Visualizing the Suspect’s Journey

Unify digital footprints coming from disparate sources

Cellebrite Pathfinder begins by consuming data sets recovered from search warrant returns. Key sources of data include extractions from cellphones, computer zip files, returns from social media platforms, Excel file data from cell site call detail records, as well as pictures or video files recovered from police-issued body-worn cameras or real- time cameras. Once data is uploaded to a dedicated server, the data sets are then displayed in a usable, searchable program that can be accessed anywhere an analyst has an Internet connection.

Focus on which threads to pull first

Investigators need to know where to focus their investigation. Is it on people, communications, a location or some combination of all three? The Analytics Dashboard provides critical insights; surfacing seemingly unrelated events, locations, and relationships to help investigators know what to focus on.

Historically, the forensic investigator would probe each data set individually, searching for items of evidentiary significance from her or his own knowledge of the case. The forensic investigator might have scoured iMessages, Facebook, Instagram, TextNow, WhatsApp, etc., all individually, in hopes of finding relevant conversations.
Using Pathfinder, the forensic investigator can view contact histories between multiple individuals at one time across multiple devices and platforms.

Identify people, not numbers

People always lie at the heart of any investigation.
Suspects, victims, and witnesses have multiple digital identifiers including phone numbers, e-mail addresses, user accounts, and aliases. These aliases and identifiers are the “digital fingerprints,” which help investigators identify people.

Collecting and assigning digital identifiers is not easy. One person can use multiple digital devices or own multiple user accounts. A single device can also be used by several people and a single user account can be shared by multiple suspects.

Automatically aggregating multiple and sometimes contradictory identifiers across multiple sources into suspects’ personas is key to mapping the suspect journey.

Cellebrite Pathfinder provides:

• A unique, automatic, person-resolving process
• Contextual person card view, which provides clarity on people related to the case
• Bird’s-eye view of the persons of interest map of connections

Pinpoint The Narrative With Media & Text Analysis

One of the biggest impediments to investigations (and a universal complaint by investigators) is having to sort through mountains of images, video files, and text conversations to find specific key media or conversations. Cellebrite Pathfinder allows you to quickly eliminate the manual review of media files and text conversations.

This capability enables you to automatically detect previously unknown images, video clips, and conversations related to key categories, such as child exploitation, weapons, money, drugs, nudity, and more. Upload or select images of interest from the existing data set and immediately pinpoint media items that contain similar items such as faces, objects, symbols, or themes to save precious time.

Additionally, Cellebrite Pathfinder can also be “taught” to search for individuals or objects by feeding the program examples, after which the program can find victims or witnesses in videos or locate narcotics related paraphernalia in photographs.

The feature also includes optical character recognition, whereby the program can identify handwriting or words contained in photographs. Pathfinder can then search for names or phrases as if they were pure text contained in messaging applications.

Map Locations of Interest

The forensic investigator might have spent countless hours comparing historical cell site returns and cellphone geolocation data to find evidence of an individual’s location at a certain time. Cellebrite Pathfinder can comb through geolocation data collected from cell site returns and cellphone geolocation data, including location meta data contained in photographs or applications.

Cellebrite Pathfinder will then find not only where an individual may have been at a certain time, but potentially what they were doing there if the data is matched to an application usage, or who they were with, if the data compares to another known user.

Beyond aggregating all this data, investigators need to automatically surface mutual locations, and frequent and irregular visits. They then need to overlay multiple suspect journeys across cases to uncover patterns, intersections, and new relationships.

Visualize the Journey

Juries expect presentations of evidence that will capture their attention. Placing a highlighted PDF or Word Document on a projector or publishing cellphone downloads is a dated and lackluster way to display evidence. Pathfinder’s interactive, colorful display will captivate jurors and draw their attention to the importance of the evidence.

• Easily create case reports using drag-and-drop capability
• Play back movement on geospatial maps
• Collaborate across investigation teams