Internet Forensics Needs a National Web Hub for Law Enforcement

Written by kelly.solid Friday, 12 February 2010 02:10

A recent survey indicated that cybercrime personnel are becoming more and more frustrated with the timeliness of receiving subpoenaed information back from ISPs.  The article that I read stated that the survey based on questionnaires completed by 100 police investigators (authored by Frank Kardasz of the Phoenix PD), “says that 61 percent of them had their investigations harmed “because data was not retained” and only 40 percent were satisfied with the timeliness of responses from Internet providers.” The survey also stated that “89 percent of investigators agreed that a nationwide computer network should be established for the purpose of linking ISPs with law enforcement agencies so that they may exchange legal process requests and responses to legal process. Authorized users would communicate through encrypted virtual private networks in order to maintain the security of the data.”

Although there are a few ISP companies that offer a web interface to subpoena data (Sprint is one of them), there is no excitement in the ISP world for setting up a national system to handle this type of data.  There are too many security and privacy issues to overcome.  This is exacerbated by a recent Justice Department’s 289 page report that claimed the “FBI obtained Americans’ telephone records by citing nonexistent emergencies and simply asking for the data or writing phone numbers on a sticky note rather than following procedures required by law.”

Maybe a national web interface is not the answer, but a better system needs to be put in place to allow law enforcement to obtain legal and timely information from ISPs and the Social Networks (Facebook, Myspace, etc.) to assist them in solving their cases.