Eddie: Hello everyone and thank you for joining us. My name is Eddie Yandle, I’m Director of Marketing at Cellebrite. And we are here today for a discussion about dealing with the visual deluge in law enforcement. Today’s speakers will be Rowe Cellebrite’s Analytics Manager, and Louis Quijas, who was in law enforcement for many years and is an expert and understands what’s going on in this industry. So with that, I will turn it over to John.
John: Thank you, Eddie. Appreciate the introduction here. So yeah, just to speak a little bit more about Louis here. I want to make sure that I give you his background so you can understand what a powerful leader in the industry he is. He’s actually an internationally recognized public safety and business leader. He’s got 36 years of law enforcement experience, which started with the Kansas City, Missouri police department. His distinguished career spans appointments as Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security and Assistant Director of the FBI, as well as time leading and advising major publicly traded companies.
Louis has served on a number of blue ribbon panels convened by law enforcement organizations, such as the police executive research forum to review high profile incidents and provide other insights to topics of importance to the profession. Louis currently provides a range of consulting services that includes strategy, thought leadership, building relationships with new and existing customers, and facilitation of teaming arrangements and partnerships to organizations operating in the public safety, law enforcement, and security space. And in recent years, Louis has used his considerable public safety and security experience for leading and advising companies working to serve the public safety community. In 2017, Louis founded Q5 consulting, and as principal of Q5, advises a wide range of organizations on law enforcement policy and practice. He also advises organizations seeking to do business with the law enforcement community. Prior to his appointment to the FBI, Louis was chief of police for the city of high point North Carolina, and he accepted a position of chief of police upon his retirement from the Kansas City, Missouri police department, after 25 years of service.
Louis, that was quite an extensive summary there. Thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Louis: John. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you for that very proud introduction. And I look forward to a great discussion on a very important and pressing topic of digital intelligence, which I believe impacts all of us who have a responsibility for keeping our community safe.
John: Great, thank you, Lou. Now with that, I’m just going to kind of give a brief overview of what we’re going to be talking today. Obviously we’re going to be talking about the evolution of technology. We’re specifically going to go into how it pertains to major advances in the field, and uses by law enforcement and criminals alike. And then we’re going to discuss what agencies can be doing to to help their investigations as they grow… the deal with the growing amount of digital data out there.
So, first I’m just going to show you a little bit here about some major advances in police technology over time. So going back to the beginning of the 1900s, Scotland Yard adopted a fingerprint classification system, it was kind of the first major… it was the first major system of its type. It basically allowed the investigators to compare fingerprints from suspects to a known set of data. In 1932, the FBI laboratory, which is a world renowned now, opened its doors; in the 60s, St. Louis police department became the first agency to utilize a computer aided dispatch system. Later in the 60s, AT&T announced the creation of 911, which obviously we’re all very familiar with today.
It was really in the seventies that police departments actually began using computers. And it was very limited at the start, but obviously today, a computer is a standard part of every officer’s daily routine. In 1994 NYPD began using comstat, which was kind of one of the first major technological tools that helped bring together a multitude of data and information in order to help them solve crimes.
In 96, the National Academy of Sciences basically put down some concerns regarding the use of fingerprint technology and DNA evidence, and basically made it so that there was… they declared there was no reason to doubt the reliability of DNA evidence, which was kind of a huge milestone in the use of that kind of evidence. And then in the 2000s, the first body worn cameras were deployed for law enforcement, which obviously as of the past couple of years, been a major, major topic of discussion for law enforcement.
Lou, is there anything on there that that you wanted to add? Anything perhaps you think it’s worth pointing out?
Louis: Well, I think the thing that sticks out to me, when I look at that slide: you looked at the advancements all the way from where it started back in fingerprinting, all the way up to body cameras. There’s been a pretty significant gap in time where we, you know, the new technology has actually become part of the investigative process.
Nowadays, we find ourselves in that timeframe being shortened quite a bit. N ext month, there could be another technology that’s being driven by our criminals and people that are out there doing bad things, and our communities that are developing on their own, that we have to stay aheads. So that timeframe of we have 10 years, 20 years, 30 years to think about what the next technology is going to be and how do we incorporate that into our investigative process… where we’re looking at that now, maybe not years, but maybe months. So that’s what sticks out to me in that slide, John, and I think that’s where the challenges lie really for our law enforcement community.
John: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Louis. All right. So going back to the 1940s through the 1960s is really when we first began seeing the emergence of anything even relating to or resembling mobile phone technology. And that was with a variety of radio-based communication systems being developed. But it wasn’t until 1973 that we actually saw the first truly handheld mobile phone brought to market by Motorola. In fact many of you probably have seen images of that online, it looked looked like a big box that that an individual had to hold to their head.
And later in the seventies the the first satellite phone was introduced, which operated on a different level of technology than the traditional mobile phones did. It provided connectivity throughout the world. So interestingly enough, it coincided with the first cellular network launch in Tokyo, it wasn’t until early to mid eighties that that actually happened in the US.
Fast forward a couple of decades. The the first iPhone was released in 2007, which also very interestingly coincided with Cellebrite entering the mobile forensics industry, with our first UFED device. Now of course, with the release of the first iPhone, that was kind of the start of where you began seeing a true digital deluge, as we’ve been calling it, the extraordinary amount of data being found on mobile devices.
Shortly after that in 2008 the the HTC-Dream was the first Android phone to be released. And I’m sure you can all do the simple math here. It’s been over a decade since we first saw the smartphones really coming about. And it was in 2013 that we began our foray into the real digital intelligence side of things and analysis of this data, beyond just pulling information off of these devices, with our link analysis in 2013.
And then you know, as of today, one important note here is that there’s devices out there — specifically, the the Samsung Galaxy S10 — that can hold one and a half terabytes worth of data on it. So, as we’ve gone along in time so has the technology and the amount of data out there also increased.
Louis: John, if I could chime in too. I know when we looked at, we talked about phones, you know, I had a gentleman I was speaking to the other day, and he said something that I thought was very interesting. He says, when you pick up your iPhone, the actually calling somebody is really now what the iPhone… most people use it for it. I thought about it myself. I have all birth dates. I have passwords. It’s an information storage device that happens to be able to make phone calls. If you think of it that way, then you start looking at what’s on that on a lot differently than a device where people pick up and they call somebody else. I mean, they’re searching the web, they’re putting in passwords, they’re showing where you’re googling, what sites you’re going to, the people that have called you, the mapping, how do I get from here to there? So if you look at it as that’s really a data storage device that happens to make phone calls, you start looking at it a lot differently when you pick it up at a crime scene.
John: Yeah, absolutely very well stated, Louis. And, I think that’s especially relevant as we discussed the criminal use of technology, because quite frankly, the more data that’s available on these phones is both a vulnerability and an opportunity for innocent civilians and criminals alike to leverage the amount of data out there.
So a brief history here of of some major incidents where criminals were using technology. It was a first in 1980s phishing became known as a way to obtain sensitive information regularly from corporations and individuals. And nowadays that’s actually estimated to be a $5 billion criminal industry that’s developed over the last 30, 40 years.
In 2003 MySpace launched, and shortly after that, Facebook launched in 2004, and that was really where we started… we began seeing the use of social media. And while that provided a fantastic opportunity for us to connect with our friends and acquaintances, it also brought in some new communication methods and opportunities for criminals to take advantage of people.
In 2004 we saw the train bombings kill just shy of 200 people. And those were one of the first incidents of mobile phones being used as a trigger devices, which has then been replicated in numerous other incidents throughout the world.
In 2011 we saw the Silk Road online marketplace launch, which was a very common place for the sale of illegal goods and illegal services, which thankfully eventually was shut down.
In 2014 you know, shortly… well. it’s in a couple of years of Bitcoin becoming known, one of the largest trading exchanges, online exchanges declared bankruptcy after a “losing” $390 million worth of Bitcoin. When I say losing, obviously it went somewhere. So incidents like that just show thatthat the technology out there is simply causing a tremendous amount of loss.
In 2016, a Chicago man was arrested for using a cell phone jamming device on his morning commute. It was… I find this one to be a little funny. I think we can all get annoyed with people speaking loudly on their phones on the commute, but he was using an illegal jamming device which was then discovered by undercover agents.
And then most recently, in 2018 we saw the first assassination attempts utilizing a remote operated drone against Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.
So there’s clearly a variety of different ways criminals are using technology in their criminal activities. And we have to do our best to stay abreast of that.
Louise: And John, I think when most local law enforcement… when they’re dealing with, you know, drugs, human trafficking and pedophiles, you know, they’re not looking at it in most cases from the terrorist part. Cause I think there’s still some of us that believe that happens someplace else, but the day to day activity challenges of state and local law enforcement have these: the people that are involved in drug dealing, the gang members, the human traffickers, pedophiles, they put everything on these devices, either sharing photos of their talking about drug deals going down, they’re talking about how they’re transferring people. Again, pedophiles.
They don’t keep this information — where they get their power and their prestige in those communities is by sharing, showing people. So again, if you go back and look at that device as something that just makes phone calls every once in a while, but it is a storage device: photos, chats, tweets; those types of things that our investigators could start looking at this technology and seeing how they can leverage it to add to this toolbox, that law enforcement toolbox, I think is very, very important.
John:
Yeah. Absolutely, Louis. And I think you’re hitting on something very important. The way we look at these investigation tests to pass, to keep up with the changing times and the increasing amount of data out there. In fact, we we did a survey — we’ll touch a little bit more on the survey itself a little bit later here — but we did a survey of law enforcement officers and we found that 85% of investigation done nowadays includes some form of visual evidence that needs to be analyzed. The most important and relevant types of data that they were looking through were text messages, images, and social media and in that order. And it’s shocking because only 26% of investigators are actually using any sort of visual analytics solution. And you know, going hand in hand with that, investigators are spending on average 26 hours of the week just reviewing that data. And that means they’re not spending 26 more hours out on the streets. That’s 26 less hours that they have to do other work, to keep their community safe.
Louis: And, and John, that, that, that number caught my eye because as a former chief, and when I was at Kansas City, was a division commander over an investigative operation. How many times do we ask our investigators or our detectives? Let’s say the case went six months, let’s say I know we framed it by, they’re only up to, they’re doing it 26 hours a week, but if every week you’re asking an investigator — and if you’re a good commander and you’re a good investigator, you’re always going back to that box of evidence, if you will looking through, did we miss that nugget? Did we miss that piece of evidence that’ll help us put a quality case together or identify the bad guys? So if you multiply that, you can have cases that go a year, six months, and then every week you send somebody back to look and review the digital information you have, and you’re looking through stacks and stacks of photos and emails and texts and tweets, and those types of things. Think about the energy and the resources that could be… if you had a good analytics tool that you could be putting those detectives, those officers back on the street, doing other public safety activities, as well as bringing closure to this case, because you still have victims, you have victims’ families that are looking for closure, and you have prosecutors that are expecting these agencies to put a quality, a prosecutable case in front of them. So I think that’s very, very important to also keep keep in mind.
John: Yeah, no, thank you, Louis. I’d actually like to take a couple minutes here and jump into our analytics tool just to cover a few of the functionalities that offers and just try to showcase how simple it can be to really review this data, this copious amount of data utilizing a true analytics solution.
All right. So by now you should be able to see my screen. That’s showing a kind of just the list view, actually just locations right now. But I want to start here on our timeline view, because what I want to highlight here is down at the bottom, you can see that there’s 344,000 events on these devices. We’ve got two devices here, it’s a victim and a suspect from an overdose case from a couple of years back. And I just want to make sure that it’s clear that this is a ton of information and not something that anybody could go through in a reasonable amount of time.
Now if you were to jump to our graph view here we’re going to kind of encounter the same problem. It’s just too much information to reasonably go through. So what we could do is we could load up a date and time filter here to kind of narrow this down. And this is going to give us a much better picture of what’s actually going on these devices. So we’ve got Kadeelyn, our victim and Lori, our suspect and what we’re also seeing here is the communication they’re having with different individuals.
Now this is showing communication flows as a whole. What we do is we take the identifiers associated with phone calls we get from, you know, phone numbers. We’ve got email addresses, maybe associated with an iTunes account. We’ve got email addresses for emails themselves. We’ve got identifiers for Facebook messenger, Kik, WhatsApp, you know, a variety of different things that make it known that you’re you. And we, we take all those and feed them into the analytics solution and basically identify which person is what based off of those identifiers.
And this was so incredibly useful when it comes to visualizing the way people are talking to each other. So I’ll go ahead and click on the linkage between Lori, the the suspect, and Kadeelyn, the victim. We could see that there are some calls going between the two people. We’ve got a Facebook message. We’ve got iMessages. So really, it’s just helping you visualize the data. That’s what this is all about, is visualizing the data so you can get to the important insights faster. We’ve got a couple other ways that we can look at this data. You know, if we’ve got watch lists here you know, predetermined listings of words that are relevant, we can upload those as well. We can actually see a better understanding of who’s talking about drugs.
And this is really what’s going to help us get to the bottom of the case. So we can also do some keywords here for relevant words. But I need to keep this brief. So I’m going to clear this out, and we’re going to jump over to the map view here. So we’re also able to do some location analysis.
So what we see here is that the two individuals are sharing the same location actually for two days leading up to the incident. It shows that the the victim was at the suspect’s house two nights prior to the overdose. So this can be really powerful. It can help make or break an investigation if you’ve got some information that’s showing you, okay, yeah. These people were together at a certain date and time, it’s just going to help you get to the conclusion of the case faster.
Couple of the things I want to highlight real quick, we’ve got our gallery view. So we’ve got the ability to automatically categorize images and frames from videos based off of a relevant category. So we’ve got facial identification and here we’ve got weapon recognition. We can identify screenshots and do some keyword searching on their screen chats. Basically we included these, we have 13 categories that we included here to help you get to the important information faster, but we also recognized here that we’re not providing you with possibly everything that you could possibly need.
So we wanted to give you the power of creating these categories yourself. So what we can do is we can add a category here, name it, and then we can go through and we can upload images that are that are relevant from the actual extractions, or we can upload our own. I’ve already created a case here.
So I’m just going to go ahead and clear out of this. What I’ve created here is a dog filter. And I uploaded about 15 images of dogs from from Google. So now what we can do is we can see that there’s hundreds of images of dogs on these extractions. And this is just one example. You know, if we had boats on these phones we could upload variety of images of boats and we’d find them.
So it’s really up to the needs of the investigation, as far as what kind of category you can create, but it’s really powerful for that. We wanted to put in the hands of the investigators. Last thing I want to touch on here before we go to the presentation is our dashboard view. So review is kind of a good way to get a jumpstart in your investigation, if you don’t have too many leads or you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. So a couple of these real quick, we’ve got our media categories that we’ve already touched on. We can see the most common faces in the extractions. We could go to the screenshots, see the most common screenshots, we can see the most common languages and apps used.
But one thing I want to highlight here is the most recent searches, and that’s going to be vitally important in this particular case. So we’re looking at Kadeelyn’s device here. So if I were to click on this area here, we’d see the top 10 most recent searches on the device. If I come down to the bottom here, I’ve got one that’s called ‘coming down off heroin’. That’s a search Kadeelyn did the night of February 6th. This is actually about 24 hours prior to the the time of the overdose. So if we didn’t know that this was an overdose case, this would be a really, really great piece of information for us to get started on the investigation. And that’s really what this is all about, is getting you getting into the relevant information faster. So with that, we’re going to jump back to the presentation.
Eddie: All right. So now that you see what our analytics tool is able to do for you, I wanted to take a step back here and talk a little bit more about that survey we discussed earlier. What I think is really important to note here is that the offerings that we provide in our analytics solution aren’t offerings that we just happened to decide upon. You know, it’s not like we came up with this out of thin air.
We asked our law enforcement customers, what are the most important features for an analytics tool to have? And these are the results that they provided for us. You know, keyword searching was definitely number one; the ability to provide reporting on what was uncovered is the second most important feature; and identifying objects and images is number three. And obviously going along with that is the identifying objects in videos as well. And then the last two were the ability to display multiple data sources in a unified view, and the ability to perform analysis on the locations, the location data that’s found on these mobile devices. So again, we’re looking to work with our customers, our partners in the law enforcement community, to really build out what solution is going to work best for them.
Louis: A couple of weeks ago, I had an opportunity to talk to a group of major city chiefs. And one of their investigative commanders had mentioned the fact that he likened it to a lens on a camera. He said, what it does, it brings really what you’re saying out there, especially when you open this up and you see all of this data, and it really doesn’t mean anything to you. It’s just a blurred image. But what we do is help, with just a few clicks, bring that into focus, to see exactly what you have and what you’re dealing with, and what those next steps should be. And then they’re going to go back to… I guess I’m obviously looking at as former police chief, is how to now I know what resources I need and how I need to direct those resources.
Because there’s a lot of agencies that are limited. You still are out… your patrol guys are out answering calls your investigative elements. A lot of agencies are telling me those are having to be reduced over years because of budgetary reason. So if I only have so many detectives I can send out on the street, what this does, it brings it into focus as our analytics tool to say, this is what you have. This is where you should be directing those resources. And it is a major, major benefit to that investigative element, those investigative commanders when they can send five detectives out, but they’re knocking on five different, but very important doors, if you will.
Eddie: Yeah, and, that’s an excellent point. In fact, on the right side of the screen there, we’ve got a little blurb, there was an agency that we worked with: prior to our analytics solution, they they then had to review 20,000 terror related images. And utilizing the analytics tool, they were able to take the time to review all of those images from about 20 days’ worth of investigative time, to only a couple hours of reviewing the key images that were pulled out by the solution. And I think that that drives directly into what you were just saying about [how] without this sort of tool, it really is taking away the valuable time or that the investigators otherwise could be spending elsewhere.
John: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So a little bit more about the survey. I just want to really jump into it and then show you that we’re not coming up with these solutions without consulting our law enforcement partners. So the survey that we did, we actually had a well over a thousand respondents primarily from North America. And what we can look at on the left side, there is the average size of the agencies for which people responded and we had a wide range; I mentioned that terrorism example and, you know, that’s not always going to be relevant to every single agency but what is relevant is what we listened to and what we asked of our customers.
And so we want to be that trusted partner for law enforcement officials. And we really want to make sure that we’re working with every agency we can to understand their specific needs and build solutions that really solve the problems that everybody’s facing.
So with that survey, a couple of key findings that we had: one in particular is, what data are you reviewing? And I think this can’t be understated enough. We heard from you about what you have to do on a daily basis. And, you know, obviously we’ve got the videos that we have to look through and crime scene photos and blood spatter analysis and the like, but what was taking up the most time and what was being seen most often was really that digital data specifically from social media text messages and images from the digital evidence. It shows you that obviously we’re not seeing a decrease in the types of evidence that needed to be reviewed. And so we really have to stay ahead of it, especially when it comes to the digital side of it.
Louis: Thanks. And John, if you allow me one time, I think this was a major step. The survey was a major step for Cellebrite in keeping with its commitment to be in a good partner. They’ve embraced the philosophy of, in order to have great partners, you’ve got to be a great partner. And instead of just developing solutions and tools — which we do it better than anybody — but we’re doing those that based on the needs that we’re hearing from our law enforcement partners. So as they deal with these threats, as you deal with the challenges that are coming at them in lightning speed; do they have the tools, do they have the knowledge, do they have the training to meet them head on and be successful? And I guess that’s very proud of the company for embracing that philosophy, because we truly do want to be a great partner. And the first step of that is truly understanding the needs and the challenges of our customers. So I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but I think that’s an important piece, because a lot of companies would not do a survey like this, and take the time, because sometimes you hear things you don’t want to hear, but we definitely got this and we had embraced it and definitely will be using that as we move forward with our solution development.
John: No, thank you. No need to apologize for jumping in there. No, I think you definitely hit on it. We’re trying to make the jobs of our partners easier and more effective. And one thing… obviously we took a lot of important insights out of the survey, but one of the most almost shocking in a bad way results that we uncovered was the amount of time that individual investigators are spending reviewing that data and then reporting on it. And you know, there’s 26 hours in terms of just reviewing this digital data, but then you add in the reporting component to it. You’re looking at 37 hours in an average week that they’re dealing with this digital data and reviewing and reporting on it. And that’s you know, frankly it’s just an unacceptably high amount of time to be spending on this.
So just before we finish up here you know, I think we want to summarize what we found with this survey and really where the opportunity for improvements are for our customers. And that’s the use of digital analytics. And so we asked our partners in the law enforcement community to let us know what they’re doing to review the visual data they have now. And we found some very unfortunate results that really show how big of a challenge this is. And that’s, you know, only 26% of agencies are utilizing a digital analytics or some sort of link relationship tool to analyze their data today.
I think a lot of us are familiar with the older ways of reviewing PDF reports and compiling evidence in Excel. And while those are still very valuable methodologies it’s not enough anymore with the amount of data that’s out there. The tools that are available can really help solve that problem. So yeah, you can look through here and see the use of different tools, but it really should stand out that so few agencies are utilizing these sort of digital analysis tools.
Louis: And John, the issue that that law enforcement has to, I guess, confront is again, through just interacting with my law enforcement colleagues, is that they they’re finding out not only are prosecutors asking about digital evidence, you’re now having the defense lawyers ask what was already done. Did you have my client’s phone? Did you get his computer? So what we’re trying to do is make sure that our law enforcement partners aren’t forced into this, that they get ahead of the curve and get ahead of this technology, because I don’t care if you’re in a very small town PD or Sheriff’s office USA, or you’re a major police department. These defense attorneys, they’re realizing that there’s a lot of evidence here. If there’s something that can prove my client’s innocent, they’re asking. It’d be like DNA. So that’s why we really encourage you to look at this technology.
John: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Louis. And just to conclude here the key takeaways, as Lou, you were just stating that we have an abundance of technology and data that’s constantly growing in complexity that we need to deal with, and utilizing that digital data in these investigations, it’s not optional. But the agencies that are out there don’t have a choice whether or not they can look at this information and without the right tools, you’re going to be missing out on that information. And you’re going to be missing out on finding the right insights that are going to help you be as effective as possible as this technology continues to advance. And with that, I think we’re really coming to the close here. Lou, is there anything you’d like to add before we jump into our question and answer session?
Louis: No, again, I believe the survey says a lot. I hope our friends and partners look at it, there’s a lot of great information.
And again, this was that piece of technology that we’re trying to, for the first time in a lot of time, made sure that the law enforcement community is ahead of it, rather than behind it. In my almost 40 years of law enforcement, it seems like every new challenge that comes up, we’re always behind. We’re always in the catchup stage. I think we have a great opportunity now, especially with this technology of digital intelligence, to try to get ahead of it. So we’re ahead of the bad guys. And we’re always one step ahead where we can keep our communities, our counties and our country safe. So know that that’s all I have to add, and I look forward to the questions.
Eddie: Okay, great. Thank you very much, John and Louis. That was great. And we did have a few questions that have come in. So I’d like to just kick that off the first one to you, Louis: why do you think there are so few agents out there that are using analytics?
Louis: The obvious ones that stick out Eddie are budgetary issues, because obviously police departments are also buying cars or buying radios or doing all this; as a former police chief, those were the things that I had to also take into consideration. There’s training, there’s manpower. Do I have the personnel in place that can handle this technology? I had a chief asd me the other day, his main concern question was, how long does it take us to get trained up on it? So those are the obvious questions.
I think the other piece is: I think there’s still a lot of us in the law enforcement community that are intimidated by this technology. And it’s just a matter of being briefed up on it, being educated to it. And actually seeing the important, the increased role that this will play in putting quality cases together down the road. And again, a lot of this is driven not only by the criminals, but it’s internally: you’re having prosecutors, defense lawyers, people are asking for this type of information.
So there’s the obvious piece, the training and all that stuff, but I was think there’s people that are still intimidated by it and they shouldn’t be. And I think that’s where we can also help them be brought up to speed and educated, and to see the real value in the technology and how it helps them be more effective and efficient and keeping their community safe.
Eddie: Right. And, you know, that actually leads into one that came in from another person that said: how do I rationalize buying analytics over something else that I desperately need? We have very limited budgets. So how would you go about rationalizing that your council or your commissioners?
Louis: Well, I think if I were standing in front of a city council and I’d asked them to look at this, I would frame it as a longterm investment. The digital evidence out there. It’s not going to decrease. It’s just going to increase. I’ve had detectives tell me they get at a crime scene, they’ll step over a gun to get to a laptop. They’ll roll the guy over, not looking for a gun, they’re looking, does he have a cell phone? So the investigators are looking for it, they need it.
So that’s how I would frame it. Also in today’s climate, I think it’s worth noting that this technology, even though we frame it in most cases as identifying the bad guys, it also identifies the people that aren’t involved in the situation. That’s not saying that they don’t have a shaky background, but in this time where we’re trying to… a lot of chiefs and agents or police agencies, or are talking about procedural justice, police legitimacy, trust with their community, the days of just going out and rounding up the usual suspects, and then chucking half of them loose after you find out they had nothing to do with a particular crime, those days are over.
And if I’m sitting there and I’m talking about, how do we maintain our relationship with the community? How do we let people know that those five people that we’ve arrested, we have solid digital intelligence on which to take that type of action? You start looking at it from that point of view, you start as seeing the other value, the value that you can get your arms around too. But it is a very, very valuable piece of what we’re trying to do as we reach out to our communities. And I was also, I would tell the city council: this helps us identify those individuals that are innocent, just as much as it does to identify those people that are suspect in this case.
Eddie: Great. and John, this one’s for you. So ‘request a demo’, what does that mean? What’s entailed in that?
John: Yeah, thank you. I was definitely hoping I would get a question here. I didn’t want to leave them all for Louis! So no, that’s, that’s a fantastic question. What do we do next? You know, how do we take the next step here in terms of bettering ourselves to fight these crimes and close these investigations. And I think the first step is really reaching out to the Cellebrite team and setting up the time for us to speak with you. And we can take that conversation a bunch of different ways. You know, we can do a live personalized demo for you, but really what it comes down to is reaching out to us and letting us work with you and finding the best solution for your agency.
Louis: And Eddie, can I jump in on that one real quick? I think one of the things that I’ve seen… and again, I talk to a lot of chiefs and sheriffs, and I’m proud to say this. The majority of them that are using this type of technology are using Cellebrite technology. And what I’m concerned about, and what I have been promoting is that through these briefings and these visits, we can also help them ensure that they leverage the maximum benefit and capability from the Cellebrite equipment they already have. While at the same time, we can bring them up to speed on our great and strong analytics tool. But a lot of the agencies have our equipment.
And again, as a former police chief, I know people rotate in and out of these assignments. Sometimes it’s just dedicated to the lab. They don’t look at it from an investigative point. So when we go in, we’re now asking to talk to senior investigative commanders. So as these cases percolate up to them, they’re asking questions, Hey, was there any tweets, was there any Snapchats? What websites were they looking at? Who were they talking to?
All of those questions that in the past commanders haven’t been asking, because they think, well, the lab guy, he’s doing that. So there’s really two benefits to a visit. We can bring you up to speed on what we’re currently doing, but we can also discuss what you currently have, and are you getting maximum benefit out of that technology that you have maybe sitting on a shelf someplace, and you’re not using it because somebody has moved on?
So I think there’s two benefits. So for people that are participating on this, it may not be that you’re looking at the analytics, but it also gives you an opportunity to… or you’re looking to get more information on the analytics, but we also have an opportunity to look at what you already have and making sure that you’re getting full capabilities out of that. So thank you, Eddie.
Eddie: That’s great. We’re going to wrap with this. I want to thank everyone who attended today.
