Thursday, December 14, 2017

How A Digital Forensic Investigator Finds Kids

By Stephanie Walker


It is not uncommon for children, and sometimes women, to disappear seemingly without a trace. It is always hoped that these kids are found and returned safely home. However, no matter the outcome, parents want to know where their missing loved ones are, and a digital forensic investigator may be able to track them if they carry any Internet-connected device.

The Global Positioning System, or GPS, is how these investigators are able to track people down. Even if a phone is disabled or turned off, with a Court-Order, the phone and its history can be obtained. If the parents or loved ones have location sharing turned on, then they have probably already been keeping tabs up to the point that the device is disabled.

Hackers in the late 1990s began showing police the potential for these technologies in missing persons cases. When they were able to get a hold of a device and bring up messages, even deleted ones, it helped the detectives create an accurate timeline. The results were so effective that there are entire groups in many larger police departments devoted to this task.

Smart criminals certainly picked up on how law enforcement could data mine a cellular phone. However, they did not wise up until after many missing persons cases were solved and the individual responsible was put behind bars for good. This was merely the beginning, however, and the techniques available to law enforcement have become as sophisticated as the technology itself.

These are the days when most anyone can be tracked to within a half mile of their location. All they need is to have their phone, Kindle, or other device on them and they are easily located in real time. For those who have an RFID chip inserted in their bodies (mostly only on pets), they can be found whether there is another device on them or not.

There is some loss of privacy when technology reaches such a point, and it is important to have laws in place that protect average citizens. Law enforcement in this country is required to obtain a Court Order before they can infringe in this way. In most circumstances, citizens are quite willing to have investigators obtain any data they can in order to find their missing loved one.

The grey area about such monitoring comes with couples monitoring one-another. Whether married or not, there is a great deal of disagreement on what constitutes an acceptable degree of prying, and when it becomes stalking. Naturally, the use of electronic spying between married couples has been regarded as basically acceptable, just as hiring private investigators has been in the past.

Women generally want to be able to keep tabs on their men, and are often more than willing to have their partner keeping tabs on them too. Men, on the other hand, are finding more and more ways to cheat on wives via the Internet. They are the loudest when it comes to the argument that adults should not be able to monitor one-another without being charged with stalking.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment