The collection and analysis of enormous quantities of data, commonly known as Big Data, is being used to solve an increasingly long list of challenges from easing traffic congestion and improving our healthcare system to drafting baseball players.

It should come as no surprise that investigating and apprehending criminals is on the list of uses as well. Public and proprietary information, such as real estate ownership, driving records, and criminal history, have always been available for law enforcement to review, but, in the days of paper filing systems, the information was difficult to find and making connections between relevant information in a timely manner was less likely. As the quantity of public information stored online increases, so does the potential to collect and use the data to find criminals.