Episode 109: Kevin Metcalf

Kevin Metcalf started his career in the Army in 1988. Since then, he’s been in one uniform or another – state, local, and federal law enforcement, and later counterterrorism. In 2006 he became a single parent to his two daughters, ages two and five, when their mother died. At the time, he was doing counterterrorism work. One Thanksgiving, he was in London for work when his overnight babysitter called and said she couldn’t make it. Luckily, he had some amazing neighbors who stepped in and took care of his daughters. But that was it – Kevin decided he needed to do something that kept him closer to home.

He returned to the United States, went to law school, and became a prosecuting attorney. As an investigator, he was trained to look in data silos. He had to know about DNA, fingerprints, and how all of that worked. But cell phones were pretty much unknown at that point. Using cell phone location data, social media, and other electronic evidence wasn’t being done much. Finding Somewhere to Make a Difference
Kevin had spent over twenty years in law enforcement, but as a prosecuting attorney, he was the new guy. He started looking around for somewhere he could make a difference. That place ended up being social media, cell phones, computers, and other technology that was new at the time. He went through the FBI’s CAST training and went to the Secret Service National Computer Training Center three times to learn about forensics and social media.

Working with cell phones and social media led to a lot of cases involving children and child predators. He had many jury trials that involved social media and cell phone evidence. That’s where he found a major difference between investigating and prosecuting. As an investigator, he just had to find the evidence. As a prosecutor, he had twelve people from the community with varying levels of interest, expertise, and usage of technology. He had to figure out how to connect the technological evidence to the witness statements, forensic reports, and more “traditional” evidence.

After a few of those trials, it really clicked. Why were investigators not making these connections on the front end? Law enforcement treats everything as its own separate silo. But it all fits together, and as a prosecutor Kevin had to start making those connections. Kevin’s combined experience as an investigator and a prosecutor led him to go back and start helping with investigations again. In each case, there were federal agencies and other agencies involved. Kevin would come in and tell them what information to ask for and what language to include on the search warrant. Usually, with Kevin’s help, they recovered the kids within a day.

This brought Kevin to the attention of the National Cybercrime Conference. The conference brings in experts in cybercrime from all over. Kevin spoke there about the work he was doing to combat child trafficking and exploitation. Other experts saw what he was doing and how much he was helping people and wanted to be a part of it.

Now, they’ve formed a nonprofit, the National Child Protection Task Force, made of active-duty law enforcement, active-duty military, private sector technology experts, engineers, and a wide variety of others. They come together to look at problems and ask questions about technology. What data are we seeing? Is there anything we can do with that? What information are we not asking for, and what do we not know? This variety of experts coming together has made a big difference.

The CSI Effect: The CSI effect is real. People do expect you to be able to solve something in 30 minutes. … If you’re going in front of a jury, you better understand the CSI effect because it does impact what they expect.