CAVIAR network, visualized

The CAVIAR investigation was an operation of the Montreal police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police between 1994 and 1996. During this two year period, police monitored via wiretap the communications of an international drug network, centered in downtown Montreal and spanning Canada, Morocco, Spain, Colombia, and the United States.

The wiretap warrants were valid for a period of about two months each, and were re-authorized in 11 separate phases. During each phase, a matrix of players and frequency of contact between each pair of players was recorded. From these records, we can construct a weighted graph of activity during the phase.

This visualization uses the d3-force library to bind data in order to plot these graphs and observe how they evolve between phases. For each phase, (precomputed) measures of network characteristics can be displayed. These provide quantitative metrics to help identify "important" players in each phase.

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