Journal Entry, Week Seven

Journal Prompt: Think back on your prior assumptions before you began the research--use your earlier journal-writing. What previously held opinions matched your interpretation of research material and which opinions were divergent?

Thinking back, research that matched my previously held hunches was mainly in the types of crimes committed that can be committed using social media, and the types of evidence that they can collect.  A lot of the crimes committed through social media is obvious, such as malware, social engineering, data mining, the sharing of illegal or copy written content, and cyber-bullying.  One crime that is less obvious is criminals using social media to track others whereabouts to attempt to commit burglary.  There was one crime that I didn’t think of either, revenge porn, which a peer had brought up in class.  After doing some research, I was surprised to not find any national laws against revenge porn.  One type of crime I do not bring up in my paper in the criminal underground, such as illegal e-commerce, human trafficking, and illegal drug trade.  I chose not to go into this, because that is a whole other paper on its own.

One thing I found that was contrary than I thought is who processes social media evidence and how it is handled in the courts.  I assumed that it was processed in crime labs by digital forensics technicians.  I was very surprised to find that it is essentially handled by judges and lawyers.  There are certifications, such as McAfee’s Certified Social Media Intelligence Expert (CSMIE), but doesn’t appear to be any national standard.