Writing Tips

Welcome to this week’s #TuesdayTip. For the next two blog posts, I am returning to the use of modern technology in your writing, focusing on Social Media. I previously looked at mobile phone technology (Tips 34 and 35) and these articles can be seen as a companion piece to those posts.This week, I intend to discuss the pros and cons of using this technology in your book and then, below the cut, bring together a list of some of the more common social media platforms with key facts to help you avoid easy errors. I will be focusing on the Facebook-owned platforms this week.

Next week, I will look at other services such as Twitter etc, as well as more niche apps and darker issues such as End-to-End Encryption and cyber stalking, and the narrative opportunities these present.

​Given the rapidly changing nature of this, topic, I may find myself returning to it in the future!

Should you use Social Media in your books?
If you are writing modern crime novels, then the chances are you will have to address this issue. Criminals are like any other member of modern society; unless they are especially savvy professionals, they probably stumbled into committing the murder or other heinous act that your book investigates, and so up until then they will likely have been using mobile technology and social media the same way that you or I do.Leaving aside the massive increase in workload from idiots using Twitter to commit hate crimes etc (which then have to be investigated), social media is becoming more and more useful as an investigative tool to police and intelligence services. Rightly or wrongly, both prosecution and defence lawyers have used interactions on social media in court, especially for cases such as rape that may rest on the believability of the parties involved.

If your story hinges around social media, then it is important to accept that it will date your story to some degree. A book written twenty-years ago with copious references to MySpace, can be somewhat inaccessible to modern readers. Try to avoid that and future-proof your books.

Don’t assume that future readers will know what Facebook etc are.
There is a fine line between over-explaining what Facebook is for the current reader, and reminding future readers of the inexplicable urge of people in the first three decades of this century to share everything – from what they had for dinner, to their online banking password hints – with total strangers and future world President Mark Zuckerburg.
Perhaps slip a few subtle lines into the prose:
“Check his Facebook to see if they know each other?” ordered DCI Jones.
Hardwick opened the social media app on her computer, pulling up the victim’s profile page. She navigated to his Friends List.
“Yes, they were friends on Facebook. He liked some of the posts that he shared.”
There is still a need for the reader to be familiar with the concept behind social media, but even if Facebook suddenly disappears, its ubiquity today is such that hopefully this will be enough to jog memories.

Make sure that the platform existed when your book is set!
You may be surprised just how recently they appeared; and often they started as niche applications, only available in the United States.

Make sure that the application had the features you are writing about at that time. The applications and services are constantly being updated and new features introduced. For example, WhatsApp didn’t fully implement End-to-End Encryption on all devices until 2016, having started trialling it in late 2014/2015.

Be mindful of the workload on your detectives!
Dedicated Social Media Units are becoming more common, but the sheer volume of data from these services is over-whelming, with an increasing backlog in its analysis.

How will you match the narrative demands of your story with the need for realism? Could the time taken be used as a means to delay key reveals? If Suspect X and the victim were otherwise unconnected, then somebody stumbling across an online interaction between them halfway through the book could flip your investigation on its head!

Thank you for reading this far. I hope that the information was useful.

Given that you probably came here via a link on social media, I have decided to place the detailed look at different social media platforms below the cut, so feel free to skip if you are short of time.

Next week, I am going to explore End-to-End Encryption and the darker side of social media, such as cyber stalking. I am also going to look at non-Facebook services, such as Twitter and other more niche applications.

Then pop back on Tuesday 22nd for a special Christmas edition…

As always, feel free to comment here or on social media!

Take care,
Paul

Click Read More for detailed information on different Social Media Platforms.

A Brief Outline Of Popular Social Media Services (at the time of writing!)Note that some of these services are banned or blocked in some countries. 

Facebook-owned Services.
Facebook
Facebook wasn’t the first ‘social networking’ platform, but is the one that people are perhaps most familiar with. Although it started as a way of rating college students’ attractiveness at Harvard in 2003 (rather embarrassing origins!) it only really became popular by about 2006. I was aware of it when living in Canada in the second half of 2006, and joined it in the UK in 2007. To play safe, I wouldn’t make much reference to it prior to 2007/8, unless your characters are ‘early adopters’ of new technology.

It has added many different features over the years so check when they became available before referencing them.

Its key features today are:
A user profile. There are several privacy options for this.
It can be private or publicly visible.
You can be entirely invisible to strangers searching for you.
You can be fully visible, or have a partial profile visible so that strangers can find you if they search for you, but they can’t see any of your content.
You can also be fully visible only to people you have chosen to be Friends with, or whom you share mutual acquaintances (Friends of Friends).

You make contact with someone by means of a Friend Request, which can be accepted, ignored or declined. Users can also choose whether or not to place friends into specific groups that may limit what content they can see.

The police and Intelligence Services can use a person’s Friends List to identify possible connections between persons of interest.
Could this be the only link between a victim and a suspect?

Content is posted to Facebook on a person’s Feed (or wall) or Timeline. Those who see it can Like it or Share it, or add their own Comment to the thread of other comments, if the privacy setting allows them to. If you are commenting, your post will be visible to anyone else with access to that thread. In 2016, the blue thumbs-up Like button was supplemented by 5 additional (and more appropriate!) reactions. Users can tag other people in their posts and even post content directly to somebody else’s wall.

In addition to an individual’s timeline, there are Pages, often popular with businesses e.g. www.facebook.com/dcijones and groups. These can be public, and joined by anyone, or closed – you can only join if a group moderator approves you. You can post to these groups, and comment on existing posts; again your post may or may not need approval by a moderator. Crime Readers Book Chat, run by the Crime Writers’ Association is a closed group. Anyone can ask to join, and most requests are approved immediately, but it allows us to keep an eye on posted content and keep the group focused on its intended subject. Other groups are fully closed, accessible only by members of the CWA.

Closed groups can be used by criminals to allow them to communicate out of the public gaze. They can also be used legitimately, for example by Human Rights organisations or support groups.
The police and Intelligence Services can gain access to these groups with a warrant, or by having ‘under cover’ officers join as members and reporting back. There are sometimes legitimate questions asked about why groups of terrorist sympathisers and hate preachers are allowed to remain active for lengthy periods of time. Presumably, at least sometimes this is to allow intelligence gathering on group members, including the identification of otherwise unknown person of interest.

Facebook Messenger
Originally called Facebook Chat in 2008, Messenger allows direct communication between people with Facebook accounts. If you are friends with a person, they can message you directly. If they aren’t a friend, you will receive a notification and can choose whether or not to accept it.
These days, you can take part in group chats, share pictures, videos and other files, make voice calls, videocalls and conference calls. Although still linked to the Facebook app, it requires its own app to make the most of its features. It can be used on a desktop computer, either by a dedicated app or a webpage.

Since 2016, users can have secret conversations using End-to-End Encryption as well as ‘self-destructing‘ messages that are permanently deleted after a set time period (pop back next week for more on this).

Group chats can be used for many purposes – good and bad – with concerns expressed about paedophiles sharing child abuse images etc. The encryption can make it very hard to access these groups and identify members.

Instagram
Instagram was originally launched as a photo-sharing app, capitalising on the increasing popularity of camera phones in the early years of the 2010s. It was available for iOS (iPhone) in 2010 and Android in 2012.
A key feature in its popularity – especially with teenagers – is the ability to apply filters to photographs or videos. These range from affects such as mimicking sepia-toned photographs, to improving skin tones and enhancing ‘attractiveness’ (a feature that some worry is leading to mental health issues from its presentation of unrealistic goals) to cartoon bunny ears.
Users have an account, their usernames referred to with an @ symbol placed in front. My Instagram account is @paulgitsham.
Their stream consists of posts of pictures or short videos in chronological order, with up to 10 images/videos per post. The images can be accompanied by text, and the posts are searchable with hashtags, for example #AuthorsOfInstagram. Users can tag other Instagram accounts, such as persons who appear in the image or businesses that they are associated with.
You can follow an account, meaning that you will see their new content in your own feed, and like posts.
A limitation of Instagram is that you can’t add weblinks to a post, so can’t click through to an internet page.

The account can either be publicly visible to anyone, or can be private, requiring the owner to approve anyone who wishes to see their content. There is also a direct messaging function for private conversations between individuals or groups.

Could your criminals be using private Instagram pages to communicate or share pictures? What about direct messaging? Or cyber bullying?

Although there are ways to use the site on desktop computers/laptops, it is primarily designed to be used on mobile devices.

WhatsApp
WhatsApp is a messaging platform, similar in some ways to Facebook Messenger, but with key differences. It started as a US-based service in about 2009. It is more akin to old-fashioned SMS text messaging, in that it requires a mobile phone number.

The app is used almost exclusively on mobile phones but transmits data via the internet. As of 2020, it can be used to send text messages, pictures and videos, as well as allowing files to be attached in a manner similar to email. Users can send messages to anyone that has the app installed, as long as they know their mobile phone number. Messages can be sent to individuals or groups of people (Group chat). You can share or forward these posts to people outside the group – leading to high-profile scandals where users sharing objectionable content in what they regarded as a private group had that content exposed to others outside the group.
Could your criminal be tripped up by somebody sharing them boasting about what they did in a private chat?

After being bought by Facebook in 2014, they introduced the ability to make and receive voice calls in 2015 using the app (again over the internet – VOIP in technical parlance) and in 2016, video calls.

In 2016 End-to-End encryption became available on all devices (see next week’s post).

WhatsApp is now the biggest messaging app in the world and in some countries has overtaken traditional voice calls, given that it is essentially ‘free’ if you have an unlimited data tariff on your internet connection. It is commonly used by individuals to talk/message directly, families, or by groups of people with common interests  – including criminals…

Thanks again for reading, pop back next week for a look at non-Facebook-owned services.

Last week I wrote about the ways in which mobile phones are a technology that should be seen as an opportunity for modern writers, rather than as a constraint to their story telling. This week, I want to explore that in a bit more depth.

Location data
It is often said that we now carry a miniature tracking device around with us. That is true to an extent.
Unlike radios, phones do not connect directly to one another. Rather they need to connect to a cell tower, which then relays the signal (often in multiple steps) to the receiving handset. Therefore to make a call, send a text or use the internet, they need to be able to contact a cell tower – the same goes when receiving a call or text – if your phone has no signal, when it finally reconnects you will get any unreceived text messages or missed call notifications.

As a phone moves around it constantly connects and reconnects to the nearest cell tower. In areas with multiple towers, the phone will often be connected to several, choosing the one with the strongest signal. The strength of a signal decreases with distance, which means that it is possible to work out roughly how far from a tower a phone is. In a remote area with very few towers, this will be a large circle around the tower. In an area with more than one tower, there will be a circle for each connection. The handset will be within the region where the circles overlap, a process called triangulation. The more towers the phone connects to, the more precisely the phone can be located, sometime to just a few metres. In an urban setting, this should be very precise. In practise, lots of tall building and thick walls will impede this – consider this if you don’t want your character’s handset to be located too precisely.
Handily, phone networks keep a record of this data for at least 12 months, and again it can be obtained by a warrant. If you want to place a suspect at a location, at a specific time, then you can use this to a greater or lesser degree of accuracy.

However, this is only useful if your character is carrying their phone with them, or it is switched on. Might they leave it at home when they go out to commit their nefarious deeds, thus establishing an alibi? This could be disproven if a witness places them somewhere different to where their phone states they were. Perhaps they just turn it off? It’s circumstantial, but if they never normally switch their phone off it seems a bit suspicious if the phone went off at the exact time the crime was committed…

GPS is a little different. The handset uses the distance from a series of orbiting satellites to triangulate its position. The satellites have no idea where the phone is and you can’t “hack into” a GPS signal to work it out. However, the device may broadcast or record its location, and this could be picked up. Many online services like to know where your handset is, for legitimate or not so legitimate purposes. This can be turned off in your privacy settings (consider doing this – it’s under location services on Google Android). Many apps make a log of where your handset has been. If police can unlock the handset, then they can access this log.
Intelligent, professional criminals will likely switch this feature off – would your character be savvy enough to do this?

Unlocking phones
Of course all of this stored data is useless, if you can’t access it – and there in lie the challenges and opportunities for writers. Modern phones have screen locks that most people now use. With so much of our lives now conducted through our mobile devices, it’s madness NOT to lock your device – if only so your ‘friend’ can’t send rude text messages to your contacts when you leave your phone unattended.
Many devices also encrypt the data held on them, making it theoretically impossible to read the data. As an anti-theft device, many smartphones now have the option to remotely lock and even wipe the data from a phone. For this reason police will often place phones in a ‘Faraday bag’ which blocks signals to the phone, so the owner can’t remotely access it. In a pinch, the shielding on a microwave oven will also do this.

So how does your investigator unlock the device?
PIN Codes
The easiest to use. Perhaps they use the same PIN for multiple devices? Dirty fingerprints on the screen might give an indication of which digits were used, but the possible combinations will soon become unmanageable. Perhaps keep it simple and have somebody look over their shoulder and memorise the PIN as they type it.

Swipe Access
The user swipes their finger across the screen in a pre-determined pattern. Again, grubby fingers may leave a trace on the screen.

Biometrics
Fingerprints, facial recognition, voice recognition – all of these are potential ways to lock a device. The most poorly understood one is fingerprint. You cannot unlock a phone using the owner’s severed finger. Nor can you use the finger of a corpse. All modern fingerprint readers use the miniscule electrical charges generated by living cells to generate an image. After death, these charges dissipate. Exactly how long after death this occurs is the subject of some debate – it’s difficult to get ethical approval to perform the necessary experiments!
Suffice to say that if you want to unlock the phone of a dead person in your book, they need to be really fresh!

That’s all I am going to say about mobile phones for the time being, but there is much else consider. In a later post, I will return to the topic of Social Media, which these days is often linked to mobile devices.

Next week, I will move away from technology for a week and focus on character voice.

As always, if you want to comment on any of this, please do, either here or on social media.

All the best,
Paul

In 1910 the notorious Dr Hawley Crippen fled Britain aboard the Montrose to start a new life in Canada, after murdering his second wife, Cora. The fugitive was recognised by the ship’s captain, who used his ship-to-shore wireless set to inform the British authorities about his infamous passenger.
Chief Inspector Walter Dew booked passage on a faster White Star Liner, SS Laurentic, and arrived ahead of Montrose, whereupon he boarded the ship and arrested Crippen.
Crippen was tried, convicted of his wife’s murder, and hanged in November of that year.Crippen was the first suspect to be caught with the aid of wireless telegraphy. At the time, it is said that some felt this advance in technology sounded the death knell for the crime novel – how could a fugitive evade justice if this new-fangled communication technology allowed their whereabouts to be communicated instantly to the authorities?

110 years on and every new advance in crime-fighting technology has provoked similar reactions. In fact just a few years ago, I was chatting to a long-standing crime writer about the use of modern technology “I’ve stopped setting my books in modern times, I stick to the 80s as I understand the technology,” he told me. And that got me thinking.

Modern technology is an opportunity, not a constraint.
There, I’ve said it.
I write contemporary British police procedurals. I try to be as realistic as possible, and so cannot ignore the ways in which the latest technology now shapes the way that investigations are performed. But it can be daunting.
Over the next few months, I intend to publish some blog posts looking at some of the ways that writers can incorporate the latest advances in technology in their books, and hopefully show how rather than being a straitjacket that makes modern story-telling more difficult, it actually opens up new and exciting ways to tell that tale.

This and the next blog will focus on mobile phones, with later blogs on DNA evidence, social media and other modern technologies. Don’t worry, there will still be plenty of posts focusing on the craft of writing also.

London Calling… The scourge/usefulness of mobile phones in crime novels.

In 2020, almost everybody carries a smartphone. Criminals have been using mobile phones to run their operations since the days of the house-brick-sized Motorola. But every advance in mobile technology has both benefits and drawbacks for criminals, and by extension, writers. So let’s look at a few of them.

Tracing calls.
Many people have mobile phone contracts, keeping the same number for years. For many of us, our mobile number is the only number we can remember and the only one that we ever give out. I’ve had a mobile for over 20 years, and that number has followed me across the better part of 10 handsets and a half-dozen providers. Should the police stumble across my number in connection with a crime, my mobile phone company can tell them who I am and where I live in seconds. An easy way to track down your master criminal! Who sent the threatening text message to the murder victim?  Clickity-Click, Joe Blogs, suspect identified!

But it doesn’t have to be that way. It is perfectly legitimate for anyone to buy a Pay-as-You-Go SIM card, with cash, no questions asked. No need to give any details, just pop it in the phone, activate it and away you go. They have prepaid credit that can be topped up online, or if you value your anonymity, with cash at the local newsagent. And many people do. Criminals, especially drug dealers, will often buy several of these SIM cards, alternating between them or discarding the number after just a few uses. This means that as soon as the police have a phone number that they can link to the criminal, it’s already out-of-date. You can use this in your writing to make things more challenging for your investigators.

Burner phones.
Criminals often go one step further than multiple SIM cards, they have multiple handsets that they throw away when they’ve served their purpose. The device will include records of calls and texts made and received and perhaps even an address book, so criminals don’t want that electronic list of their historic offences in their pocket when they are collared.
The common term for these is a ‘burner phone’. Cheap, basic handsets are easy to buy, either legitimately or from a mugger.
But there is a protection against this. All devices have a unique identifying code called an IMEI number – look at your phone instructions for this – you can register the number with your network provider, so if your phone is stolen, they can block it. This obviously reduces the attraction of phones being stolen purely for their resale value, which is why many head off overseas, and those stolen to be used as burners have to be used quickly before they stop working.
The IMEI number will  be logged every time the phone connects to the network – can you use this in your book? If your victim’s expensive phone was stolen, perhaps it was sold on? Trace the current owner, and perhaps it will lead your investigators back to the person that originally stole it? 

Call logs.
Who did your victim call? Who else does your suspect keep in contact with? Assuming that you can put a name to a number (see above), this web of connections between mobile phone numbers can be an invaluable tool. On production of a warrant, the police can demand to see this web from the network providers, going back at least 12 months.
But it can’t do everything. First of all, this log merely lists the numbers called or texted, date, time and duration. IT DOES NOT have the content of those calls and texts. You can show association, but can’t prove that two people chatted about the crime. The network doesn’t save the content of the texts, so you would need access to one of the devices to read them. Similarly, calls are not recorded. To get that, you would need to have arranged for this to happen in advance – a wiretap if you like. That requires a warrant, granted by someone more senior than the local magistrate.
Conspiracy theorists would have you believe that all calls are recorded by GCHQ or the NSA etc. True or not, unless it’s national security related, PC Plod isn’t going to have access to that.

In next weeks blog, I am going to take this a little further and look at the other ways you can use mobile phones to help tell your story, such as location data and the ways that phones store this data.

Do you have anything interesting to add? Feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time,
Paul.