Recap · Masters Conference New York
Right Discovery Staff Writer
Josh Janow and Paige Hansen (SMI Aware) reframed social ingestion as behavioral forensics, not novelty optics. As Janow put it, social feeds are "where people live online—it's their relationships, their movements, their mindset—it's behavioral evidence."
Facebook, Instagram, X, Venmo, Strava, and adjacent apps now sit beside email archives in scope conversations; ephemeral stories that vanish in 24 hours routinely establish intent faster than stale attachments. Yet volume never excuses sloppiness: teams need ethical, defensible, repeatable collections—hashing, metadata capture, chain-of-custody narratives that survive cross.
Accessibility and admissibility diverge: public artifacts may be fair game for preservation, while restricted personas demand lawful process—not screenshot cowboy tactics. Alias resolution and proactive ECA playbooks keep squabbles from metastasizing mid-trial.
"You can't afford to overlook the digital footprints people leave behind in public and semi-public spaces."
Topics: social media intelligence, SOCMINT, investigations, eDiscovery, Right Discovery, Facebook, Instagram, X, Venmo, Strava, preservation, chain of custody, behavioral evidence