Forensic Analysis of Phone Call Networks
arXiv:1303.1827 · doi:10.1007/s13278-012-0060-1
Abstract
In the context of preventing and fighting crime, the analysis of mobile phone traffic, among actors of a criminal network, is helpful in order to reconstruct illegal activities on the base of the relationships connecting those specific individuals. Thus, forensic analysts and investigators require new advanced tools and techniques which allow them to manage these data in a meaningful and efficient way. In this paper we present LogAnalysis, a tool we developed to provide visual data representation and filtering, statistical analysis features and the possibility of a temporal analysis of mobile phone activities. Its adoption may help in unveiling the structure of a criminal network and the roles and dynamics of communications among its components. By using LogAnalysis, forensic investigators could deeply understand hierarchies within criminal organizations, for example discovering central members that provide connections among different sub-groups, etc. Moreover, by analyzing the temporal evolution of the contacts among individuals, or by focusing on specific time windows they could acquire additional insights on the data they are analyzing. Finally, we put into evidence how the adoption of LogAnalysis may be crucial to solve real cases, providing as example a number of case studies inspired by real forensic investigations led by one of the authors.
18 pages, 10 figures
References in corpus (8)
- Fast unfolding of communities in large networks
- Structure and tie strengths in mobile communication networks
- Quantifying social group evolution
- Uncovering individual and collective human dynamics from mobile phone records
- Generalized Louvain Method for Community Detection in Large Networks
- Analysis of a large-scale weighted network of one-to-one human communication
- A Classification for Community Discovery Methods in Complex Networks
- A Novel Measure of Edge Centrality in Social Networks