The Gard gendarmerie is developing pseudonymous investigations to flush out sex offenders and drug traffickers. Exclusive meeting with an investigator under pseudonym from the Nîmes company.
Pedocriminality, drug trafficking, pimping, the Gard gendarmes conduct investigations on the ground but also on the internet. Like this specialized gendarme, an investigator under a pseudonym. You will obviously not see his face or any identifying element allowing him to be located.
At the Gard gendarmerie group, an investigator under a pseudonym is therefore specially dedicated to cybercrime. His secret weapon? He advances masked with a false name, a false pseudonym that allows him to approach delinquents of all kinds and on all aspects of crime or delinquency. Indeed, they work just as well on pimping or human trafficking as on drug trafficking cases.
Darknet specialists
Schematically, he surfs the internet often on the darknet (the illegal internet) and creates accounts to talk with other internet users. Some are looking for drugs, others offer them, others child pornography images or offer relationships with prostitutes, still others sell weapons. Thus, specialized police officers sometimes dive into underground and illegal worlds teeming on the darkweb. “Crime is happening online, we have had to change our methods of action. Covid has accelerated things”notes Commander Emery of the Nîmes company present alongside his specialist investigator.
Authorization of the Attorney General
This pseudonymous investigator (ESP) has undergone solid training to work in the twists and turns of the internet to flush out web criminals. Moreover, this specialization is mandatory to carry out compliant legal proceedings. Because the pseudonymous investigator does not act like a completely traditional investigator and his authorization must be registered and validated by the public prosecutor of the Nîmes Court of Appeal to be validly used in legal proceedings. Thus, if he detects offenses, he can lead the suspect to reveal himself and provide information on his activity but according to a very regulated protocol. All exchanges with the alleged offender will be annexed to the investigation file. And if he has the right to elicit information from the criminal, the ESP cannot in theory provoke the offense. The need to track cybercrime?
Complementarity and subsidiarity
HOCINE ROUAGDIA ARCHIVES
“Delinquency adapts to the evolution of society, it is necessary for the gendarmerie to go into this area and deal with the entire spectrum of delinquency. Our approach is complementarity and subsidiarity”notes the commander of the Nîmes company. “In practice, this means that when a case exceeds our investigative capabilities at the company level, we hand over to a higher-level service such as a research section or a central office or the regional judicial support section.”continues Commander Emery. At his side, the investigator under a pseudonym explains that he acts as in a traditional investigation and must materialize the offenses as for usual investigations. In this regard, he works within the Nîmes research brigade and collaborates with his other gendarme colleagues to structure a file and sometimes, the specialists (NTECH) of the gendarmerie accompany him on the technical level to go and flush out clues in the hard drive of a computer or on a mobile phone.
Web stalking day and night
At the gendarmerie group level, there is an investigator under pseudonym per gendarmerie company (Nîmes, Vauvert, Alès, Le Vigan, Bagnols-sur-Cèze) and when the needs of a case require it, these web gendarmes are required to work shifts to better detect offences. Thus, some traffickers or sex offenders are particularly active at night, which leads the military to work “atypical hours”, observes the commander of the Nîmes company. Which means in concrete terms that tracking on the web is done night and day and in all sectors and when a gendarme detects an offence on the other side of France, he forwards the file to his colleagues.
