Key Points
Global Intelligence claims that, using only open source datapublic information that doesnt require a warrantand a suite of more than 700 algorithms, its Cybercheck system allegedly can geolocate an individual in real time or at a specific time in the past by detecting the wireless networks and access points the persons cyber profile has interacted with..
But a WIRED review of investigations involving Cybercheck from California to New York, based on hundreds of pages of court filings, testimony, interviews, and police records, suggests Cybercheck is a much less effective toolone that has provided evidence in high-profile cases that was either demonstrably incorrect or couldnt be verified by any other means...
Indeed, over the past several months, Global Intelligences work in Ohio has faded away, with prosecutors ultimately deciding not to use Cybercheck reports as evidence in several murder cases, including Mendozas...
Either theyre somehow doing the Minority Report now, or somehow its just BS, says Stephen Coulthart, director of the Open Source Intelligence Laboratory at the State University of New York at Albany, who reviewed Cybercheck reports and transcripts of Moshers testimony at WIREDs request...
In an unofficial email chain in which investigators from different agencies shared their experiences with the technology, which WIRED obtained through a public record request, Aurora, Colorado detective Nicholas Lesnansky wrote that Cybercheck had identified someone as a suspect in one of his departments homicide cases because the persons cyber profile pinged a router located at an address of interest..
