Social Media for IACA 2019 - Open Source Policing

Social Media for IACA 2019

Real Time Social Media Monitoring

The most recent presentation notes with real time tools can be found here: https://t.ly/mWKGA

Lieutenant Glen Mills – Burlington Massachusetts Police Department

Notes

This year my presentation is geared towards what analysts will need to know in order to anticipate in the future.

Today, we have a good amount of research on social media usage in disaster response and recovery and many free resources exist online to help one gain a great deal of expertise on using social media tools in a disaster.

What about the future? What resources can we use to anticipate future threats? The military has done a great deal of work in this area. Unfortunately, the future holds a number of challenges that in the past would not have been the concern of private industry, nonprofits and local government agencies. Recent events and past trends point to what we can anticipate in the future.

TRADOC is the U.S.Army’s Training and Doctrine Command. This document is about the future of warfare – http://tinyw.in/Zxf7 – This DefenseOne Article summarizes the findings – http://tinyw.in/8rmr

The U.S. Army has determined that adversaries and competitors have blurred the lines between armed conflict and competition. Beyond this reality the report speaks to 4 issues that have changed the face of future conflict. These 4 factors have huge implications for everyone.

The Exponential Speed of Information Technology
Increasing Urbanization
The Internet becoming a key aspect of the battlefield and the increasing importance of shaping public opinion
“Every Bad Guy Becomes the Joker” – “Super Empowered individuals and small groups will have ever increasing capabilities in regards to weaponry and technology.”

All 4 of these factors point to a future where information warfare will touch more and more people and organizations. Social media will be the primary area of conflict and competition and misinformation and disinformation will become one of the largest and most unpredictable challenges we will face in all phases of business.

The “Firehose of Falsehood” report from RAND is a great short read that explains propaganda tools and why they are so effective. It is important to understand how information can be used in nefarious ways. http://tinyw.in/ZYjm

Deepfakes are our latest challenge and the potential use of these tools by adversaries needs to be planned for now.

Videos on Deepfake Tools – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1b5aiTrGzY

Article and video – https://www.wired.com/story/deepfakes-getting-better-theyre-easy-spot/

While the 2014 Sony Hack was not a social media attack it is an interesting case study on information warfare and how attacks can be carried out against any entity and be launched by any entity, even a government – http://tinyw.in/RKm7

Here are some resources on countering the Hybrid Threat:

DefenseOne article on Hybrid Warfare and what can be done about it – http://tinyw.in/LNwY

RAND Report on Understanding Hybrid Warfare and What Can be Done About it – http://tinyw.in/1uRY

Hybrid CoE – The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats – https://www.hybridcoe.fi/hybrid-threats/

First Draft is an organization battling misinformation – https://medium.com/1st-draft

Once we understand the threats we can begin anticipating what these threats might look like. We should also try to detect these threats as soon as possible. Detection lies in real-time monitoring.

The notes below are from 2015:

A lot of police departments fear social media. I can tell you right now that this is something police departments need to be very familiar with and that they need to have a presence on all of these sites – even if it is to simply claim their name and to make sure nobody else is pretending to be them.

Generally, the most important things you need to know are:

1. The rules for police on the internet are generally the same as the rules for the police in real life. Your conduct has to follow all of your existing department policies. You can have officers online in a visible way, like a uniformed officer and you can have officers using websites undercover, just as you use plain-clothes officers in real life.

2. You need to know exactly what your public information laws say you can and can’t post online – you should already have policies regarding the release of public information. Ignore the words “media”, “reporter” and “newspaper” and replace them with “website”, “Facebook Page”, “Twitter”, etc…

3. Do your research – there are a lot of free resources online

Social Media for Law Enforcement

Presentation Outline – 09/23/2015

International Association of Crime Analysts

Lieutenant Glen Mills – Burlington Police Department

President – Massachusetts Association of Crime Analysts

Social Media Basics

What is Social Networking?

History of Social Networks

Terminology

Social Media by the Numbers

Why is it important to us?

Social Media Usage

Intelligence Gathering – Passive and Active

Undercover Operations

Investigations

Public Interaction

Emergency Notifications

Training

Personal and Business Use

Creating Accounts

A discussion of Web Browsers

Tor Browser

Pirate Browser

Setting up an E-Mail Account – Gmail is Recommended

Gmail Trick – you can use periods “.” and plus signs “+” in your Gmail address in order to create multiple social media accounts and sign up to multiple newsletters with a single Gmail account

Examples: ospolicing@gmail.com can be os.policing@gmail.com or ospolicin.g@gmail.com

OR: ospolicing+MACA@gmail.com or ospolicing+IACA@gmail.com

All appear to be different addresses to other services but all messages will go to the same inbox

Protecting Your Good Name using Knowem.com

The First Commandment

Never, ever, use your own personal accounts

Intelligence Gathering

Passive (Open Source)

Active (Working Undercover)

Legal Issues

Ethical Issues

Legal Issues

Search.org

Visualizers – MentionMap.com

Personal Use

Police Officers probably shouldn’t have personal profiles – If officers have profiles they should understand the risks to their careers, their safety, and to their families

FaceBook Graph Search

Exif (Exchangeable Image File) Data

“Checking In”

Instructor Contact Information:

Lieutenant Glen Mills – Burlington, Massachusetts Police Department

www.bpd.org / www.opensourcepolicing.org

781-505-4945

gamills@bpd.org / glenmills@opensourcepolicing.org

Resources:

Free Stuff:

www.opensourcepolicing.org – A variety of Free Resources and Tools

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Masspolice/– Masspolice – Free Resources and Tools for Massachusetts Officers / Massachusetts Sample Search Warrant Templates are located in the “Files” section

How-To’s:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kloving/ – Tools and Resources for Investigating High Tech Crimes

http://www.iacpsocialmedia.org/ – IACP Guide to Using Social Media

http://cops2point0.com/ – Christa Millers Blog on Social Media for Law Enforcement

http://connectedcops.net/ – Laurie Stevens Blog on Social Media for Law Enforcement

www.search.org – Training in High-Tech Investigations / ISP List

Legal

https://www.ncirc.gov/28cfr/Default.aspx – 28 CFR 23 Training

Policy

The NESMO (Northeast Social Media Officers) website has some guides to help develop social media policy for law enforcement agencies: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9iRD6XPAB1ac1Q2eEVKVUlENGc&usp=sharing

People Search / Profile Search

www.spokeo.com – Social Network Search Tool

www.pipl.com People Search

www.zabasearch.com

www.peekyou.com

Profiles:

www.knowem.com – search for user names across multiple social media sites

www.twitonomy.com – Twitter Profile Info

www.foller.me – Twitter Profile Info

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=facebook+report – Facebook Profile Report from Wolfram Alpha

Mapping:

www.tweepsmap.com – Where are a profiles followers