To illustrate how people no longer have a filter on the web, Detective Sergeant Maya Alieh is looking for a concrete example. At the end of the line, she finally finds one: that of people who exhibit a weapon on social networks.
In 2018, says the supervisor of the cyber investigations team of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), her team handled three files of the kind…
“But in 2022, it is 190 files of people who exhibited a firearm on social networks. »
Whether it’s exhibited weapons, threats, harassment or other acts where digital is a tool to commit a crime, the one who has 12 years of experience in cybercrime is still amazed by the impunity that people think they own because they use a keyboard.
“It’s not that people have stopped hiding, it’s that they think they are hidden, behind their screen, with an avatar,” says Maya Alieh.
So there is a trivialization, we no longer draw the line between freedom of expression and crime.
Maya Alieh, Detective Sergeant
This trivialization of criminal words and gestures, notes the detective sergeant, is the result of the generalization of the use of social networks. Children, for example, are using tablets at an increasingly young age. We are all exposed to increasingly extreme words and gestures, observes Maya Alieh, and this leads to a form of desensitization.
“A desensitization?
— It’s more interesting to share violent words or gestures for ‟likes” than to report it to an adult, or to call 911! »
Today, Detective Sergeant Alieh is invited to Montreal City Hall, where she will explain what her team of nine investigators and two civilians are doing to elected officials from the Commission on Public Safety. The SPVM cyber investigations team does not launch any investigation, but it assists all SPVM investigators who need to break through digital walls.
Posting suicide on Facebook, luring children for sexual purposes on TikTok, death threats on Twitter, beatings on Instagram, photos of young people displaying guns on YouTube: it is Maya Alieh’s team who is requested by Montreal police investigators.
“The suspects, are they mostly young people?
– Nope. There is no standard profile. It affects all generations. It’s amazing how different the groups of people in our files are. There is really a trivialization in general: as everyone is on social networks, there is no longer a filter. »
The cyber investigations team has been in existence since 2017. This trivialization of dangerous words and gestures on the internet mentioned by Maya Alieh is reflected in the number of investigations and in the staff of her team: 1,588 investigations in 2022 (an increase of approximately 20%) and 12 investigators in January 2023 (they were 5 a year ago).
I ask Maya Alieh the success rate for finding people, when SPVM investigators make requests to members of her team. Praising her team’s investigative techniques and the collaboration of digital platforms, she hesitates to give a precise percentage, beating around the bush a bit. I interrupt him:
“More than 60%?
“Yes, more than 60%,” she replies.
By speaking in public, the boss of the SPVM’s cyberinvestigators wants to send two messages.
One, that of empowerment: “We must empower our young people, and empower ourselves as adults. We are accountable for what we say or do on the internet. There are consequences. And the more time goes by, the more zero tolerance it is. »
Two, that of the importance of reporting to the police: “We can’t see everything, 24 hours a day. We need the public to report words and gestures that go beyond the limits. »
Visually, as an Internet user, I must say that I have personally noticed for years these outdated limits mentioned by the police officer Maya Alieh. Every day, I read or see things on Quebec social networks that clearly fall under the Criminal Code. There is a kind of freedom of speech that is staggering and disturbing.
“Words have consequences, warns Maya Alieh, even under a pseudonym. If you commit a crime with words, you will be traced, accused. What is surprising, when we stop them, is that they did not think that their words could have consequences. A lot of things are said about a person, a group of people, without regard to the consequences. That’s what surprises me the most: free-for-all. »