The Public Prosecutor’s Office received information regarding the alleged commission of a criminal act. Based on the data obtained, a website was identified where several individuals were planning attacks with firearms at schools; one of the participants posted that he would attack an elementary school in the Republic of Panama, specifically in the province of Colón. These posts indicated that the person allegedly organizing the incident was a minor residing in the country, who left traces of an account associated with him on a platform operated by META PLATFORMS, INC.
In the comment thread, the alleged minor posted that his goal was to carry out a mass shooting at an elementary school where there would be child victims, inspired by the well-known shooting at the Uvalde School in the state of Texas, United States of America, which occurred on 24 May 2022; consequently, it was estimated that the attack in Panama would take place on the same date the following year.
This information was forwarded to the Cybercrime Unit of the Judicial Investigation Directorate in order to preliminarily obtain data through court orders. For the purpose of receiving assistance from the service provider, one of the requirements under its governing internal regulations was that the request must have judicial authorization in order to provide emergency information, which is why the corresponding request for a seizure warrant had to be filed with the Juvenile Criminal Court Judge in order to obtain the subscriber data for the account under investigation from the overseas service provider.
The following information was requested from META PLATFORMS, INC:
- General information related to the account;
- Date the account was created;
- Email address and cell phone number associated with the account;
- Geolocation associated with the account;
- IP addresses used for account registration and connection;
- IP addresses used to connect to the account from 12 August 2022, until the date the inquiry is conducted;
- Connection history with times and dates.
META PLATFORMS, INC. did not take long to provide the authorities of Panama with the coordinates of where the communications originated: it was estimated to take 24 hours.
The location data revealed that the cell phone used was at a residence in the Bamboo Lane area of Colón Province. A search and seizure warrant was immediately executed at that location, which led to the identification of the sender of the messages. It was confirmed that the sender was, in fact, a minor and that the device used belonged to his grandmother.
At that time, the minor had not accessed firearms or explosives; therefore, through the respective criminal proceedings, he was ordered to undergo psychosocial counseling (attending psychological therapy).
The investigation benefited from several key Budapest Convention provisions, including those enabling the expedited preservation (Article 16/17/29) of digital evidence, production orders (Article 18) for subscriber information and account details from service providers, and the search and seizure (Article 19) of electronic devices. International co-operation articles (Article 23-25) also supported requests to overseas companies, helping authorities swiftly identify the suspect and secure evidence for criminal proceedings.
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