Using A Digital Forensic Investigator To Track Runaways

By Stephanie Walker


Worried parents will go to any lengths to find their missing children. Whether these kids are very young and presumed kidnapped, or if it is a teenager who may simply be off on a lark, there are modern tools available that help locate them. If the missing individual carries a phone or other device, they can be tracked by a digital forensic investigator.

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.

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.

As this technology becomes more and more available to average citizens, a debate has come up on where the line between acceptable monitoring and stalking exists. Parents are encouraged to keep tabs on their children and teens through electronic means. However, when and how couples should be allowed this type of monitoring remains a debated topic.

The argument about electronic spying runs right down the middle between women and men. Women are more eager to know where there partner is, and what they are doing both on and off the Internet. Women are also more willing to be monitored themselves while men seem to wish to keep a window of opportunity open for themselves to get away with infidelity and deceit.




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