A little more on the social media/open source investigation - field. Posted: Oct 20th, 2017 - 12:51 pm
First, in answer to one question, I'm posting here because I'm still an MT. With 30 years time in grade, I can still make $15 to $18 reliably (although with much more pressure on myself to maximize every second of every hour), so I'm not going to drop it like a hot potato.
Second, my initial goal was very modest. You know how it is with "no work available" and all that stuff - I wanted something where I could use free time to supplement my income, even $400 or $500 a month would make a huge difference.
Third, as the "30 years" comment implies, I'm not a spring chicken and despite the fact that age discrimination is against the law, it is probably the most widely practiced and under-prosecuted of the various forms of discrimination that Congress has prohibited. As such, I knew that I would probably need a skill that was in demand (which I had checked) but with not a lot of competition from highly-experienced (and younger) people. Again, I checked. The field is new, and there are not hordes of people who have both training AND a lot of experience. Not to say there aren't any, because there are. But, most of them are already working for government agencies, large insurance firms, etc.
Fourth, I have already been offered a full-time job (investigative firm) but it had too many drawbacks, including a 70-mile round trip drive every day in bad city traffic and the nondisclosure agreement was vile, plus I really wasn't interested in domestic (divorce, child custody, etc.) cases. I'm more interested in several other aspects of SM/OS work.
Fifth - regarding someone's comment about "spying." The eye of the beholder, I guess, but I put this to you: If your home were burglarized and your mother's prize heirloom necklace handed down to you lost, you believe, forever, and if the burglar then advertised it for sale on Craigslist, eBay or a dozen deep websites (oh yes, they do!), would you accuse the police officer who arrested the burglar and returned it to you of "spying"?? I think not!
$Billions are swindled every year in the disability insurance game, and workers who faithfully remain on the job are saddled with the "disabled" worker's tasks. Do you think it to be "spying" when one of these malingerers then brags about their ski vacation on Facebook, complete with pictures? I think not!
About 40% of resumes contain material misrepresentations, resulting in people being hired who ought not to be and thereby imposing their incompetence on their fellow workers. Do you think it's "spying" to discover that while the individual said he was working he was actually spending time in the county jail? Or that the company he said he worked for never existed? I think not!
Software piracy costs US companies $billions. Do you think it's "spying" to discover that it's being sold at a tenth the retail price for download on a dark website?
Do you think it might be "spying" to discover that someone lurking on a teenage chat room as an 18-year-old premed student is actually a 45-year-old twice-convicted molester?
If you were an innocent defendant in a hit-and-run case, would you think it to be "spying" to discover that the plaintiff against you had filed 3 other cases in the last 2 years and posted his "winnings" online - complete with instructions how to do what he did?
I don't know where this will take me. I'm limited at the moment, of course, by the fact that I have training but really nothing in the way of experience to put on a resume. Like anything else, you have to start at the bottom, take what comes your way and push forward.
No, there are no guarantees. But as I said in another post, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that society today revolves around "virtual worlds" that are lived out in social media, and the phenomenon is only growing. Most young people today would rather communicate by electronic media than in person! And, it's pretty easy to think of the myriad situations in which there are legitimate reasons to be interested in what people have posted about themselves online, communicated about themselves in chat rooms and forums, etc.
We've just had a prime example of SM investigation in the case of the Las Vegas mass murderer. What was the first thing that people wanted to know about him? WHY DID HE DO IT? And where was the second, if not the first place, that people looked for an answer to that question? SOCIAL MEDIA. Such investigations are so much more involved than simply entering his name into a Facebook search box. SO much more than that. You might, for instance, want to find out if he's been posting to forums that discuss gun modifications - but what are they? You need to be able to identify them, and then how to figure out what screen names he might have used, etc. This takes training.
I think it's a fascinating field. If you don't agree, at least have the kindness to your sisters on this forum not to post comments that are, frankly, uninformed - and I promise not to post comments that I am not sure about. Fair dinkum?
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