The investigation that led to the suspects in the murders of councilwoman Marielle Franco and her driver Anderson Gomes took place in informational space. It was probably Brazil’s first police investigation of the post-virtual era.
The investigation was based on analyzing and interpreting mobile phone signals and accessing files stored in digital clouds—that is, on remote servers. It relied on access to confidential data, rather than wiretapping.
As we know, the weapon and car used in the crime, which can be called an execution, were never found. All the remaining clues were found in informational space, through methods that at one extreme express the sophistication of expert filtering and, at the other, the basic elements of everyday life for practically anyone with a mobile phone.
The police began with a very large search universe: 33,000 mobile lines connected to the 2,248 towers along Marielle’s route on the night of the crime. An image from a surveillance camera on the street where Marielle attended an event that evening made it possible to narrow that number.
The image showed a shiny object that appeared to be a mobile phone inside a silver Chevrolet Cobalt matching the known characteristics of the suspects’ vehicle. So far, we are in the realm of police expertise.
But when used, a mobile phone, like any other device, is automatically logged by the carrier. After all, that is how our phone bill is generated: by usage time and whether it is within its coverage area, thereby revealing its approximate location (which can be refined by linking the device to GPS, as generally happens). At this point, we enter everyday phone use.
Mini brother is watching you
This narrowed the search universe to 318 lines. One recorded a call to military police officer Ronnie Lessa’s number; he was already a suspect. Access to his confidential data was then requested. Examining Lessa’s internet searches showed that he had followed Marielle’s events and searched for weapons, silencers and other information a few days before the councilwoman’s murder.
Although insufficient to answer the persistent question—who ordered Marielle’s murder?—the investigation was a major step toward solving the crime.
But what happened also makes clear that we live in a world where “mini brother is watching you,” in which we are walking databases leaving footprints and traces of our activities on servers of every kind.
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