of those associates, creates ample opportunity for investigators to learn about the person behind the person of interest. That information can be used in a number of ways, such as selecting a low-risk time and place for an arrest. It can also be exploited in negotiation situations, where an understanding of the subject’s frame of mind is crucial.
5. Using Social Media to Source Eyewitnesses and Video Evidence
When a crime, accident, or other incident takes place within the public view, eyewitness videos from bystanders quickly begin circulating on social media. Tracing those back to their source may or may not be simple, and the videos in wide circulation may not capture crucial details that would speed the investigation.
Spokeo for Business can help investigators in such situations. Searching the username of a given account on Spokeo can identify the person behind that account, and provide several options for making contact. Spokeo’s address search can also quickly provide the names and contact information for others living in the vicinity of the incident, who may have witnessed the event or recorded their own videos. (You can read about a few real-life examples of this in action in an article we produced in partnership with Police1.)
The speed of these searches, and the timeliness of the information they can yield, should not be overlooked. They may yield actionable intelligence such as imagery of suspects and their vehicles, for example, which can quickly be disseminated to the public or matched against existing law enforcement databases. Less formally, using Google’s “search by image” functionality, investigators may find newer images posted on social media by witnesses who have seen the fleeing suspects or may even locate social media profiles owned by the suspect. A quick additional Spokeo search can then provide their real-world identity.
6. Combining Regulated and SOCINT Data in a Single, Comprehensive Search Tool
Legacy database providers offer LEAs access to high-quality regulated data. Other tools provide excellent search and analytics tools that law enforcement can apply to the collection of open source intelligence generally, and SOCINT specifically. Ideally, investigators would use SOCINT to counter the shortcomings of regulated data, such as its relatively static nature, while using regulated data in turn to validate information garnered from social media.
In practice that is not necessarily straightforward. Each data vendor has its own proprietary user interface and search methodology, and while many of them provide tools that allow access to the underlying data through an Application Programming Interface (API), the IT resources necessary to establish and maintain that kind of inter-accessibility are not negligible.
In an ideal scenario, a single vendor would offer access to both regulated and open-source data in a single search, with a single consistent, intuitive UX for investigators to master. This is exactly what Spokeo for Business brings to the table, incorporating both types of data in its reports. Regulated data is clearly identified, so investigators know (and can document, for compliance and evidentiary purposes) the source of any given piece of information.
The Best Tool is One You’ll Use
Law enforcement agencies have many investigative tools at their disposal. The question is seldom one of tools being unavailable: it’s more likely they’ll fall short in usability; fail to offer the full functionality investigators need; or require budget-stressing contracts or IT support.
Spokeo for Business offers a compelling combination of usability, function, and ease of use, at subscription levels appropriate for LEAs of any size. To see the impact Spokeo for Business could make on your investigations, schedule a demo today through the contact form on our Law Enforcement page.
Disclaimer: This blog post is not intended as legal advice. Consult your legal and/or compliance department before making any changes to your operations.
For more than 30+ years, Stephen Henderson Jr. has worked and held senior positions for both Fortune 500, startup, and Business Process Outsourcers. Prior to becoming the Client Services Manager of Spokeo’s Law Enforcement & Government Division, Stephen Henderson, Jr. served as an exceptional intelligence and law enforcement officer for over two decades, including as full-time Dignitary Protection for the former US Ambassador to Spain as well as at the Fullerton Police Department and Orange County Sheriff’s Department. He honorably retired from public service in May 2018 with the rank of Reserve Lieutenant. Today, Henderson Jr. leverages this background to lead Spokeo’s efforts to accelerate new growth and provide real value to the businesses that rely on Spokeo’s data for mission-critical operations.
Sources
US Department of Justice, Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS): Social Media and Tactical Considerations For Law Enforcement
Pew Research Center: Social Media Fact Sheet
Google Search Help: Refining Google Searches
Google Search Help: Searching With an Image on Google