Argentina’s Border Guard Force is Crushing Time and Distance Barriers with Digital Investigative Solutions

Gendarmería Nacional Argentina is Building a Network of Digital Labs to Gain Intelligence Faster

The national forensics laboratory for the Gendarmería Nacional Argentina (GNA), the country’s 70,000-person border guard force, is in the capital city of Buenos Aires. GNA officers in five regional headquarters in Campo de Mayo, Córdoba, Rosario, San Miguel de Tucumán and Bahía Blanca deliver a steady stream of digital devices to the laboratory — as many as 2,000 on any given year — for data unlocking, extraction and analysis, to aid in digital investigations involving border security, drug trafficking and smuggling, among other issues.

But because the regional headquarters are hundreds (and in some cases, thousands) of miles from Buenos Aires, barriers of time and distance slow down the path to justice. That’s why the GNA is building a network of digital forensics labs throughout Argentina to gain intelligence faster.

“It’s a big country, and it’s hard to cover with one lab,” explained Antonio Maza, Experto (expert) for the GNA’s Departamento Análisis Forense Digital. “The number of devices is always increasing because of digital adoption, and we can’t keep up with the demand.”

Maza, a 20-year veteran of the GNA and a forensic analytics instructor at Universidad Católica de Salta, has a plan to crush the time and distance barriers affecting investigations — and to ensure that digital investigations take center stage in the GNA’s investigations now and in the future. He’s spearheading the creation of the new lab network, which will respond to the needs of local judicial authorities, by studying electronic devices connected to possible criminal activities. Maza, who’s passionate about the value of digital data for the GNA, sees the chain of labs — equipped with Cellebrite digital investigative solutions—as crucial to future generations of GNA officers.

“I want this to be my legacy,” said Maza. “I want all the capabilities in place that will help everyone across the country work as a team. And I want people to be thinking outside the box and take different approaches.”

Now that evidence comes from so many different device and data sources, investigators can no longer “think” in a straight line,” Maza said. “Investigating is not linear.”

Data pushes GNA officers in many new directions, inspiring new ways to solve crimes.

Keeping Up With The Suspects

Today, in the GNA’s national forensics lab, officers like Maza are working hard to match the pace of their digital knowledge-building with the explosion of digital devices found in the course of investigations.

“Digital disruption has had an enormous impact on the cases we handle,” Maza explains. “The volume of information we have to process annually has increased exponentially.” That acceleration has forced GNA examiners and investigators to climb up the digital investigations ladder as fast (if not faster), as suspects can accumulate digital data on their devices or in the Cloud.

“Our greatest challenge is the vertiginous technological advance, as is the case with mobile devices,” Maza said. “On top of that you have security measures to protect data privacy that have hardened over time, putting up barriers to obtaining evidence that could be of vital importance in investigations.”

It’s an overwhelming and complex task. The good news is that digital investigations helps Maza and his colleagues meet these steep challenges. “It lets us optimize our time and resources — finding evidence that supports our cases in ways that wouldn’t have been possible,” Maza said.

A key part of this optimization is around access to data in the Cloud, using Cellebrite Inseyets.UFED to analyze the information. Maza ticks off a long list of data that’s now a common part of investigations: chats from messaging applications like WhatsApp and Telegram, multimedia content and metadata, online calendars, web browsing history, Wi-Fi connections, location data, and user profile information. It’s all vital these days, and it all requires automated analysis tools in the hands of knowledgeable investigators.

In his own 20 years with the GNA, Maza has seen how the digital world has utterly changed policing. “Tech’s impact on society is continuously reflected in our GNA activities,” he said. “As experts in forensic analysis, we have to dive into these mountains of evidence. One thing I can say for certain today, is that there are no simple cases, thanks to a complex ecosystem that makes up digital evidence.”

Eliminating Barriers Of Time And Distance

The first five of the regional forensics labs are expected to open in late 2020. The locations were picked strategically based on case load, as well as examining other national policing resources in those regions, Maza said. His goal is to not only position the GNA at the forefront of digital forensic analysis, but also transform how his colleagues do their jobs.

The people who hold the purse strings have agreed with Maza: They recognize that digital investigative solutions are a must-have, not a nice-to-have, when it comes to effective investigations. And a single lab wasn’t going to help the GNA solve cases with necessary speed.

“Last year, for example, we analyzed about 2,000 devices over all Argentina,” Maza explained. “And it’s not just mobile phones – it’s also computers, DVRs and more. A few years ago, we had to analyze 1,000 devices – now it’s 2,000, and next year, it will be much more. It’s a problem to solve for the future.”

It’s not just about devices mushrooming in number: It’s about the time it takes to ferry them to the national lab from all points across Argentina. “We don’t have days and days to finish investigations,” Maza said. “And we don’t want evidence to be lost.” With a network of labs, devices and data can be analyzed more rapidly, closing cases more quickly and bringing suspects.

Speedy Case Resolution

The critical value of digital investigations shines in more and more of the GNA’s cases, like one from March 2019 involving a teenager’s threat to kill fellow students at his college. The 17-year-old posted a Facebook message saying that he would broadcast the “massacre” live on Facebook; the post included a photo of an assortment of firearms.

In an early morning raid on the student’s home, GNA investigators seized the students’ mobile phones and a computer. Using Cellebrite Pathfinder, investigators applied filters to locate more firearms photos that the student had downloaded from the Internet; with Cellebrite Inseyets.UFED, they also located social media messages sent to other people alerting them to the proposed attack.

“In just two hours, we solved the case,” Maza said. “We knew that this was the person, and we found credit card numbers belonging to him as well as other people connected to the proposed attack.” Maza and his colleagues were also able to construct a timeline of the suspect’s movements as he made plans for the attack. The suspect was eventually charged with making anonymous threats involving weapons.

“Although the case could have been solved without digital intelligence tools, we would have had to spend more time and more resources to do so,” Maza said. “It might have taken a week or more, which translates to more money for staff deployment and accommodation.” Given the nature of the case, more time could have meant the attack went forward in some way—a chance that investigators simply can’t allow. “We need to identify evidence in a short time frame, and with certainty,” he says.

A Lifetime Love Of Forensics

It’s no surprise that Maza, who’s spent decades working with forensic evidence, is behind the expanded lab project. Even in childhood, he wanted to know how things worked. “I used to take apart my grandfather’s radios because I wanted to know who was talking inside the box,” he laughs. “I like to get to the bottom of things. That’s why I like forensics and investigating so much.”

In college, Maza studied computer engineering—but even though the field was about figuring out how all things technical worked, he didn’t feel excited about it. “It didn’t give reason to my life,” he said. When he discovered policing and forensics, everything clicked.

“I love my job because I can catch the bad guys, and because I figure out things that no one else knows,” Maza said. He’s frustrated by the cases he and his team can’t solve, but he’s encouraged at how digital investigative solutions are helping the GNA close cases that, years ago, might have only resulted in dead ends. He’s sharing what he knows with a new generation of investigators. Maza is currently the director of the postgraduate degree program in forensic analysis and digital investigation at the Universidad Católica de Salta, teaching everyone from police officers and judicial officials, to IT and cybersecurity professionals.

As Maza prepares to take a two-year leave of absence from his position to take GNA courses to advance in the force, he feels confident that the legacy he’s worked hard to create will remain strong.

“I remember back when I started doing digital investigations that our processes and tools almost seemed homemade,” Maza said. “Now we’ve moved on professionally and we have the maturity that digital forensic analysis gives us. We can move quickly, and we are much smarter.”