The trail of data we leave online can reveal private details about our lives, and multiple people will collect and sort through this, often to engage in targeted advertising.
Another use for the social network analysis is to help prosecutors in criminal courts make sense of large amounts of digital evidence, collected both online and from devices offline. It is particularly useful in trials with several defendants in helping courts to save time and money. Many criminal networks are there include a dark web marketplace that organizes crime and reaches more victims and clients. With the help of transaction patterns, messages, pages visited will give ideas that help to unpack details of one’s activity. Social network analysis includes using advanced computer software to explore segments of patterns that repeat in social interactions, online and offline. It offers scholars a broad perspective of the world of human relations. This form of analysis not only looks at friends in your account but also what decisions you make as an individual, which you make in a group, and how these choices influence your world. Social networks can be presented in graphs such as nodes for representing people, and edges represent a phone call, message, or meeting.
The murky networks of crime syndicates
This information is usually expressed in mathematical form and these numbers offer information about the dynamic of a group and the specific role of each individual inside it. Social network analysis help investigators understand covert criminal networks such as the key individuals are in the group, how various members are connected, how the members combine or act alone, to carry out a crime. It will filter out enough evidence to prosecute and also help judges reach fairer decisions.
Surfing through oceans of data
Due to certain factors like time, money, and human resource restrictions, all evidence from investigations is not used in criminal court proceedings. Social network analysis would greatly help prosecutors during criminal trials involving an excess of digital proof.
Removing the potential for bias
In any criminal investigation, there is a chance for the potential for bias from investigating officers. This can make errors in the evidence pool that may not be taken during the trial.
Technology: both a problem and a solution
Social network analysis isn’t perfect it can tell how an individual interacts with a syndicate but it can’t guide us as to whether that person should be considered separate from the main network or not, that will be the Judge’s decision. Important data are stored outside police jurisdiction or require a search warrant from law enforcement before they can be accessed.
Social network analyses could prove to be an invaluable support tool to help judges and jurors value the evidence.
