Just realized that might have come across as harsh and figured I'd tell a story that sort of shows where I am coming from. A couple of years ago, I had a user on a site post child ****. It looked as though he was trying to post a picture of something related to the thread, but accidentally posted this picture instead... and it was terrible. To this day, the worst thing I've ever seen.
So, I traced the user's IP address, did some other things, and found out who this person was and where he lived. I then called his local police department and explained what had happened and how I got the information that I had.
The excuse I got over and over again was, "You can't prove conclusively that the content came from the user you have identified. As such, there is nothing we can do other than keep an eye on the person."
The thing is though, I had conclusive digital proof and no matter how many times I tried to explain that, they simply didn't understand the technology. Both IP tracing and meta data analysis was completely lost to them.
I gave up... But then, that night I kept thinking about that poor kid and what she must be going though. I have kids of my own... So... I called the FBI. They pretty much ignored me the first few times and then, I got a hold of a woman in the DC branch that would hear me out. I was able to convince her that I wasn't crazy and she transferred me to the Cyber Crime division of the FBI.
Long story short, these guys did things that I didn't know was possible. And they did it within minutes of verifying what I was telling them. Three brothers in Seattle were arrested the following day. Turns out, they were also talking to a family member at the same time, already had a case, and the digital stuff was just sort of icing on the cake.
You can read more about it here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...aged-82-80-and-78-accused-of-child-***-abuse/
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But the one thing I learned about that whole experience while talking to the FBI was that most local police departments are woefully undertrained when it comes to cyber crime and understanding how the internet actually works behind the scenes.
Given that, it doesn't surprise me at all that some police departments are using Edge as a department browser. Hopefully, their IT department is sharp enough with the firewall to keep people from taking advantage of that.
