Successful Use of Online Social Networking for Criminal Investigations

Basic Course

Law Enforcement Training Solutions

There are over 300 known social networking sites on the Internet.  Myspace.com has over 185 million users and Facebook.com adds 20,000 new users each day.  Too often, investigators overlook or underutilize this valuable resource.  Social networking sites are virtual communities.  As in any large community criminal organizations, fraud, violent crime, and victimization exist.  Investigators need to understand these communities along with the tools, tricks, and techniques to prevent, track, and solve crimes.

This one day (8 hour) course is designed for police officers, detectives, criminal analysts, probation officers, and parole officers.  Students with any level of familiarity with the Internet and computers, from beginning to advanced, will find this course beneficial.

The program gives students an up-to-date understanding of how social networking sites work and how members act and interact.  Students will learn what information is available on various sites and how to integrate that information into criminal investigations and criminal intelligence analysis.

By the end of the course, students will:

· Be familiar with the operation of the largest sites, to include: Myspace.com, Facebook.com, Xanga.com and LiveJournal.com.

· Understand how criminal organizations use online social networks to interact, identify victims, and conceal their identity.

· Receive extensive information on the two learning trends in online social networks - Multi User Environments and mobilization.  To include: understanding how immersive social networks, such as Second Life and Sony’s Home are exploited by criminals and how these sites can be used to gather criminal intelligence; and become acquainted with the latest mobile social networking technology and platform, including Bodgeball, Helio and AirG

· Know what information is available from social networking sites through the service of legal process, and how to make that service.

· Practice preserving the publicly viewable portions of a suspect Myspace.com profile or group in a forensically sound manner.

· Have a clear understanding how criminals exploit social communities through case studies and live online examples.

· Learn how to identify real-life intelligence targets by participating in the virtual world of social networking.

· Understand the methodology and pitfalls of virtual undercover operations.

Attendees receive course material, including legal process contact information, preservation letters, boilerplate compliance documents, and resource guides.

NOTICE: Course contains graphic content including profanity, and sexual and violent images.

Instructor: Lieutenant Chuck Cohen