Friday, November 24, 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 GPS system which provides us with directions to our local coffee house can also be used to find our missing kids. Smart parents keep location sharing turned on with their kids so they can see where they are at all times. This can not only save their lives in an emergency, but it helps keep the kids out of trouble, or at least informs the parents if their kids are not where they said they would be.

The potential of this technology to change the way law enforcement finds people became very clear in the late 1990s when former hackers were being utilized in missing persons cases. These hackers were able to take the phone of the missing individual, once found, and bring up messages or forum conversations, even if the owner had deleted the entire history of the device.

At that time GPS did not exist for the average individual, so finding the device was imperative to the investigation. In those days it was easier to delete historical data for good. However, most people were not yet aware of the fact that law enforcement was going after cellular telephones for the messages or other data they could provide, and this ignorance actually assisted them in many investigations.

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.

The downside to such technology is that a great deal of privacy is being eroded. However, in the United States, law enforcement must be able to obtain a court order in order to pry into such private data. Parents are regarded as having a right to monitor the whereabouts of their children via their devices, and the technology to do so has become more and more available.

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.




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