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By KSA213755 on
Just thought I'd share with the community that I used Drupal's Timeline module in a criminal case that I prosecuted recently. Part of the evidence involved IM Messenger logs where the defendant had been in simultaneous IM conversations and received some file downloads of illegal images during one of the conversations.
I wanted to visually represent the IM messages going back and forth in both IM's and to show the receipt of the illegal images in the context of the IM conversations that were taking place. The Timeline module looked like it would enable me to do exactly what I wanted to in terms of creating the visual representation of the various pieces of evidence.
Thanks to Arto's help I was able to get enough of an understanding about the Timeline module to apply it to my needs. Arto also came up with a little code hack so that Timeline's GMT timestamp issue could be overcome.
I put xampp on a USB stick and then loaded Drupal 5.1 and the Timeline module. I also put the Simile Timeline widget on the flash drive so I could run the presentation from a laptop without being connected to the internet. The evidence of the IM conversations and file downloads was then summarized as a timeline and presented as a demonstrative exhibit during the trial.
It was just a small part of a 6 day trial, which resulted in a child molester being convicted of seven criminal acts. I haven't had an opportunity to find out if the jurors found the timeline exhibit helpful, but some of the people who were observing the trial thought it helped to have a visual representation of what was going on during that period of time.
In the future, if I have cases where a timeline of the facts in evidence would be helpful to gain a clear understanding of what happened, I'll definitely make use of Drupal and the Timeline module.
Roger
Comments
really interesting
Thanks for the heads-up and for the test-case. I hadn't looked at this module before but it provides some really interesting functionality. Cheers.
Additional Details
Arto asked if I could provide some additional details about how Timeline was used for this application.
Some further background on the source of the information for the data sets used might be helpful. The forensic computer examiner found several IM Messenger Logs on the defendant's computer. Simply having the logs on his computer didn't necessarily mean that the defendant was the person involved in the IM conversations that were logged. However on one particular night he was involved in an IM/Web Cam session with his girlfriend (Tiki). It was apparent from the context of the IM conversation that the girlfriend was communicating with the defendant. We also had an affidavit from her that she knew it was the defendant and that they could see each other during the IM via their web cams. So we knew for sure that it was the defendant who was sitting at the keyboard at the time the IM was going on with the girlfriend. Another IM conversation was logged with an unidentified person (Alexia) and that log indicated that the IM was taking place simulatneously with Tiki for about an hour and a half, until the IM with Tiki paused for about an hour after the defendant told Tiki he was going to bed. During that hour away from Tiki, several CP images were downloaded to the defendant's computer. The messages back and forth in the IM log with Alexia clearly indicated that the images were being sent from Alexia: (i.e. messages such as "I always wanted a lot of pics of this sorta thing", "wow, that last one was awesome", "anything real hardcore?" etc. and replies of "you're welcome" and "that's not hardcore?") In addition, after the IM with Alexia ended, four more IM conversations were logged which all involved IM contact with people apparently located in chat rooms and all of them involved conversations about crimes against children. After those IM's ended, the IM conversation with Tiki resumed with the defendant claiming that he "got up to get a drink."
So, I had evidence consisting of six IM conversations, two of them largely taking place simultaneously, as well as the creation of CP images on the defendant's computer during one of the IM conversations. I wanted to pull all that evidence together visually into one exhibit and that's where Timeline came in.
The IM logs contained a Datestamp which indicated the hour:minute:second that each message was sent from or received at the defendant's computer. I set up a Content Type for each IM conversation and then entered each individual message as a node. For the node title I used whoever the message was going to, or coming from, for example "To tiki"; "From tiki"; "To alexia"; "From alexia". Initially I tried putting the body of the message in the title, since most of the messages were really short. However, that didn't work well, it made the Timeline display itself way to busy. Just using the To or From approach conveyed on the timeline the relationship of the two simultaneous IM's that were being logged on the defendant's computer. For the image downloads, I just used the file name of the image as the node title and didn't put anything in the body of the node. I thought about putting the actual images in the body, but I figured the jury really didn't want or need to see those disgusting sights any more than they already had.
Since it's the title of the node that displays on the Timeline, I could click on any individual message title and the popup bubble would appear with the full IM message sent or received at that particular moment in time. One thing I did not do, but which would if I had it to do over again, is put some portion of the message in the node title of the specific messages that I wanted to highlight so they would be easy to located on the timeline without having to look at the actual time frame on the Timeline.
Also, even though the messages bore timestamps down to the second, I chose to have the upper band of the timeline present the data in one minute increments, instead of one second. One minute increments in the upper band made for a very nice grouping of the messages on the timeline display. For the most part the messages would display in a downward cascade within each minute of time on the timeline display. I used "one day" as the increment for the lower band since it was really just the one day that I was interested in displaying.
One problem that I ran into was that when I tried to display all six IM conversations, along with the file download nodes, the Timeline wouldn't load in time and I'd get an error message. I didn't have this loading problem on my home computer with 2 gig of ram, but in court I had to use a laptop and it just couldn't process all the nodes quickly enough to generate the timeline view. I couldn't figure out how to increase the load time, so I ended up creating separate timeline views, each one focusing on a different aspect of the evidence. So I had the simultaneous IM's with Tiki and Alexia, along with the file downloads on one timeline view. I had a second timeline for the other four IM's plus the contact being resumed with Tiki.
To me, the benefit of using the Timeline module was that I could scroll through time and show the general ebb and flow of the IM activity, and also instantly highlight any particular message with the popup bubble. It was a learning experience as well and I found the Timeline module a lot of fun to work with.
Roger
this is by far the best
this is by far the best drupal use case I've ever come across
thx for innovating!