Top Cops to Tackle Web Crime

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Top Cops To Tackle Web Crime
Todd Wallack, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, January 10, 2000

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/01/10/BU4001.DTL&type=tech_article

Top law enforcement officials from around the country plan to converge in
Palo Alto today to tackle ways of fighting a troubling new wave of crimes
-- those involving the Internet.

To be sure, a handful of sleuths have been tracking down hackers for
years. But with the explosion of access to the Internet, legions of
pettier crimes are taking on a cybertwist.

A Santa Clara high-tech task force, for instance, recently found someone
hawking rare stolen baseball cards on eBay. Federal prosecutors in
Southern California have accused an Infoseek executive of trying to have
sex with a teenage girl he met in a Web chat room. (The Lolita turned out
to be an undercover FBI agent.)  And a growing number of Californians are
complaining about cyberstalking and online fraud.

Though many of the crimes are similar to those in the physical world,
experts say the Internet link raises a host of thorny issues: Many cops
aren't trained to track down criminals over the Net. The Internet
potentially makes it easier to commit a crime from thousands of miles
away, crossing multiple state and national boundaries, and raising
jurisdictional questions. And some experts aren't sure whether juries will
be as willing to convict defendants of committing a crime with a mouse
instead of a gun.

To help settle the issue, at least 20 state attorneys general (and 200
staffers and other law enforcement agents) are expected to meet today and
tomorrow for a cybercrime conference hosted by the National Association of
Attorneys General.  Organizers said U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno
likely will give the keynote speech.

Several law enforcement agencies around California have already set up
high-tech task

forces to tackle the issue of cybercrimes, and Attorney General Bill
Lockyer said he's been meeting with other officials around the state to
come up with ideas for how to fight high-tech crime. In addition, Gov.
Gray Davis told Lockyer he will set aside some seed money in this year's
budget, to be unveiled today, for high-tech task forces and efforts to
fight cybercrime.

``We are trying to develop a good game plan'' said Lockyer, a
self-described computer aficionado who helped organize the
cyberconference. Lockyer said sex crimes have gained plenty of publicity,
but he thinks intellectual piracy and other economic crimes will be a
bigger target for prosecutors in coming years.

Lockyer said he's especially interested in the issue because he's a
longtime computer user -- he used punch-card computers in college in the
'60s; has had a computer in his home for nearly a decade; and even plays
games like Myst, Riven and Halflife after work, in addition to using more
standard office programs.

But George Vinson, who started the FBI's West Coast high-tech task force
before becoming director of corporate security for Barkley's Global
Investors in San Francisco, said most law enforcement officials aren't
computer wonks and need more training to learn how to deal with
cybercrimes. ``It's a big challenge,'' Vinson said.

In the past, Vinson added, local law enforcement agents could rely on the
FBI to handle the trickle of hacking and other cybercrime cases. But the
Internet is becoming so pervasive that they need to take up some of the
load. Plus, many of the crimes are too small for the feds to become
involved. ``The states (and towns) have to do it on their own,'' he said.
Santa Clara County, for instance, has set up a high-tech task force called
REACT (Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team) with 11 agents, up from
three when it became a formal group two years ago.

``It's a growth industry,'' said task force agent Tom Quilty, who is also
a Santa Clara deputy sheriff. ``We could easily double our size and be
busy. We've just scratched the surface.''

Quilty said law enforcement agencies face a particular problem because
cops usually rotate into different departments frequently, though it often
takes a few years to learn the skills to handle cybercrimes.

Still, not everyone thinks the Internet will make cops' jobs harder.

Jonathon Zittrain, executive director of Harvard University's Berkman
Center for Internet Society, points out that computers can easily be
programmed to keep detailed records that law enforcement could potentially
check to track down criminals. And many Web sites meticulously monitor
everything about users -- from what Web sites they visit to what they buy
online -- so they can target their sales pitches in the future.

Many of the developments, Zittrain says, are troubling from a privacy
standpoint but offer a mother lode of information for police trying to
track down a suspect.

Zittrain points to the recent case of the Melissa virus, which flooded
e-mail systems around the country, forcing many companies to shut them
down. Within days of the attack, federal agents had arrested a suspect in
New Jersey named David Smith, apparently because the Internet service
provider he allegedly used had caller ID. Plus, an independent computer
guru in Massachusetts was able to find David Smith's name hidden in
original copies of the virus, recorded automatically with a little-known
feature of Microsoft Office.

``You'd have to be a pretty skilled and tenacious lawbreaker'' to avoid
detection in the future, Zittrain says.

To be sure, the Internet also makes it possible to harass Net users or
commit other crimes from tiny countries in remote parts of the world,
where criminals feel safe from prosecution. But Zittrain points out that
it is also just as easy to automatically warn Internet users about fraud,
for instance, when they are dealing with people in remote locales. And
stalking victims might feel better if they know their attacker is
thousands of miles away, he said.

Both Zittrain and Lockyer are scheduled to speak at this week's
conference. In addition, the conference will feature a number of panels,
including ones on what attorneys general are doing to tackle cybercrimes
around the country, how current laws relate to the Internet and how to
``create a family friendly Internet.''

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