Abstract
Mobile social services are an indispensable part of our daily lives. These services are also favored by criminals because it is difficult to retrieve communication data from them. In the past, communication data provided by telecommunication carriers usually indicated when, from where, and with whom the communication occurred. Presently, it is difficult for law enforcement agencies and public security departments to obtain information regarding mobile social services. For this reason, these departments have requested Internet access service providers to store data that can be used to identify the user of a mobile social service at any given time. However, many non-government and civil society organizations claim that these practices violate privacy rights; hence, they strongly oppose the retention of the subscribers’ data by the government. Currently, the European Union law does not allow “general and indiscriminate retention of traffic data and location data,” except for “targeted” use against “serious crimes.” Under this premise, ensuring the necessary data retention, while reducing the privacy violations and maintaining public security is a challenging task. In this study, a novel identification framework based on different types and action characteristics of mobile social services is proposed. Based on this framework, government agencies do not need to retain general and indiscriminate traffic data, but only data that aid in identification. Thus, this framework substantially reduces the volume of potential targets and improves the probability of correct target identification, ensuring a balance between privacy and public security.
Highlights
The development of high-speed mobile Internet access and powerful mobile devices has led to the rapid growth of overthe-top (OTT) services
IMessage and FaceTime [50], which are pre-installed in the iPhone, provide a similar service as the above Mobile social services (MSSs), and are tested with two identical iPhone 6 Plus cell phones in this study
This study investigated the potential of Internet connection record (ICR) in tracking MSS users in law enforcement and rescue fields through an ICR retention framework; by recording, analyzing, and comparing characteristic ICRs of MSSs, this study demonstrated that general and indiscriminate pre-retention of ICRs is potentially no longer necessary in the abovementioned fields
Summary
The development of high-speed mobile Internet access and powerful mobile devices has led to the rapid growth of overthe-top (OTT) services. Mobile social services (MSSs) [1], a type of OTT service with connectivity and data sharing patterns among users, are the most popular among these applications and communication services. Their main functions include instant messaging and voice call services. Facebook has more users than the population of China or India, two of the most populous countries in the world [3]. 100 billion messages are delivered and 3 billion minutes of voice and video calls are made from its applications and network per day [2]. Different MSSs are dominant in different countries [4]
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.