Uncovering Criminal Behavior With Computational Tools

In this chapter we explore the opportunities brought in by advanced social network analysis techniques to study criminal behaviors and dynamics in heterogeneous communication media, along multiple dimensions including the temporal and spatial ones. To this aim, we present LogViewer, a Web framework we developed to allow network analysts to study combinations of geo-embedded and time-varying data sources like mobile phone networks and social graphs. We present some use-cases inspired by real-world criminal investigations where we used LogViewer to study criminal networks reconstructed from mobile phone and social interactions to identify criminal behaviors and uncover illicit activities.