Law Enforcement Investigations Research Articles

Evidence in the Age of Privacy: Access to Data in the Criminal Justice System

This Article introduces the phenomenon of “privacy asymmetries,” which are privacy statutes that permit courts to order disclosures of sensitive information when requested by law enforcement, but not when requested by criminal defense counsel. In the United States adversarial criminal legal system, defense counsel are the sole actors tasked with investigating evidence of innocence. Law enforcement has no constitutional, statutory, or formal ethical duty to seek out evidence of innocence. Therefore, selectively suppressing defense investigations means selectively suppressing evidence of innocence. Privacy asymmetries form a recurring, albeit previously unrecognized, pattern in privacy statutes. They likely arise from legislative oversight and not reasoned deliberation. Worse, they risk unnecessary harms to criminal defendants, as well as to the truth-seeking process of the judiciary, by advantaging the search for evidence of guilt over that for evidence of innocence. The number of these harms will only increase in the digital economy as private companies collect immense quantities of data about our heart beats, movements, communications, consumption, and more. Much of that data will be relevant to criminal investigations, and available to the accused solely through the very defense subpoenas that privacy asymmetries block. Moreover, the introduction of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools into the criminal justice system will exacerbate the consequences of law enforcement’s and defense counsel’s disparate access to data. To avoid enacting privacy asymmetries by sheer accident, legislators drafting privacy statutes should include a default symmetrical savings provision for law enforcement and defense investigators alike.

Privacy in Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing.

Over the past decade, direct-to-consumer (DTC)6 genetic testing has grown from an intellectual curiosity to a mainstream technology. In 2018, the total number of US customers for DTC genetic testing has been predicted to exceed 20 million. There are many benefits to DTC genetic testing, including increased accessibility of testing at rapidly decreasing costs. A new powerful use of DTC genetic testing data is the identification and surveillance of persons of interest. In 2018, a suspect in the Golden State Killer murder cases was identified by use of DTC genetic testing information, 30 years after the last known crime was committed. Since the break in the Golden State Killer cases, >100 law enforcement investigations are now underway using DTC genetic data. Individuals providing DTC genetic data may not be aware their data are being used for law enforcement activity to identify links with distant relatives. There are currently minimal regulations and ethical standards to guide the appropriate use of consumer genetic databases by law enforcement. How have you been involved in DNA testing, privacy, and/or the use of DNA in law enforcement? Michael T. Risher: I have been litigating challenges to laws that require people arrested on suspicion of a felony to provide DNA samples for inclusion in the government's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database since 2009, first as a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and now in private practice. I have written and testified before Congress about the privacy and racial-justice implications of the increasing use of criminal DNA databanks and familial searching. Timothy Caulfield: Our team at the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta has been looking at these issues for decades. This has included work on social issues associated with DTC genetic testing, the collection of samples …

Healthy Data Protection

Healthy Data Protection

3 Cases of Inflicted Skull Crush Injuries in Infants.

We describe 3 infants with skull fractures that involved more than 1 skull bone. On further evaluation, 2 of the 3 infants had additional fractures at other sites of the body and the third infant had concerning bruising of the face. Although an accidental mechanism of injury was initially given as the history in each case, law enforcement investigations led all 3 fathers to confess to crushing their infants' skulls out of frustration. These crushes were caused by their arms or hands. Bilateral skull fractures or those involving more than 1 skull bone can be seen in falls as well as in crush injuries. A crush-like pattern of injury, in the absence of a clear and plausible accidental mechanism, should raise concerns for possible physical abuse especially in nonambulatory infants.

Exploring drug-related crimes with social network analysis

In recent years, drug abuse and drug addiction have become a major burden to the society. In order to achieve the public expectation for drug crime prevention, law enforcement agencies devote considerable resources hoping to strengthen the intensity of interventions. However, with the rapid changes in social patterns, the drug criminals also look for ways to avoid law enforcement investigations by producing, transporting and selling drugs through different regions, making drug prevention more difficult. Thus, developing dominant strategies to deal with this issue is a main task for police agencies. For more effectively analyze the structural influences of drug crime, we utilize social network analysis (SNA) techniques to discover implications of drug related crime networks. The macro-level perspective of co-offender network indicates that criminals intend to set blocks between network members to prevent law enforcement interventions. The micro-level perspective of individuals provides significant social features to predict drug recidivism. The experimental results indicate superior performance when adopting both personal and social features in classification task. Applying SNA to recidivism prediction is a leading endeavor, and the approach presented in this paper offers remarkable improvement on traditional methods. The results of this paper reveals the advantages of structural implications in analyzing drug related crime, as well as its ability to facilitate the cognition of crime prevention and intervention strategies.

Transborder Access to e-Evidence by Law Enforcement Agencies

As communication nowadays commonly takes place via electronic means, the use of electronic evidence (e-evidence) is becoming a crucial element in criminal investigations. Due to the borderless nature of the internet, many criminal investigations include a cross-border dimension and therefore, commonly require access to electronic data and evidence that are stored outside the territorial jurisdiction of the investigating authority. Since data are typically held by private companies that are often located in a different country than the investigator, law enforcement authorities (LEAs) are either dependent on the willingness of these service providers to cooperate on a voluntary basis, or to resort to existing legal procedures for obtaining the data for investigations. The relevant procedures under the current framework to access data stored outside the European Union is based on so-called Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs), whereas judicial cooperation within the EU is, inter alia, governed by the Directive on the European Investigation Order in the form of the national transposition acts of the Member States. Because e-evidence is, due to its volatile nature, prone to modification and deletion, the timely acquisition of stored data is vital for LEAs. Therefore, informal cooperation between LEAs and private companies is a common method to obtain e-evidence, thereby bypassing the lengthy and often ineffective Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) mechanisms. Such direct cooperation between law enforcement and private companies, which is commonly carried out on a unilateral basis, has led to a fragmented framework for the acquisition of data. Against this background, the European Commission, on 17 April 2018, proposed new rules on access to e-evidence, to secure and obtain preserved data faster and more effectively and to ensure that all providers that offer services in the EU are subject to the same obligations. Similar developments regarding the adoption of comparable legislative acts and instruments regarding direct law enforcement access to data stored by private companies take place elsewhere in Europe and beyond: The Council of Europe is currently preparing a 2nd Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention on enhanced international cooperation, whereas in the U.S., the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act on rules for cross-border law enforcement investigations was enacted in March 2018. This contribution will address concerns regarding the role of private companies as ‘extended arm’ of LEAs and the measures that seek to cope with the legal uncertainty and fragmentation that emerged with the informal public-private relationships around the acquisition of e-evidence. The article suggests that the initiatives on different levels might result in even more conflicts of laws than is currently the case, if lacking a coordinated and coherent approach in Europe and internationally. Moreover, the article discusses the impact of the abovementioned developments with regard to EU data protection standards. The compliance of the new rules on access to e-evidence with the EU data protection acquis, namely the GDPR and Directive (EU)2016/680, will be one of the relevant matters covered in this article.

The quantitative study of serial murder: Regression is not transgression

Abstract In Too Few Victims: Finding the Optimal Minimum Victim Threshold for Defining Serial Murder, we empirically examined how victim count influences the definition of serial homicide. With a series of multinomial logistic regressions, we determined that a cutoff of three victims was optimal to ensure a more homogeneous population, and recommended a return to this traditional threshold (Fridel & Fox, 2018). In response, Yaksic (2018) published a scathing review of our work, claiming that our study was “transgressing” against serial homicide research and actively hampering law enforcement investigations. In addition to defending our original study, we reject his suggestion to rely solely on the qualitative methods of the past and firmly advocate for the modernization of serial homicide research through rigorous quantitative analysis.

The black sheep of forensic science: military forensic and technical exploitation

ABSTRACTThe Improvised Explosive Device (IED) threat faced by coalition partners in Iraq and Afghanistan required concepts of operations to identify threat actors, network analysis to attack the network, and counter-IED strategies to defeat the devices. Forensic science was employed beyond its traditional law enforcement investigation and criminal justice objectives, and provided a capability for military organizations to help to counter IEDs. Forensic science in support of the expeditionary force on the battlefield is referred to as expeditionary forensic science, which is not well understood outside of the military domain. Military forensic science could be considered the black sheep of the forensic family as it is often left out or not considered alongside traditional forensic science. The purpose of this paper and plenary address, presented at the Australian and New Zealand Forensic Science Society (ANZFSS) 24th International Symposium, is to provide the broader forensic science community with a better understanding of military expeditionary forensic science. The aim is to promote greater partnerships between law enforcement, intelligence, the criminal justice system, and military forensic science as part of the broader forensic science ‘system of systems’.Abbreviation: System of systems (SOS); improvised explosive devices (IED)

Investigation of Efficiency in a Law Enforcement Organization

A mixed-methods study was conducted to discover means of improving the efficiency of a law enforcement investigations subunit during a time of staff shortages and budgetary constraints. The researc...

Sex Determination of 3D Skull Based on a Novel Unsupervised Learning Method.

In law enforcement investigation cases, sex determination from skull morphology is one of the important steps in establishing the identity of an individual from unidentified human skeleton. To our knowledge, existing studies of sex determination of the skull mostly utilize supervised learning methods to analyze and classify data and can have limitations when applied to actual cases with the absence of category labels in the skull samples or a large difference in the number of male and female samples of the skull. This paper proposes a novel approach which is based on an unsupervised classification technique in performing sex determination of the skull of Han Chinese ethnic group. The 78 landmarks on the outer surface of 3D skull models from computed tomography scans are marked, and a skull dataset of a total of 40 interlandmark measurements is constructed. A stable and efficient unsupervised algorithm which we abbreviated as MKDSIF-FCM is proposed to address the classification problem for the skull dataset. The experimental results of the adult skull suggest that the proposed MKDSIF-FCM algorithm warrants fairly high sex determination accuracy for females and males, which is 98.0% and 93.02%, respectively, and is superior to all the classification methods we attempted. As a result of its fairly high accuracy, extremely good stability, and the advantage of unsupervised learning, the proposed method is potentially applicable for forensic investigations and archaeological studies.

An Evidence-based Forensic Taxonomy of Windows Phone Dating Apps.

Advances in technologies including development of smartphone features have contributed to the growth of mobile applications, including dating apps. However, online dating services can be misused. To support law enforcement investigations, a forensic taxonomy that provides a systematic classification of forensic artifacts from Windows Phone 8 (WP8) dating apps is presented in this study. The taxonomy has three categories, namely: Apps Categories, Artifacts Categories, and Data Partition Categories. This taxonomy is built based on the findings from a case study of 28 mobile dating apps, using mobile forensic tools. The dating app taxonomy can be used to inform future studies of dating and related apps, such as those from Android and iOS platforms.

The forensic intelligence continuum in the military context

Law enforcement forensic intelligence is the accurate, timely and useful product of logically processing forensic case data for investigation and/or intelligence purposes and is, to some extent, an emerging discipline. In the military domain, intelligence has a long history and military organizations have forensic science capabilities. However, to date, military organizations have not formally implemented forensic intelligence models. Forensic science is an end-to-end process and forensic intelligence spans the continuum between forensic science informing law enforcement investigations or military intelligence through to prosecution in the criminal justice system. Hence, forensic intelligence can be consistent with military objectives and could be a valuable model for military organizations in the long-term. The purpose of this article is to review law enforcement forensic intelligence models and explore requirements for military forensic intelligence models. To achieve operational utility, a military forensic intelligence model needs to enable the provision of timely forensic intelligence to be fused with all-source intelligence. The right methodologies will preserve the forensic science rigor, which will balance the forensic intelligence needs with the criminal justice system standards. A principle-based approach to the development of a military forensic intelligence model can provide a flexible and adaptive model across the spectrum of military conflicts.

A Location-Based Test for Jurisdiction over Data: The Consequences for Global Online Privacy

U.S. technology companies face growing uncertainty over whether and how they can be compelled to turn foreign-stored user content over to law enforcement officials. In July 2016, the Second Circuit ruled that the government could not require Microsoft to produce user content stored on its server in Ireland because the execution of the government’s warrant constituted an impermissible extraterritorial application of the Stored Communications Act (SCA). But after the Second Circuit declined to rehear Microsoft Corp. v. United States, (formally titled In the Matter of a Warrant to Search a Certain E-Mail Account Controlled and Maintained by Microsoft Corporation, also known as the “Microsoft Ireland” case) en banc in January 2017, the Supreme Court granted the DOJ’s petition for certiorari and heard oral argument on the case in February 2018. Throughout this litigation, other courts have issued orders compelling Google to produce foreign-stored data requested by SCA warrants. Two fundamental questions have divided these courts: (1) whether the physical location of the data at the time it is accessed should determine whether it is within the reach of the SCA, and (2) whether other countries’ data privacy laws and search-and-seizure protections apply. This Article argues that basing government jurisdiction over data on the data’s physical location threatens user privacy. It also creates unworkable and unpredictable results for technology companies by failing to account for the significant differences in how they divide, store and transmit their users’ data around the world. In the context of digital searches, the data location test has two potential effects. First, it will create bottlenecks in the already-burdensome mutual legal assistance system, hindering intergovernmental cooperation on law enforcement investigations. Second, it may embolden foreign governments to circumvent the system by adopting similar, or even more extreme, positions on jurisdiction over data, such as data localization and mandatory encryption backdoor laws. These policies have dangerous consequences for privacy, free expression, and innovation around the world. While some have written about the data location test in Microsoft Ireland in the abstract, this Article takes a step further and considers its role in the rulings conflicting with Microsoft Ireland that have been issued by federal judges over the past two years. It also evaluates several recent legislative and non-legislative proposals to solve the problems arising from the data location test. In particular, this Article highlights the pressing need for Congress to reform the Stored Communications Act, incorporating an alternative test for jurisdiction over user data and provisions that would clarify companies’ data disclosure obligations under conflicting legal regimes. Finally, while much of the literature on this topic focuses solely on legislative proposals rather than the real-world impact of the uncertainty creating a need for statutory reform, this Article focuses on what companies should do while they await a resolution from Congress or the Supreme Court. To that end, this Article offers some practical recommendations for how companies can navigate the issues arising from the data location test, particularly as they make decisions about their global operations and data storage architecture.

Access Denied: Colorado Law Enforcement Refuses Public Access to Records of Police Misconduct

Despite the Colorado state law permitting discretionary release of law enforcement investigation files of alleged police misconduct under the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act (CCJRA), most jurisdictions routinely deny public records requests for such files. Although the Colorado Supreme Court has mandated that law enforcement records custodians perform a balancing test on a case-by-case basis to decide whether to release these files, custodians generally deny all requests for files irrespective of the nature of alleged misconduct or the outcome of the investigation. This report details the independent research study conducted as a student-faculty collaboration at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law to assess the willingness of law enforcement agencies to release internal affairs files. The study includes two “waves” of requests. The first wave of the study sought logs of internal affairs files during the 2015 and 2016 calendar years from various law enforcement agencies across Colorado. The second wave sought specific internal affairs files from those agencies that provided a sufficient list or log during the first wave of requests, as well as requests for a few additional targeted files of particular public interest. The researchers were ultimately unable to obtain a single complete internal affairs file from any jurisdiction included in the study. The vast majority of agencies denied outright the request or failed to respond. Furthermore, the two isolated jurisdictions that offered to process the request assessed cost-prohibitive fees for processing. Despite state open records laws explicitly intended to promote public transparency and accountability among government actors, this study illustrates that Coloradans remain largely in the dark with regard to allegations and investigations of police misconduct. Indeed, most law enforcement agencies are categorically unwilling to allow public access to internal affairs files. To achieve the intent behind state open records law, the Colorado General Assembly should amend the CCJRA to require public release upon request of completed internal affairs investigations, a policy in line with at least a dozen other states.

Artificial Intelligence in the Context of Crime and Criminal Justice

This exploratory report offers an overview of the role AI is bound to play in criminal justice, relying on a broad range of examples gathered from around the world. It adopts a sequential approach that reflects how a crime unfolds, from its commission by offenders to its detection by law enforcement investigators, then its judgement by criminal courts, and finally the enforcement of a sentence by correctional services.

Phylogenetic inference of Coxiella burnetii by 16S rRNA gene sequencing.

Coxiella burnetii is a human pathogen that causes the serious zoonotic disease Q fever. It is ubiquitous in the environment and due to its wide host range, long-range dispersal potential and classification as a bioterrorism agent, this microorganism is considered an HHS Select Agent. In the event of an outbreak or intentional release, laboratory strain typing methods can contribute to epidemiological investigations, law enforcement investigation and the public health response by providing critical information about the relatedness between C. burnetii isolates collected from different sources. Laboratory cultivation of C. burnetii is both time-consuming and challenging. Availability of strain collections is often limited and while several strain typing methods have been described over the years, a true gold-standard method is still elusive. Building upon epidemiological knowledge from limited, historical strain collections and typing data is essential to more accurately infer C. burnetii phylogeny. Harmonization of auspicious high-resolution laboratory typing techniques is critical to support epidemiological and law enforcement investigation. The single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) -based genotyping approach offers simplicity, rapidity and robustness. Herein, we demonstrate SNPs identified within 16S rRNA gene sequences can differentiate C. burnetii strains. Using this method, 55 isolates were assigned to six groups based on six polymorphisms. These 16S rRNA SNP-based genotyping results were largely congruent with those obtained by analyzing restriction-endonuclease (RE)-digested DNA separated by SDS-PAGE and by the high-resolution approach based on SNPs within multispacer sequence typing (MST) loci. The SNPs identified within the 16S rRNA gene can be used as targets for the development of additional SNP-based genotyping assays for C. burnetii.

The Evolution of Grooming: Concept and Term

This discussion is not intended to be a detailed analysis of the complexities and dynamics of grooming. Instead, it will focus on the evolution of the concept and the term. More than an historical narrative, however, this evolution provides valuable insight into recognizing the diverse nature of contact sex offenses against children and important differences among types of cases. In this victimization context, the term grooming generally refers to specific nonviolent techniques used by some child molesters to gain access to and control of their child victims. The techniques a child molester employs are most influenced by the relationship between the offender and the victim. Although acquaintance child molesters are sometimes violent, to avoid discovery, they tend to control their victims primarily through this seduction or grooming process. I believe the term was first used by a group of law enforcement investigators beginning in the late 1970s to describe aspects of a seduction pattern of offender behavior that was poorly understood by most professionals. The term grooming then evolved, as language does, and spread into more common usage by law enforcement, other professionals, and then by the media and laypersons. The term grooming has pretty much supplanted seduction as the term of choice for this behavior pattern. Hopefully, understanding the evolution of the concept of grooming, the diversity of cases, the need for precise and consistent definitions, and the use of nonviolent grooming techniques to access and control victims will help interveners to better respond to and evaluate cases.

Assessing the Psychological Well-being and Coping Mechanisms of Law Enforcement Investigators vs. Digital Forensic Examiners of Child Pornography Investigations

Previous research indicates law enforcement investigators and digital forensic examiners working child exploitation cases are at an increased risk for experiencing psychological distress; however, the roles of digital forensic examiners and investigators often overlap substantially when working child pornography cases. Thus, the current study was the first to compare the psychological well-being, job satisfaction, coping mechanisms, and attitudes toward mental health services for individuals working as either digital forensic examiners and/or investigators of child pornography cases. Law enforcement officers were solicited from the Internet Crimes Against Children task force listserv, and based on their current self-reported duties, 20 were classified as digital forensic examiners-only, 71 as investigators-only, and 38 as both digital forensic examiners and investigators of cases involving Internet child pornography. Results showed significant differences between groups; individuals performing both duties scored significantly higher on secondary traumatic stress, higher on feelings of worthlessness, and lower on concentration compared to digital forensic examiners-only. Individuals performing both duties also reported significantly lower scores on job satisfaction compared to investigators-only. Finally, individuals working both duties were significantly more likely to know someone who sought counseling as a result of work-related stress. The study’s mental health implications and future research suggestions are discussed.

Matthew Bacon, Taking care of business. Police detectives, drug law enforcement and proactive investigation

Matthew Bacon, Taking care of business. Police detectives, drug law enforcement and proactive investigation

Ricin-like proteins from the castor plant do not influence liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry detection of ricin in forensically relevant samples

The toxic protein ricin (also known as RCA60), found in the seed of the castor plant (Ricinus communis) is frequently encountered in law enforcement investigations. The ability to detect ricin by analyzing its proteolytic (tryptic) peptides by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is well established. However, ricin is just one member of a family of proteins in R. communis with closely related amino acid sequences, including R. communis agglutinin I (RCA120) and other ricin-like proteins (RLPs). Inferring the presence of ricin from its constituent peptides requires an understanding of the specificity, or uniqueness to ricin, of each peptide. Here we describe the set of ricin-derived tryptic peptides that can serve to uniquely identify ricin in distinction to closely-related RLPs and to proteins from other species. Other ricin-derived peptide sequences occur only in the castor plant, and still others are shared with unrelated species. We also characterized the occurrence and relative abundance of ricin and related proteins in an assortment of forensically relevant crude castor seed preparations. We find that whereas ricin and RCA120 are abundant in castor seed extracts, other RLPs are not represented by abundant unique peptides. Therefore, the detection of peptides shared between ricin and RLPs (other than RCA120) in crude castor seed extracts most likely reflects the presence of ricin in the sample.