As data space fills up, messages are saved for shorter periods
Sunday, May 1, 2011 03:12 AM
By Holly Zachariah
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

As the world frets about whether the latest generation of cellphones track our every move, a more-obvious trail that sometimes can prove useful - as shown by a string of recent criminal and ethics cases - practically evaporates in seconds.

With an estimated 5 trillion text messages being sent around the globe this year, phone companies say they either no longer store the messages or do so for only a few hours or a few days. This can be a problem for law-enforcement officers trying to track down missing people or criminals.

"Anytime I can't get enough information to solve a case, that's an issue for me," said Brance Johnson, special-agent supervisor of the computer-crimes unit of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification & Investigation.

Sometimes, by the time authorities realize that they need to see text messages and try to get subpoenas or court orders seeking them, the messages are gone, Johnson said.

Still, he acknowledged that no company has unlimited storage space for these trillions of texts floating around.

And although privacy advocates worry about the consequences of Big Brother, few can deny that cellphone technology can aid investigators in some instances.

Take, for example, the recent case of triple-murderer Sammy Littleton II in Logan County.

When the daughter of Littleton's live-in girlfriend disappeared in February, no one focused on Littleton as a suspect.

But on the day that 26-year-old Tiffany Brown was reported missing, Bellefontaine police notified Verizon of a problem and asked them to find her phone.

Using signals from tower locations, the phone company was able to get a hit. (Police later said that Littleton had the phone by then and had only briefly turned it on.)

When police then asked two days later for Brown's text messages, some were still on file. Those texts showed that Littleton had lured Brown to his home on the day she was last seen.

But even as police sorted through the texts, processed the information and found Brown's body hidden in Littleton's basement, he was already on the run. He killed two more before he was arrested.

Tracking technology also helped lead authorities to the people charged in the abduction of Summer Inman in Logan on March 22. Cellphone use and a separate GPS unit indicated that Inman's estranged husband and his parents were in Logan when Summer, 25, was taken.

Her body was found on March 29 in a church septic tank. William A. Inman II and his parents have been charged only with her disappearance.

In the current NCAA investigation of Ohio State University football coach Jim Tressel, the timing of phone calls to acquaintances and a trusted mentor of his star player also will surely come into play.

But the fact that text messages are harder to come by might surprise some people. Text messages have, after all, taken center stage before.

In 2008, thousands of sexually explicit text messages exposed an affair and kicked off the rapid downfall of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. The messages between Kilpatrick and his chief of staff were retrieved from city-issued pagers.

At the time, it had people across the country talking about how text messages could come back to haunt you. But that was then.

Now, the sheer volume of the messages makes tracking them a problem, experts say.

People could always keep the messages on their phones, of course, and the texts will exist as long as the phone does.

But, as far as the phone companies are concerned, a message sent and received is as good as gone.

"We don't keep them. Period," said Jason Gertzen, a spokesman for Sprint.

Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Nancy Stark wouldn't discuss specifics but said text messages are stored by the company "for a very, very limited period."

Johnson said the bureau's approach is always, "Ask for everything and hope you get something."

Sometimes, the text messages are gone. But in other cases, such as Littleton's, an officer might get lucky, and some data is still on computers, he said.

Phone companies, however, have well-established protocols for handing it out.

Court orders, subpoenas and proof that a criminal matter is at hand or that someone is really in danger must exist, Johnson said.

"We know who to go to at every company, though," he said. "We strike quickly, and we don't mess around."

hzachariah@dispatch.com

Source: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content...tigations.html