Reconstructing the trail of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's deleted Instagram account

           

http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/26/tech/tsarnaev-instagram-account/index.html?sr=sharebar_twitter

 

By Erica Fink and Laurie Segall, CNN

updated 10:55 PM EDT, Fri April 26, 2013 |

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

 

    Accused bomber had a little-known and now deleted Instagram account

    Digital traces still remain of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's deleted post

    Investigators are likely to look closely at the Instagram trail

    One of Dzhokhar's friends says he "was the last person you'd expect to

do this"

 

(CNN) -- Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's Twitter account and VK Russian social

networking profile have drawn heavy public scrutiny, but he left another,

more hidden social media trail: a deleted Instagram account that sources

close to him tell CNN once belonged to the accused Boston bomber.

 

The Instagram account, with the user name "jmaister1," no longer exists, and

friends of Tsarnaev say it was deleted only recently. An Instagram spokesman

declined to comment on the account or disclose when the account was deleted.

 

CNN National Security Analyst Juliette Kayyem says the account could be

significant.

 

"If I were an investigator right now, obviously the platform he deleted

matters the most," she said.

 

Traces of the jmaister1 account were still visible this week in Google's Web

cache and on other archiving sites. Digital sleuths often use those tools to

find glimpses of deleted material.

 

"It's exactly like an archive," tech entrepreneur and programmer Sam Altman

explained to CNN. "So no matter what changes were made to the page today, on

the current server, Google has this sort of imprint from a couple of weeks

ago."

 

Tsarnaev's complete account could not be recovered with those tools.

Google's cache stores the pages it indexes for variable lengths of time --

sometimes days, sometimes weeks.

This image, taken from the site Statigram, shows an image that Dzhokhar

Tsarnaev "liked" of Chech warlord Shamil Basayev.

 

The digital traces that remain show that Tsarnaev added a "like" on several

photos referring to Chechnya that were posted by other Instagram users. One

shows Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, a onetime government official who

later masterminded terrorist attacks against Russia. Basayev was killed in

2006.

 

Another pro-Chechnya image that Tsarnaev "liked" carries a string of

hashtags including #FreeChechenia #Jihad #Jannah #ALLAH #Jesus and #God. An

academic Chechnya expert who CNN consulted said the images illustrated a

familiarity with Chechen politics and iconography.

 

Tsarnaev's Instagram account wasn't widely known; CNN spoke with several

friends of his who said they were unaware of its existence. Two of his

high-school classmates, however, told CNN about the account and said he used

it to keep in touch with a close-knit group of school friends.

 

The two classmates say they are shocked by -- and in some case, skeptical of

-- the charges being levied at the friend they knew as "Jahar." As one told

CNN: "Jahar was the last person you'd expect to do this. I've honestly never

heard anybody say anything bad about him."

 

Since Tsarnaev's account was deleted, little of what he wrote and posted

remains publicly visible, but Kayyem expects investigators to take a closer

look at whatever data they can reconstruct.

 

"Were there clues embedded in the combination of images that can tell us

something about what Dzhokhar was thinking?" she said. "Some of those

pictures are very benign. Some of them standing alone don't mean anything."

 

Instagram makes clear in its terms of service that it will turn its records

over to law enforcement officials when it receives a valid subpoena or

search warrant.

 

"Given the volume of real-time content on Instagram, some information may

only be stored for a short period of time," Instagram says on its site. "We

do not retain data for law enforcement purposes unless we receive a valid

preservation request.

 

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