Criminal Investigations: Has Crime’s Digital Trail Gone Dark? | FBI, Cybercrime, Encryption & Digital Privacy

Gareth King (00:42)

Eric, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to Ruined by the Internet?

 

Eric Robinson (00:47)

I'm glad to be here, Gareth. Thanks so much.

 

Gareth King (00:49)

You spent decades chasing some of the most serious crimes imaginable as part of the FBI and a SWAT operator. Can you start us off by taking us back to a case or a moment that you realised that technology, whatever form it was, was fundamentally impacting or changing what you were up against?

 

Eric Robinson (01:10)

Yeah, there's many that the internet now touches everything that we investigate. I say we, I'm out now. But when I began in the FBI in 2002, I was in Chicago division with about a thousand employees, and there were five internet terminals for those thousand employees. So, things had changed quite a bit over the years.

 

I think back to a case I had not too many years ago where the naval criminal intelligence contacted me and CIS and said, hey, just so you know, there's a kid that separated from the Navy recently, and we separated him because he had homicidal and suicidal ideation. And we just think you should know.

 

So, I start looking at him and I do my usual thing. I've got my burner Facebook, Instagram accounts, and immediately I see here's this young man who is now stockpiling guns and excited, excited to show it off. And so many cases that the FBI has had come from you shouldn't have a gun, here's a gun, let's make a case.

 

That was the cue that there may be a problem. Went back, got medical history, and now I see okay. He was remanded to a psych ward on at least three occasions involuntarily. That in our country says you cannot have a gun and move through the process from there. But yeah, being on SWAT, I can't tell you the number of cases that we had on a felon who now is showing his weapon on Instagram and looking really cool. And that's enough for a search warrant and now we're in.

 

Gareth King (02:52)

That innate desire that so many people have to show off and get, you know, some likes online has actually made that process there a little bit easier or more streamlined for you. Is that the case? Is it does it give you a lot more leads voluntarily from criminals in that regard?

 

Eric Robinson (03:10)

It does and it also ties up manpower now. So, we go from, hey, we wanna make a case on this gang member to these days we get constant they're not full investigations, we call them guardians. It's like a preliminary investigation where a complainant calls our threat center and says, hey, this guy on Facebook is saying this and so now we're inundated with complaints that we need to follow up on that aren't real threats that even if the guy admits to it would never be charged.

 

And so now the public is doing their best, try to keep their community safe, but they're reporting on things where yeah, you know, I had one where a politician in my area said, we should just bomb Gaza to glass and somebody said, someone should bomb you. I’m like okay, that's not getting charged.

 

Gareth King (04:02)

Yeah. Yeah, look, if you take it literally, it obviously sounds like a credible threat. But in the context of the online space, it is obviously just that exaggerated way that people speak. So yeah, I can imagine, like you just pointed out, that that does tie up a lot of resources chasing these non-credible threats.

 

But while we're talking criminal threats in the digital space, now one of the things that is most easily associated by people with crime is encryption and encrypted messaging. And there's obviously loads of apps for that. But in your experience, how often or how successfully do those sorts of things actually hide people if they're trying to not be found?

 

Eric Robinson (04:46)

So, when I began my career in the FBI in 2002, I was working on drug cartels, guys selling heavy amounts of cocaine or heroin in Chicago. And even then, that far back, people understood you gotta use burner phones. Get a phone, don't have it traced to you, get rid of it, have that routine, but people wouldn't do that because it's too much work.

 

And similarly now, we have people who they might be using signal, WhatsApp, some type of encryption. And so that may keep us from intercepting in time, but now we have a search warrant, we get into the phone and here's all messages still saved. The criminals still get lazy, make mistakes, don't want to delete, and the tools are there to obfuscate law enforcement, to make roadblocks. And if people are thorough with it, yep, they can beat law enforcement easily. Right. But most people aren't.

 

Gareth King (05:49)

It does make you know, your point around the burner phones. As long as I can remember as well, like every criminally adjacent person seemed to like those old Nokia brick phones for some reason.

 

But you raise the point there around leaving stuff undeleted. And I guess that anybody that's looked into it in the slightest knows that digital trails never fully disappear. So, you know, those points that you mentioned, people get sloppy. How often does that generally happen? Is that something that is really unavoidable for all of us? And how often do people actually successfully fully cover their tracks? And how, really?

 

Eric Robinson (06:27)

Well, if they've done it successfully, I don't know about it. And that's and that's usually the case. It's because someone has gotten sloppy and now, we can insert ourselves or an informant to gain more.

 

So again, you can have a group that is fully encrypted, messages deleted, after an hour. Here's a criminal network, here's a white supremacist group, but you let our informant in. And so, he can take all that down. So, with all the technology there still is always going to be person to person contact and that is the crack where we get to insert ourselves. Whether it's having an informant or getting someone in who can then exploit and now we can get the information we need real time.

 

Gareth King (07:14)

Yeah, 'cause it sounds like from what you've just said there as well, like the whatever the technology is, it a lot of it is still driven by human-to-human trust, which is a topic that is coming up a lot from what I can see lately. Is there any particular cases that you can talk to where the human-to-human contact initiated something and then the technology and the tools available to you helped move things along?

 

Eric Robinson (07:40)

I'll take that backwards for you. Before I retired, an agent in another division came to me and he said, hey, we're looking at this kid. I always say kid. I mean, he was in his early twenties, and the agent told me, I've been more concerned about him than anybody else. He had an ideology he wanted to kill in the name of God. And the FBI had used every advanced technique to get into his computers, get into his phone, see what he was searching. And yet they needed an informant to assess, evaluate, and see if he was going to take next steps.

 

And that's where I came in with an informant who again use all these advanced techniques. I mean, this guy was telling me stuff and I go, I didn't know we could do that because I never had to. And then he's coming to me and saying, can you get this guy involved?

 

And it came down to a former analyst that worked with me, became an agent, now was a partner with this guy. And as he was going through the case, he goes, oh my gosh, does your informant know this name? Because I recognise the last name. Turns out they were family. That was the subject's best friend. And then we'd use this great technique where I said, hey, go tell them your company is looking for somebody. And then we made a questionnaire that seemed broad but was laser focused on saying, yeah, I've got a good friend who would be great for that, and boom, we are in from there.

 

So, we can do a lot. The FBI, other agencies have really advanced techniques. And it's still, I'm gonna say again, it comes down to unless this guy's a lone wolf, you have to have that human contact.

 

Gareth King (09:25)

Yeah, that's really interesting because for so many of us, all we know around, say, the FBI and all of that is kind of what we see through media. It almost feels a bit magical to the typical person out in the world.

 

But on that point of being just a person and going up against something, I'd love if we can talk about open-source intelligence as well now. This is something that I personally just discovered one day and started looking into. Obviously it gives investigators access to so many things and digital trails that we spoke about so quickly as well to paint that picture of a target or a suspect, whatever you want to call them.

 

Did you see things like this as a fundamental change that made, I guess, your job easier in what you were doing, or the job of, say, the bureau or whatever department it was? Or does it just gather so much stuff, that adds another layer of sorting and analysis? Like how does that process change from before it all came about to after?

 

Eric Robinson (10:32)

While I was in the FBI, I would get on Google and I'd see if I were a bad guy and I knew Eric Robinson, FBI, Toledo, Ohio, what can I find out about him? Like and that's a great tip that people should do too.

 

And it gave what I felt for me a real benefit, especially working financial crimes, terrorism cases. It broadens the person. So now I can see more about who he is, what cracks are there that I might expose or exploit. It helped to add to surveillance that, okay, now we need to know we're going to set up here instead of there.

 

And then recently in the US, we have a proliferation of what's referred to as flock cameras. So, these are license plate readers that police use warrantless, but you're in public, so you don't have that notion of privacy, but that was something often used too to say, can I find a pattern? When do I set up on surveillance on this guy?

 

So many of those things, LexisNexis, I'm going through and I'm seeing vehicles he's been on, all of these things that have been placed in the system by you as you sign cards, you know, get a credit card, move, whatever it might be.

 

Gareth King (11:52)

Yeah, that's a good point around the cameras and, you know, the license plate recognition. Now, I lived in the UK for a bunch of years, and it seemed like when I was there, the amount of cameras on every building and every pole and everything just seemed crazy. And that's like a decade ago. And it feels like in that last decade, that surveillance apparatus, whatever it is, as you said, is just advancing quicker and quicker and quicker.

 

But the one place that I've read that people do try and escape from it is the dark web. Now that is often portrayed as this kind of criminal safe haven that is, I guess from their perspective, safe, but also very difficult to get into from people doing the investigations.

 

From what you saw on the inside, how accurate would that reputation be? And what are the realities of the way people use it as a tool for crime?

 

Eric Robinson (12:51)

My experience with the dark web usage has been more I've worked dope; I've worked around guys who are working dope and those are always this guy's gonna buy off of that guy and we're gonna flip him from there. And the technology involved is getting on phones, which that was going when I came in.

 

And so, my exposure to that is has always been sexual exploitation. So, it was by the time, you know, my last few years I had a buddy who was an online undercover and he would regularly pose as either a young girl or more often as a parent who was offering their child for assault. And these guys, other than the time it took to write warrants, go through trials, set up the operations, you could do an arrest every day because there's enough people out there.

 

And they, they have that feeling. I'm back to humans. They have that feeling that they're safe because this is a dark web, but you're still talking to a person. So maybe you got what you wanted this time, you got it that time, you keep rolling the dice, and eventually it's going to be the police. And with these situations when they were now going to be person-to-person, they were going to show up in person and that's where the cracks are. That's where the vulnerability is. That they're gonna come forward and be there live while we wrestle them to the ground.

 

Gareth King (14:23)

Yeah, like even just on that, that being there live and wrestling the perpetrators to the ground. Like one thing that basically we're all aware of is these I guess you could call them vigilante YouTubers type thing, you know, where they go and catch these child predators themselves.

 

Is that a case of them using the same kind of tools that that I guess or methods that you guys would have been using, or is it their leads are not as qualified? Because it feels like potentially that could blow apart something that you might be working on if it went bad.

 

Eric Robinson (14:59)

Yeah, it could. I mean obviously they don't have judicial process like we did. They could find themselves in places where they're carrying out illegal activities or are complicit there. But the FBI doesn't like those guys. They meddle in things, they cause problems. But also, it's one more possibility that the guy who shows up might be a cop or he might be a vigilante, like you said.

 

And so, at the very least, it's like a lead ball on their leg to slow down where they have to be careful and watch what they're doing, rather than just I'm gonna go online and get what I want and there's no consequences. So yeah. I'll give ‘em that. But again, these guys are gonna show up in a parking lot and you don't know that somebody's gonna pull a gun on you too.

 

Gareth King (15:48)

No, of course. That's a different aspect to it that us in Australia. Like we don't generally need to worry so much about like the guns thing. So, I can imagine that must be incredibly tense mentally and even physically as well, like knowing that that risk is constantly there.

 

But one thing I'd love to just connect into our next section is we're talking about stuff that the internet has done and the effects that it's had on the way the investigations were conducted and all of that. Was there ever a point where a tool or something came out that really kind of hit you as, wow, this is like a great advantage to a criminal, or is it you guys were always on top of all that stuff?

 

Eric Robinson (16:34)

Gareth, we had a DOS based computer system until 2012. So the FBI is not on top of things, like as far as technology. We'll it's sped up since then. We're now only three steps behind.

 

Without getting into detail, it was a partnership that my analyst informed me about where, I mean there are groups that are non-governmental that their job is to create this great software. I'll call ‘em scrapers, where they can scrape the internet for certain things. And their job is to say, okay, we've got this tool. How about you give us a contract? Or, you know, you get a license and you're going to pay us ten thousand dollars.

 

And I remember having a Zoom meeting with one of these groups going, Holy crap. But then also going back, like, what's the legality of this? Now they're private. That's a civil issue. The government using something, okay, how's that work? There's been some others I remember I mean, this is public but talking to a colleague about putting like a poison pill in an email to see if we can get someone to click on it and now get judicial process, but now we're going to get a free download of phones.

 

So yeah, some of those things you know, those seems those are pretty James Bondy. Like that's remarkable that we can do that.

 

Gareth King (18:05)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even just that point there around that poison pill. I always hear about kind of coercion and things like that. And it was a great point that you raised there around the legalities.

 

While we are talking around the legal process and due process and judicial systems and things, like one thing I'd love if we can get into it is around platform non-cooperation. Now we know that some platforms are very vocal around not cooperating in criminal investigations, whether it's from a free-speech standpoint or a privacy standpoint.

 

In your experience, is non-cooperation like that a significant problem? Or is it just a couple of really vocal cases that they kind of use that as their angle for their platform?

 

Eric Robinson (18:52)

I think that many of the platforms try to present that to their users so that they can say, hey, we're looking out for you. And yet if I would speak to the users, I would say, hey, let me show you the guy that we're trying to get this information from. We're not looking for you. If I did want your information, I could subpoena it, I could write a search warrant, and I would get it. Because even if the platform tries to stall us, case is going to go to a court and now you're going to be forced to give it.

 

So, I remember one time I was trying to get a Gmail search warrant done and Google gave me such a hassle. And I'm like, hey, this guy is trafficking, sex trafficking girls. Do you mind if, you know, you speed this up? This isn't something to obfuscate on. So, a lot of times I think they're doing that so they can say, hey, you know, we stand with free speech, which is great.

 

And then there's the criminals and they come forward. And I'll tell you one significant run in we had, which was comical but also sobering. We had a case on a Black Lives Matter activist in our area. So, here's the FBI and we go to Facebook with a search warrant for a Facebook page of Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta.

 

And Facebook said, Excuse me, you know. This isn’t the 1960s. What is the FBI doing searching Black Lives Matter? And had to explain. Yeah, this guy's stealing. He's pretending to be Black Lives Matter. And people are he got four hundred thousand dollars of people thinking, Atlanta's a great hub for civil rights. Donate to this for my birthday instead of presents. But it made sense. I mean, the FBI had some significant abuses against civil rights leaders. You know, fast forward fifty years, they think we're doing it again. Like, no, this is legitimate. Once explained, they're like, okay, here you go.

 

Gareth King (20:58)

So, is it I guess their default position of non-trust to say the FBI, or is it they feel it's their responsibility to do their own processes even when presented with evidence of, say, sex trafficking or financial crime?

 

Eric Robinson (21:15)

Well, and so, when I write a search warrant or send a subpoena, they don't know all of the case. They just know I want this; I'm looking for that. And I mean, I'm not even mad that Facebook said no the first time around. It caused some problems and delayed our investigation, but we got what we needed because we were doing something righteous.

 

What I don't like is for many companies, if we send a subpoena we also have to send a court order on top of it that says, do not disclose, because otherwise they'll say, hey, by the way, the FBI asked for, you know, your contact information. So, I'm okay with that because that just adds one more step. It's a small thing to curtail abuse and we get around it.

 

Gareth King (22:02)

Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say it sounds like that extra hurdle to dot the I's, cross the T's, all of that and make it all legit is obviously worth it. But you know, we've just been speaking about Facebook, and we quickly touched on, you know, open-source intelligence previously. I'd just love if we can come back to that and ask you, is there any examples where you've seen that OSINT deliver results that those traditional methods would not have been able to and what did that look like once all this tech’s being involved?

 

Eric Robinson (22:34)

For me it was always having a better picture. The mandate for the FBI is to conduct long term enterprise investigations where we can dig out the route and find the breadth. And for me, that was part of understanding. So local police get a call, here's a problem, go solve the problem, and that's often it. For the FBI, here's a problem. Now I want to find out who all is involved.

 

And oftentimes that public information that helps me to understand what else might be there. It very infrequently solved cases or broke them wide open, but it gave clues or cues to say you should probably follow this, and now we're following through more sophisticated techniques or more legwork.

 

Gareth King (23:27)

It's interesting you just point out like little clues to follow and things like that. And one of the things that we all know about around the internet especially and technology is it almost democratises access to so much of this information.

 

Obviously, organisations are constantly looking at this stuff and compiling all that evidence. But I can imagine that you've got a lot of people out there focusing on what the organisations are doing, trying to catch those abuses of power. Does that constant threat, not threat, but chance of like very visible public accountability change the way things are conducted beyond just crossing the T's and dotting the I's that we spoke about?

 

Eric Robinson (24:10)

I think it's proper. And if I didn't like it, maybe I shouldn't have belonged to an agency that has had abuses in the past. You know that that's just how it goes. The Bureau, agencies make mistakes; they get called out for it. There's a swing. And I never felt like that swing was too far.

 

So, if people are trying to scrutinise us, I'm fine with that because I can abuse someone with my authority. I can misuse my gun, and I can misuse the technology or the judicial process as well. I can lie on a search warrant. I can make up facts. And so there needs to be those checks and there needs to be some scrutiny.

 

And then also I know what I saw, which is across the board, agents not just following our laws, but many times saying, Yeah, but is it right to do? And so I felt good about that, that I wasn't just the one saying I'm not sure we should or taking steps to just show humanity to people.

 

We had a political arrest years ago and as the news crews showed up, this guy was an asshole to me, so I had no reason to treat him nicely, but I had my buddy back the vehicle into his garage, put a belly chain so I knew he had bad shoulders from a sports career, cuffed him in front and just let have some dignity. So, I saw things like that. So, I feel comfortable and I also take no qualm if the public says, we’re watching you. I'm like, Yeah, good. Good.

 

Gareth King (25:48)

Okay, yeah, that's great to hear as well. Like I could imagine getting almost so tunnel vision and focused on the case and the lead and chasing the lead that that might potentially override the humanity behind it all.

 

But on that, let's talk the privacy paradox. I've read kind of an argument that says a society where investigators can access literally everything is more dangerous than a society where criminals occasionally escape using privacy tools. What are your thoughts on that as someone who's been in that world for decades?

 

Eric Robinson (26:24)

Yeah, I don't disagree. I can't speak to other law enforcement because I didn't work those, but there was never one thing that the entire case hinged on that if we can't get this or do this, we're not gonna get it done.

 

Famously there were mass shooters in San Bernardino and the FBI needed to crack their iPhone and paid a million dollars to have an Israeli company crack it. That was to see did they have co-conspirators. And you know, if you don't get into the phone, you just work harder and you find a different way. That was going to be the case on any occasion.

 

When I finished a case, I arrest someone, I've got the post arrest interrogation, and I want to get a confession. But if I was counting on a confession to win the case, you know, I wouldn't have been there in the first place. I should have things wrapped up and then if we get that one last thing, now it's sealed. So, it's always an advantage to be able to get into people's phones, to get onto their computers. And if we're not able to, then we're just gonna work harder and smarter.

 

Gareth King (27:36)

Yeah, look, it's interesting to hear that the phone is kind of one aspect of a case because we do hear as regular people that phones are targeted so much. And you know, I don't know what the reality is on the ground in the States, but you always hear about people who say, I tried to fly into America and they turned me around because I wouldn't give them my phone to look into at the airport or something like that.

 

Look, I'm sure that that actually happens, but is there legal protections for civilians that they can just outright refuse or is that what you need the warrant for? How does that all work?

 

Eric Robinson (28:09)

Yeah, that, that's an abuse. There's a notion that once when you come into the country, you should like we can have access to the phone. I've been a part of those types of searches before. And then those customs officials say, ah they're cracking down. We're only supposed to use for this. And like, wait, what? Like you so you were getting into phones and now they just say, it doesn't look good anymore. Like, it's either legal or it's not. I didn't understand that.

 

And here's what I'll say. You're not receiving due process if that happens. And what are you gonna do if the official says, give me your phone or leave? Like now you're stuck. And so that can be an abuse.

 

Gareth King (28:53)

I know personally there's been times when I've been detained at an airport after like twenty-four hours of a flight and I you know, I didn't know what was going on. And the worst thing I could think of at that point was I would be getting put back on the plane to do that flight again. So, you know, I'd probably be like, what do you need? Let me in. So, I yeah, I can imagine how that could be abused.

 

But has there been any cases that you can speak to where there has been those abuses or overreach that have made it fall apart?

 

Eric Robinson (29:22)

No, not for me. And I I'm glad for that. I would not be a part of something like that. And in the FBI, I saw very rarely small occasions of what I would consider inappropriate. I mean, you could call an abuse. I'll just say inappropriate.

 

We had an arrest warrant on a SWAT operation. So, we have the right to go in the house to search for the guy to see if he's there, which means I can look in any place that I'm, he might be hiding. And then I saw guys opening desk drawers and I'm thinking, well, he's not in a desk drawer. And if you find contraband, what do you intend to do with that? Because you can't put that in a warrant. That while searching him I found a brick of cocaine in a five by six drawer.

 

After that I spoke to a close friend of mine on the team and I said, did you see that? He said yes. I said I didn't like that. He said I didn't either. And I said, if you ever see me doing something inappropriate, I want you to put your hand on my shoulder and I'll respond properly. And then I waited and he said the same thing to me.

 

And we saw that much more of having our own checks. I mean, if you see some of the things that the federal government is doing now that you think are not appropriate, I will just say this - in my conversations with my colleagues, both when I was in and now that I'm out, they also look at that and say that's inappropriate.

 

Gareth King (30:51)

Yeah, and again, from a from a civilian perspective or a global civilian perspective, the States is that cultural leader, like so much of it, and there's so much of attention on the States for various reasons at any given moment, looking for abuses. Now, whether they're there, whether they're not, it does feel like that scrutiny is coming from all angles of the globe.

 

We have been talking about technology and different tools, how it's affected investigations and how process is conducted, and evidence gathered and things like that. Now, one thing that I'm sure you're aware of because everyone on Earth is basically aware of it now is AI. Now we know it's being rapidly deployed across basically everything and in the context that we're speaking today on both sides. So obviously for the chase and the potential escapees.

 

Based on what you've seen either recently, currently, or where things are going. Have you got any thoughts on artificial intelligence being used in both crime and the investigation of it?

 

Eric Robinson (31:54)

Yeah, so I was just talking to someone today who was speaking about how their family was, like fell for a spoof saying, your son was in a car accident, and he got a DUI and now needs money to get bailed out. Presumably AI being used to mimic the voice or to change it. It's so simple. I mean, you can use it for those simple scams. There's obvious ways that people have heard about it used sexually as well and cases going on with that.

 

As far as like using it for analysis and scraping, yeah, again, the FBI switched from DOS-based computer systems in 2012. So, we will, we will always be behind on this. There will be a group of hyper intelligent FBI agents who are on the front edge and then the field will be trying to catch up to whatever route that criminals take this in.

 

Gareth King (32:53)

Yeah, I mean, you've mentioned that DOS-based system and being behind, is there is there kind of a push right now, like there is right across the I guess the civilian world, to take so much resources and put it into these new forms of technology, say within the investigation sphere? Or is it still fairly reactive, would you say?

 

Eric Robinson (33:14)

It's still reactive. I've already mentioned the DOS-based system a couple times. Now I'll now I'll tell you another anecdote. I remember when digital cameras had been out for quite some time and the FBI said, no, no, no, we can't use digital cameras because you could easily manipulate the images and it won't be good for court. And we were so slow just to get digital cameras.

 

Now, similarly, what do we do when we're feeding our own information into a system that's got to be completely internal? I mean, we there can't be anything where I'm feeding all this intel that we have and somehow, it's being analysed and could be leaked out.

 

So also, I mean, right now, I don't trust AI, and I don't just mean that in like an existential threat. I don't trust its results. I still prefer the guy who's got 20 years’ experience and has seen this before and can say yeah, I'm pretty sure this is what he's doing, and this is how we get him.

 

Gareth King (34:12)

Yeah, I mean that experience point is something that comes up a lot from a lot of arguments around it, isn't it? It does make a lot of mistakes that are that are pretty easy to recognise if you actually know what you're doing.

 

While we're talking new forms of technology or even just technology in general, now obviously something new coming out, it creates a whole lot of new opportunities for various types of crime.

 

Would you say that there's any types of crime or categories of crime, whether it's AI, whether it's something else, has allowed the creation of, that you would say is particularly worth paying attention to simply because of the risk of it?

 

Eric Robinson (34:50)

Yeah, I think it's gonna be those nickel and dime scams. Well and I say that, but it could be even like targeting financial institutions as well. And again, it starts with people. The manipulation begins with some type of just gathering of intelligence through bumping into people, making phone calls, finding things out, reading a website and seeing that the CFO is gonna climb Kilimanjaro. Okay, well he won't have his phone. And now I'm going to use that to use AI, hey, I'm stuck in Nepal. I'm you know, I'm somewhere, I need money.

 

My own financial advisor called me one day and said, you know, we got an email that said, wire this money from this account. Had the right account, had the right numbers, you know, I'm gonna send a million dollars over here, and it comes back to humans going, yeah, let me check on that first. So as sophisticated as someone might be, it still needs to come down to your own intuition and experience.

 

Gareth King (35:51)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's a great point around the digital trail that we're all leaving. And obviously if you've got your stuff open, people can take wherever you are and create a little scam out of that.

 

But look, in your from your experience, if you could make one change to how tech platforms, whether it's social media, whether it's anything else, could meaningfully improve their value, I guess for investigations, without compromising privacy, what would that be? Like is there is there a way to kind of reconcile those two worlds?

 

Eric Robinson (36:29)

I don't think so for a couple of reasons. Every agency would like some type of backdoor fail safe that only Apple has, only Google has, whatever. By my understanding, it's just not there. That if you allow for a backdoor, somebody's gonna go through the back door.

 

And I'm okay with that. I'm gonna throw something against the wall in anger, you know, when I'm when we can't get what we need, but then you just go back and take care of it. And as much as it again would make things more difficult, that's okay.

 

Because the government has so much power and authority, if you are slowing them down in one way, you're possibly slowing them down from another way that could cause harm. So, I'm okay with how things are. The playing field isn't level. The government will always have the advantage. And so, if there are obstacles, it's okay. We're still always gonna have the advantage. So keep the privacy.

 

Gareth King (37:34)

That makes total sense that something with the resources and the power of the government would have the advantage. But would you say that there's any particular area of crime that is using technology more successfully than others? Like, what's the most dangerous area of crime based on how it uses technology, would you say?

 

Eric Robinson (37:57)

So, I'll just answer that with what my experience was of what I'd seen, and that is the regular use of encrypted platforms for people to converse, make plans, share information quickly and easily.

 

Back in my day when I started, the only way you're doing it is over the phone. Well, you could by mail perhaps, but they're gonna use phones. So, we have to get on the phone and we could get everything that they were sending as they talked.

 

And now it's so much quicker. It's encrypted, and that is what's rife. If you have an opportunity to speak with someone in Syria who is working with ISIS and you can send information like that, anyone can be a part of that conversation. And then you have stochastic terrorism going on where people are pushing their ideas out, and that's dangerous because here's thousands of individuals eating that up in different groups and chats and one of ‘em now takes that up and you doesn't matter if you have informants in there, you don't know who that's gonna be until afterwards.

 

Gareth King (39:12)

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point on the stochastic terrorism that you've just raised there. You obviously mentioned that instance a while ago around someone threatening, what was it, to bomb, saying someone should bomb you like to the politician.

 

From my observation, that is how so much of the internet and social media especially operates. Everything is designed to enrage people. If we draw that to its, I guess logical conclusion, you enrage people enough, they'll become radicalised, whatever ideology they're following.

 

Is that is that a real problem that you saw happening? That something that could start like a fairly innocuous joke on social media can attract all sorts of people that will kind of groom that person into their ideology to an in extreme sense?

 

Eric Robinson (39:59)

It can be. We had what we refer to as racially motivated violent extremists and those are from whatever group. They're the ones who are saying we want to create this world and of course violence is necessary to do that. They would advertise in some ways and like say, hey, come be a part of this. So, they had their public, their forward channel where people could come and say, I see you're, you hate Jews as well. Fantastic. And then move into the private groups from there once they've proven themselves or gone through some identifying process.

 

But they didn't have to recruit necessarily. They would just put it out there. And then the people who already have this hate and anger or disillusionment then, yeah, I know where to go now. And then we would often have that.

 

And a couple of years ago I had one informant who was in many of these groups. He calls me on a Saturday, and he was always telling me about these threats. I'm like, I know, man. Like there's don't tell me about every threat. They're always threatening people. And so, he's telling me about it. And it's a Saturday and I'm out running errands. And he says, Yeah, there's this kid in Ireland who's gonna kill Muslims. And I go, Okay. And he says, well, he's already made a scouting video, and he's got a deadline for it. And I said, let me pull over. I need to write this down.

 

And then within twenty-four hours emergency procedures to Snapchat, Instagram, I forget like all these platforms where they're conversing and identifying who it is and sending it out. And when the Irish Garda got him, follow club on his head, on his way out the door, ready to carry it out.

 

Gareth King (41:46)

Wow. We hear so much of platforms online. You know, so many people call them like havens or hives or hotbeds of extremism and hate and stuff like that. Like, what's the reality? Are they really as bad as people make out?

 

Eric Robinson (42:03)

Oh in the private groups? My gosh. Yeah.

 

Gareth King (42:06)

Or just even public platforms as well. Say like X or anything like that is called that.

 

Eric Robinson (42:13)

Well and we would have that. So, there'd be this individual who's spreading his Nazi, like very vocal in the private group, and now we're seeing him on X. And now we have you know, this one says somebody should kill these, and you know, all the words.

 

And then you go to his X account, but this is more God bless America. It's good to be a strong male. I support these, like so you could see it, but this was more I'm going to appeal to people because I know they're looking. This is I'm going to vent my hate and maybe follow from here. People DM and now he says, hey, if you're interested, move in here.

 

But I could see it and then you got to be able to read it later where like now I don't know this guy, but I'm reading his X account and like that guy, he's one of them because I'm familiar with, I'm familiar with the public language.

 

Gareth King (43:12)

So, it's kind of more that that more palatable gateway into those private channels, which makes a lot of sense. And I'm sure that that would happen across any kind of digital platform where people can communicate with each other privately, right?

 

Eric Robinson (43:25)

Yeah. And it depends on the persons. Some of them are great at presenting that public message and some are terrible. So, you know, it's like Anwar Alaki. He was a great spokesperson for Al Qaeda. So, boom, let's keep pushing this guy out there. And now you have this guy. he's great with the memes. He knows how to show something that's funny. And if it gets a little racist, it's like they're jokes, you know? But those who know, know.

 

Gareth King (43:55)

Yeah, that's an interesting point on the memes. Something that I'm not shocked by, I'm kind of shocked to actually see it play out is even just this recent Iran conflict. Of like the memes coming from the Iranian government and the US government. I'm like, how are we at a point where we're kind of having this meme warfare online? And that while I find it kind of amusing in isolation, the stuff that they're coming up with, I just think to myself, how is this very, very serious issue being communicated through memes for likes online? Is that is that simply because, as you said, that that palatable face is more easy to get support from people, do you think?

 

Eric Robinson (44:40)

This is a call back to like the eighties where they would have dance offs. You know that that's how we solve the gangs solve their problems. Yeah. West Side Story. Like now they're fighting through memes, but I think they're trying to you know, they're mocking the President the same way that he does it himself. They're like, here's some medicine for you too.

 

Gareth King (45:00)

Yeah, totally. And I guess that's that democratisation of the internet that anyone can do, which is entertaining but strangely scary at the same time, that we're kind of doing that.

 

Look, after everything that you've seen from inside some very serious investigations over the last few decades of what is, you know, been the digital age, would you say that the internet and technology has made things harder or giving investigators tools that you've never had before that could kind of outweigh anything that was lost? Where have we ended up, do you think?

 

Eric Robinson (45:37)

Well, so I'll just throw this at you. Like so imagine you're trying to catch gangsters in the 1920s and you're the FBI. Now imagine you're in the 2020s and you're trying to catch these guys. Clearly, we have so much more and with the internet too that's going to assist us.

 

At the same time, the internet has broadened what those crimes are. Like so, these guys aren't selling bootleg liquor, you know, they're doing something much worse. So, it has made for much more crime. It has broadened it. it's made it more serious, but easily the tools that we have are much greater.

 

Gareth King (46:19)

Mm, so it seems like everything just kind of levels up in correlation with each other, which makes perfect sense really. Okay, Eric, to finish up then, what's a belief or concern that you have about technology right now that you wish was getting more attention?

 

Eric Robinson (46:36)

Oh that's fantastic. I'm a big fan of audiobooks. So, I mean for me, I'm a bit fascinated with the proliferation of this very simple form that goes out, you know, and you get the reels on Instagram and you get snippets, and yet like any person who has a modicum of ability, and I'm not putting that down, but like if you're pretty good, and you've got an appeal and you've got an angle; you can run your own TV show.

 

That's pretty interesting that you talk about democratisation. I don't have to be special to host a show. I just have to have a good angle and be good. I don't have to wait for some agent to see me, and I don't have to look great. I can say, this is my angle. I'm talking to people, I find great people, I talk to ‘em. I think that's kind of neat. That's pretty cool.

 

Gareth King (47:32)

Yeah, very cool. I totally agree. look, Eric, thanks so much again for joining us today. What have you got coming up and where can people follow what you're up to?

 

Eric Robinson (47:42)

What I've got coming up is I mowed the lawn today, so you know I've got now I gotta I can let that sit for a week. I wrote a book about my time in the FBI. I spent twenty-four years in the FBI. Rather uniquely, I spent twelve years in Christian ministry before that. I was a Baptist pastor in Western New York and preached on Easter Sunday, 2002. The next Sunday I was in Quantico, Virginia at the FBI Academy. And then the Sunday after that I was preaching at the FBI Academy because they didn't have a chaplain.

 

So, I have some stories about what it's like if you take a Baptist pastor and you stick him in the FBI. And here's a guy who's never handled a gun, but he gets to spend most of that time on a SWAT team. So, my book is called Irreverend: From Saving Souls to Chasing Sinners in the FBI. Comes out in October. And if people want to find out more about the book and follow me, they can go to my website which is preachertobreacher.com

 

Gareth King (48:45)

Awesome, Eric. We'll definitely drop that info in the show notes. Thanks again.

 

Eric Robinson (48:49)

Thanks, Gareth. Appreciate it.