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Another scandal in the United States with the use of digital evidence.
In August 2020, a tragedy occurred in Akron, Ohio: 20-month-old Tyraeus Halsell was fatally shot in the head while sitting in a car that was shot by unknown persons. His grandparents, Kimberly Thompson and Brian James, who got out of the car, were shot in the legs but survived. The police launched an investigation, collected CCTV footage and asked the public for help in finding suspects. The recordings show that the two men opened fire on the car and then fled.
Despite early progress, the search for suspects has reached an impasse. Later, detectives focused on Philip Mendoza, the suspect in the attack, and requested his location data from mobile carriers and Google through special warrants. However, these inquiries did not yield results indicating Mendoza's presence at the crime scene on the day of the incident.
The investigation dragged on until August 2022, when the Canadian company Global Intelligence provided the police with a long-awaited report. According to the company, their Cybercheck system can determine a person's location at a specific point in time by analyzing the interaction of their "cyber profile" with Wi-Fi networks and other access points. The report claimed that Mendoza's cyber profile was at the crime scene on the day of the shooting.
However, during the trial, the defense drew attention to errors in the report: the system indicated the wrong date of the incident, and later provided a corrected, but still dubious report. Ultimately, prosecutors decided not to use Cybercheck's data in court, as the accuracy of the technology raised many questions. In other cases under similar circumstances, where Cybercheck reports were used, there were also problems with evidence.
Questions about the reliability of the Cybercheck system and its ability to extract data exclusively from open sources raised doubts among experts. In some cases, the company's reports did lead to arrests, but other investigations questioned the technology's ability to deliver accurate results. As a result, in a number of cases, the charges were dropped, and Global Intelligence was criticized by law enforcement.
Problems with the reliability of Cybercheck's data have jeopardized investigations and caused the need to reconsider approaches to the use of such technologies in the legal system.
Source
In August 2020, a tragedy occurred in Akron, Ohio: 20-month-old Tyraeus Halsell was fatally shot in the head while sitting in a car that was shot by unknown persons. His grandparents, Kimberly Thompson and Brian James, who got out of the car, were shot in the legs but survived. The police launched an investigation, collected CCTV footage and asked the public for help in finding suspects. The recordings show that the two men opened fire on the car and then fled.
Despite early progress, the search for suspects has reached an impasse. Later, detectives focused on Philip Mendoza, the suspect in the attack, and requested his location data from mobile carriers and Google through special warrants. However, these inquiries did not yield results indicating Mendoza's presence at the crime scene on the day of the incident.
The investigation dragged on until August 2022, when the Canadian company Global Intelligence provided the police with a long-awaited report. According to the company, their Cybercheck system can determine a person's location at a specific point in time by analyzing the interaction of their "cyber profile" with Wi-Fi networks and other access points. The report claimed that Mendoza's cyber profile was at the crime scene on the day of the shooting.
However, during the trial, the defense drew attention to errors in the report: the system indicated the wrong date of the incident, and later provided a corrected, but still dubious report. Ultimately, prosecutors decided not to use Cybercheck's data in court, as the accuracy of the technology raised many questions. In other cases under similar circumstances, where Cybercheck reports were used, there were also problems with evidence.
Questions about the reliability of the Cybercheck system and its ability to extract data exclusively from open sources raised doubts among experts. In some cases, the company's reports did lead to arrests, but other investigations questioned the technology's ability to deliver accurate results. As a result, in a number of cases, the charges were dropped, and Global Intelligence was criticized by law enforcement.
Problems with the reliability of Cybercheck's data have jeopardized investigations and caused the need to reconsider approaches to the use of such technologies in the legal system.
Source
