The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Center for Social Media gives stats about social media use including:
- Every minute of the day, email users send approximately 204,166,677 messages.
- Facebook users share approximately 684,478 pieces of content every minute.
- Twitter users send over 100,000 tweets every minute.
For law enforcement, the information found online and in the Deep Web provides a glimpse into the lives of suspects, victims and witnesses that wouldn’t be possible with a real-life investigation. The information can even be used to stop potentially dangerous situations before they start. With the right Internet monitoring tools, law enforcement can proactively stay ahead of criminal activity instead of only reacting to it.
BRIGHTPLANET CASE STUDY: Monitoring social media 
during large public events
Hundreds of demonstrators descended on Hofstra University for a 2008 presidential debate in Hempstead, N.Y. A large crowd is typical for political events, but this protest quickly turned violent. Riot police and protestors clashed, leaving six civilians injured. An Iraq veteran protesting the debate suffered a fractured orbital bone after being trampled by a police horse.
Hofstra is again hosting a presidential debate in October 2012, and the violence at these demonstrations is projected to be more severe than at the 2008 debate. Long Island police departments don’t want to be caught off-guard once again, and are looking for every tactical advantage, including the fast-growing trend of monitoring social media.
Local, state, and tribal law enforcement need a location-based tool to monitor social media and enhance situational awareness around such large public events.
BRIGHTPLANET SOLUTION:
BrightPlanet has been working, in concert with a number of police departments, to create a Social Media Monitor specifically to track and monitor Twitter and send alerts. BrightPlanet’s Social Media Monitor is an ideal solution for investigators seeking to exploit location-based data from Twitter, saving valuable time by filtering out noise and viewing only relevant results. Implementing BrightPlanet’s Social Media Monitor for Law Enforcement will give intelligence analysts real-time situational awareness for large public events, such as concerts or political debates.
BENEFITS
- Geolocation – When a name or “red flag” keyword is present in a tweet and location services are “on”, Twitter users can be tagged against a latitude/longitude location in near real-time.
- User Timeline View – Users can be tracked by user name, “red flag” keywords, tweet and follower analytics, and recent posted photos and videos.
- Keyword Alerts – In the User view, keywords can be tracked and highlighted in near real-time, along with audio alerts for user-specified bad guys.
The Social Media Monitor, a force multiplier for investigators, greatly reduces the time required to find mission-critical information around large public events.
MORE CASE STUDIES:
Not in law enforcement, but interested in seeing how other industries use Big Data? In our “What is Big Data” whitepaper, there are four additional case studies for finance, healthcare, politics and business.
Source: IACP
Photo: davidsonscott15
