| Scenario |
A detective in Bangor, Maine assigned to monitor a
registered sex offender believes the man, Sam Lindblad, has been attempting
to molest children again. The detective’s suspicion was aroused
after the manager of the apartment complex where Lindblad resides found
an advertisement posted by Lindblad in the complex laundry room, offering
to tutor children after school. When the detective went to Lindblad’s
apartment to question him, he noticed crayon drawings by children on
the refrigerator and observed Lindblad cutting pictures of young boys
out of catalogues. As no laws had been broken, the detective had to
leave Lindblad’s apartment. He returned to his office and searched
for Lindblad’s name in N DEx using his identifiers to obtain
information about Lindblad and to learn whether any other LEA had conducted
an investigation on him. He also enters a subscription to be alerted
of future activity on Lindblad. The detective included Lindblad’s
e-mail address of “tigerguy@aol.com” and Internet Protocol
(IP) address in the subscription request.
Six months later, N DEx notified
the detective when Lindblad’s
IP address had been queried on the system. A special agent with the Air
Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) at F.E. Warren Air Force
Base in Wyoming, responded to a complaint by a service member that her
10-year-old son was being approached online by someone using the screen
name “lionguy@aol.com” who she thought might be an adult.
The text of the message, while stopping short of asking the child to
meet the man for sex, was suggestive. The AFOSI agent did not believe
he had enough evidence to seek a subpoena for the Internet Provider to
obtain the true identity of the screen name so he entered the IP address
into N DEx as a search. N DEx recognized the IP address from the Bangor
subscription and notified both parties.
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