NCJ Number
185435
Journal
Law Enforcement Technology Volume: 27 Issue: 10 Dated: October 2000 Pages: 174-183
Date Published
October 2000
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This article describes the specialized tools a police investigator needs to conduct online investigations and develop sufficient evidence to ensure successful prosecution.
Abstract
Since the commercialization of the World Wide Web, it has been the domain of child pornographers, scam artists, thieves, and purveyors of frauds and all types of white-collar criminal activities. The right tools for investigating such crimes include specialized software to examine binary or photographic postings, unencoders to decrypt files and newsgroup attachments, password crackers, and at least two decompression programs to unzip or unstuff compressed files. This article provides the names and sources for such software tools. Search engines are also important in obtaining information on the Internet. In addition to traditional search engines, investigators should also use prototypical or specialized search engines that provide specific information on individuals, including their addresses, phone number genealogy, and more. Sources for such search engines are listed in this article. An important source of evidence for some cyberspace crimes are newsgroups, which are groups of people who share information based on a common interest. Through newsgroups, participants can exchange messages and post or download pictures and text. Newsgroups are common forums for communication and the exchange of pictures by child pornographers. This article explains how investigators can obtain the real identities and locations of newsgroup members.