Pasadena Police Department Tries New Social Media Technology to Find Suspects

“Whether it’s the crime itself that originates online, or a series of leads connected to a perpetrator, crucial information is often linked to digital and social activity,” said Harrison Tang, CEO, Spokeo. – Courtesy photo / Christian Colen

If you have social media, odds are Spokeo will find you; Pasadena PD Investigative unit is in trial stage of Spokeo for Law Enforcement

By Sadie Gribbon

The Pasadena Police Department is using a new investigative tool that aggregates public record and any public information spread through social media to find, and potentially criminalize, suspects in open cases.

From a full list of crimes to interests on Facebook, Spokeo, a Pasadena-based technology company, has developed a new branch of hardware aimed at Law Enforcement agencies. The new “easy-to-use investigative tool,” filters through more than 95 social media platforms like Facebook, Venmo, Twitter and dozens of other sites which carry an excessive amount of public information to acutely narrow down possible suspects.

“Whether it’s the crime itself that originates online, or a series of leads connected to a perpetrator, crucial information is often linked to digital and social activity,” said Harrison Tang, CEO of Spokeo. “Unlike any traditional data provider, Spokeo combines public record data and social data together for a more enhanced solution and I’m confident it will help make the jobs of investigators a little easier.”

In 2006, Spokeo began as a silicon valley social network aggregator, with the launch of platforms like Facebook and Twitter it surpassed Whitepages’ streamlined people-searcher by creating a search tool that allows anyone to use a phone number, email or home address to find information on anyone in the world. In 2009, the company moved to Pasadena where it has found a home for the last eight years.

Though Spokeo began as a people finder for the common user, the company has taken its technology to another level to aid crime-solving in Pasadena and across the country.

“Law Enforcement has a lot of investigative tools already at their disposal, where Spokeo for Law Enforcement comes into play: we’re complimentary,” Stephen Henderson, Client Service Manager who is internally leading Spokeo’s Law Enforcement effort said. “We’re used in-addition-to, so we’re their tools.”

From a full list of crimes to interests on Facebook, Spokeo, a Pasadena-based technology company, has developed a new branch of hardware aimed at Law Enforcement agencies. – Courtesy photo / Spokeo

Spokeo for Law Enforcement cannot be accessed by just any member of the public, in comparison to its original, and current, Spokeo technology.

“We have that dedicated team of law enforcement who is contacting registered sworn and non-sworn officers,” Senior Vice President of Spokeo, Jason Matthes said.  “There is no self-sign-up; if you come to our Law Enforcement portal, you can only submit an indication of interest form that comes into that dedicated law enforcement team.”

But how does Spokeo aggregate over 12 billion data records? The largest contributor to the social network aggregator: email.

“Emails have a high correlation with social media and that’s so significant from a Law Enforcement perspective, from an investigative standpoint,” Henderson said.

Since all social media platforms require an email or phone number to sign up, Spokeo Law Enforcement can access a singular person on multiple levels from those two simple – and very public – sources.

“We’re pulling social media handles from publically available social profiles,” said Matthes. “Spokeo and our social media data that we have do not trump any of the privacy settings associated with people’s email boxes or their social media profiles that are online.”

Setting personal social media accounts turned to private doesn’t always keep Spokeo Law Enforcement from finding a suspect.

“Even though someone may have a private setting in their Facebook, perhaps when you search a person of interest in our investigative platform, there are associates that commonly may come up and make reference to a person, or have pictures that people self-report and the geo-tagging information within that is very valuable to the law enforcement community,” Henderson said.

The Pasadena Police Department was contacted but Lt. Luna, the point of contact with Spokeo, could not comment on their trial with Spokeo for Law Enforcement due to the nature of Spokeo being a product, in which PPD can neither endorse nor oppose.

The Pasadena Police Department is currently in the infancy stage of the 30-day trial for Spokeo for Law Enforcement.

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