Digital Device Security & Forensics ...

Using Public Search Engines to Investigate Potential Terrorists
Perhaps you are a security contractor who is employed at an airport and observed some suspicious behavior from a traveler or group of travelers. He or she may be taking pictures with his or her cell phone and may even be counting paces from entrances or exits. Such behavior may be part of some pre-event surveillance where a loner or group are planning to place a bomb and calculating distances as well as passenger traffic flows.

Your standard operating procedures may be to place a call to a dispatcher, request assistance, and engage the subject in conversation. Another member of your private contractor team may arrive and ask for the person's name and home address. Since many new hand held devices such as the Blackberry Bold have Internet capability, you may use a search engine to look up the person in question and see where they live or if they belong to any social networking sites or blogs that discuss violence and terrorism.

There are many search engines available to the private individual or non law enforcement personnel. Most people know of Google but many people are not aware of sites such as http://pipl.com or www.freeality.com or http://find.person.superpages.com/ which are all excellent tools where one can collect open source materials and public records. This material often shows where a person lives, organizations they may belong to, and possibly blogs or social networking sites where they post statements and commune with like minded individuals. A private contractor many not have access to databases that are only available to sworn law enforcement personnel, so the public search engine may be a quick way to discover information.

The Freeality and superpages search engines previously mentioned also offer options for reverse lookups where a phone number or email may be typed in and the account holder discovered. A phone number that revealed someone such as Bin Laden's mom, Hamida al-Attas, should be investigated further. Many libraries offer free assistance and short classes where one can learn to use search engines and public records to obtain a variety of information.

By Dr. Eamon P. Doherty



Dr. Doherty Holding Simulated Tagged Evidence for a Training Exercise in the Cybercrime Training Lab.
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