Yesterday Twitter released its transparency report on government requests for data related to user accounts. I had a look at the report to see whether or not any request was made from Mauritius by the Cybercrime Unit of the Police Force.

It came as no surprise. There hasn’t been any request from Mauritius between January 2015 till June 2016. Okay, let’s just say Twitter did not receive any request from the Mauritian government at all.

Should we expect any request made by Mauritius though? Yes!

On 11 February 2015, lexpress.mu published an article about a fake Twitter profile of Sir Anerood Jugnauth, the Prime Minister of Mauritius.

The article mentions the Prime Minister’s Office as communicating that an investigation was initiated to find the «imposter».

Did the investigators expect to obtain the Twitter account holder’s information without asking Twitter? Is there any other way in Mauritius through which the Cybercrime Unit may get social network account info?

Does the transparency report of Twitter tell us Police investigators are not doing their job properly?

I’ve met people who made complaints to the Cybercrime Unit and were utterly disappointed by the poorly done investigation and sometimes no investigation at all. From my observation, the only cyber crimes that got people convicted were those that involved confession to the crime. In the absence of a confession (which is obtained through archaic methods) the case just remains stale for «years» and little is ever done to obtain digital forensic evidence.