Selfie-snapping rioters leave trail
FBI has obtained more than 140,000 images
WASHINGTON – The FBI arrested one man after a co-worker at a western Maryland restaurant reported seeing him in images of people assaulting the U.S. Capitol.
A Texas man was charged after his ex-wife recognized him in a socialmedia video and called authorities.
Perhaps the most easily recognized interloper wore the same bearskin headdress with horns, and carried the same 6-foot spear, as he did on his Facebook page. Prosecutors called it “distinctive attire” in charging documents.
These and more details gleaned from court documents reveal how the FBI has quickly identified more than 275 suspects – the number is expected to grow quickly – related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. More than 98 have been arrested, often with the aid of video taken or social media posted by the participants themselves. And investigators, academics and citizen sleuths are still combing though broadcast footage and websites such as Twitter Inc., Youtube and even archives of the now-defunct Parler platform favored by right-wing activists.
More than 140,000 pieces of digital media have been obtained by the FBI. “And we are scouring every one for investigative and intelligence leads,” said Steven D’antuono, assistant director in charge of the FBI’S Washington Field Office. “We continue to ask for more.”
The FBI has opened a portal to accept tips and digital media depicting rioting and violence in and around the Capitol on Jan. 6, when a mob supporting President Donald Trump swarmed the building, scaling walls, breaking windows and beating police officers. The siege left five people dead, delayed the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory and sparked a backlash among lawmakers who impeached Trump on Wednesday.
The FBI has declined to provide many details of how it’s conducting the search, but one police department says it’s helping the bureau link names and faces with facial recognition software. And a trail of location data left behind by the rioters’ mobile phones could prove useful. Service providers are obligated to turn over information in response to search warrants.
While the digital dragnet has proven useful to law enforcement, it carries risks for the many volunteer sleuths who are reposting screen shots they allege are lawbreakers.
Misidentifying someone as a rioter – or even correctly identifying someone who was at the Capitol but not involved in criminal acts – can be libelous, potentially triggering fines, lawsuits and expensive settlements with the people on the other end of those Twitter and Facebook Inc. posts.
Authorities, meanwhile, are sifting methodically through the digital trail left by the mob. Arrest documents speak to the clues left in images, detailing all the co-workers and acquaintances who’ve led authorities to suspects after spotting their images in news reports or on social media.
Michael Sherwin, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said there are “thousands of potential witnesses” that may lead to “hundreds of criminal cases” in an investigation that will stretch over months.
Despite its magnitude, the investigation to name and find those who swarmed the Capitol will be relatively simple, said Milan Patel, former chief technology officer of the FBI’S Cyber Division.
The agency can enlist Facebook and Twitter as well as the mobile carriers whose airwaves were used by rioters, Patel said.
Patel outlined standard procedure. Investigators can take one data point – a photo, or a name or a social media identity – and subpoena Facebook or Twitter. They’ll ask for additional data, like that person’s online persona, their posts, friends list, associated phone number, and data on their location.
“You take this data and you start mapping out where these people are, where they were in the past and you start putting them at the scene of the crime,” Patel said.
Like social media companies, telecoms will be essential to investigations, and be obligated to maintain and turnover subscriber call logs and location data once subpoenaed or presented with a warrant, said Jennifer Lynch, Surveillance Litigation Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Facebook has “worked to quickly provide responses to valid legal requests,” said Andy Stone, a spokesman for the company. “We are removing content, disabling accounts, and working with law enforcement to protect against direct threats to public safety.”
Wireless carriers also help authorities track suspects in investigations. “There are teams already working with law enforcement regarding what happened,” Verizon Communications Inc. Chief Executive Officer Hans Vestberg told reporters Jan. 10.
At least one police department is helping investigators using facial recognition software. Detectives in Miami have been uploading photos of potential suspects in the Capitol riot into a system provided by the closely held company Clearview AI.
The officers are screening photos of potential suspects from materials provided by the FBI, as well as from images they spot on social media and in news reports. So far, they have passed on at least six potential matches to the FBI, said Assistant Miami Police Chief Armando Aguilar.
“It’s only half the battle when we have video evidence,” Aguilar said. “The other half is trying to identify the person in the video and making the case that the person we think we’ve identified is, in fact, our suspect.”
Clearview Chief Executive Officer Hoan Ton-that said that since the Capitol riot his company has seen a spike in usage of its services.
Clients upload a photo and the system compares it to a database of billions of images scraped from Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.
That’s raised concerns among civil liberty and privacy advocates.
“The FBI has thousands of tips on the Capitol attack, and people posted their own information online from inside the building,” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Lynch. “That should be where this investigation begins, not on face-recognition technology.”