The Panama Papers and Graph Technology
The article linked below discusses the engineering behind the Panama Papers leak. Mossack Fonseca, one of the world’s primary offshore money holders, had its internal database leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Aside from the legal and social implications of this leak, the technology at work behind the scenes is an important highlight of the article. In order to identify and analyze trends within the leaked data, investigators used graph databases. Graph database technology allowed them to gain insight into the relationships behind the Mossack Fonseca’s data, thereby discovering the connections between different bank accounts and their subsequent implications. Although the piece focuses on the ICIJ’s work with graph technology in uncovering insights about the movement of money through Mossack Fonseca, the article also mentioned other uses of graph databases today. Fraud detection, for example, is another relevant example of graph application. Mining consumer purchase history databases for relational trends over time can more identify fraud more quickly and accurately today than ever before.
The use of graph technology in the investigative journalism behind the Panama Papers is not unlike Google’s use of the PageRank algorithm. PageRank too is a graph application; in PageRank’s case, however, the application works by attributing a website’s legitimacy and importance to the number and quality of links it links to. The underlying assumption PageRank then, is that the more important website is, the more likely it is to link to other websites. Similarly, the Panama Papers were able to be as groundbreaking as they were because members of the ICIJ were able to apply the same underlying concepts that PageRank relies on. However, instead of mapping links to a given page, the Panama Papers utilized graph technology to visualize connections between bank accounts and form a story around the movement of money through Mossack Fonseca.
Article link: https://www.cmswire.com/big-data/the-panama-papers-what-business-can-learn-from-data-driven-scoops/