As Christa Miller notes in this month's tech term breakdown primer, IT jargon can sound like alien speak at times.
Editors at LET are swimming in technology talk every day. Many of these terms and concepts become commonplace and as such, we tend to stop explaining them. However, technologies often have short half lives and their use can crossover between industries, creating ripples that affect the law enforcement waters. Thus it's important to keep a close running tab on these topics, what they mean and how you're using them. Miller reviews a handful of tech terms this issue (Page 44) but a fourteenth term didn't make the story due to space. It highlights a technology familiar to most law enforcement:
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14. VoIP Short for voice over IP, VoIP allows people to make telephone calls over the Internet. Computer to computer, computer to phone, phone to computer, and phone to phone calls are all possible, thanks to software like Skype and service providers like Vonage. Such communications are also another form of stored evidence that can provide investigators with clues to people and crimes.
VoIP is an example of why it's good practice to revisit our tech speak, definitions and applications, because it illustrates the changing nature of tech. VoIP technology has origins dating back many years and has a solid foundation in communications and the law enforcement industry.
However, this technology and its use has changed in recent years, due in part to an increased use in the consumer world. One example we wrote about in a past issue of LET was the way some tech-savvy teens discovered how to cover their prank call tracks by utilizing VoIP services to make (false) emergency calls, which dispatched SWAT teams to residences chosen at random. The tactic is called "switching," and it's not only financially costly for an agency, but it has the potential for serious consequences. Consider the scenario where an unwitting father armed himself with a knife as armed officers closed in on his home after an 18-year-old used the Internet to dispatch police. ("Sighting in Swatting," May 2009 or online at www.officer.com/article10233618).
The upspring of free Internet services like the software Skype, as Miller mentioned, provide anyone with an e-mail address the ability to chat via video and voice calls through the Internet, which has expanded VoIP beyond professionals and into the somewhat mainstream.
New terms are invented every day, as well. Writer Lachlan Paige's "Mapping human behavior" story on Page 24 describes a couple unfamiliar concepts, too: picocells and Cree.py.
Paige writes about the social networking app called Cree.py (a.k.a. the stalker app), which helps users take specific information from sites like Twitter, Foursquare, Flickr and create a map of the digital trail where those notes, pics or updates were dispatched from. Creepy indeed.
Novel cell phone signal enhancers noted in the story called picocells are cellular network boosters mounted on telephone poles, a telecommunications company solution that's cheaper than building additional cell sites. If picocells gain popularity and installation, they could in turn help investigators more accurately track cell signals from a widespread area to say a more pinpointed path.
The evolution on VoIP, swatting, apps like Cree.py and crossover industry ideas like picocell basestations are just a sampling of today's tech concepts and terms, but they help express why we keep tabs on these topics, both recycled and new.
If you've got a tech question or an idea for a technology we can break down, please feel free to share it by e-mailing editor@letonline.com.
Tabatha Wethal
Associate editor
For questions, news tips and comments, e-mail editor@letonline.com.
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