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Traffic cops on the information superhighway

Is computer crime really on the rise, or are there just too many fledgling cybercops chasing around on the World Wide Web?

BY DANIEL BLACKBURN

Tank lives unobtrusively these days, spending most of his time aboard his small, cramped sailboat moored in a Southern California coastal marina; Tank’s usual company, a wiry, black cat named Mayday, is tethered to the mast to prevent unanticipated harbor swims.

Amid an amazing pile of clutter in the craft’s tiny cubicle cabin, Tank has wedged a sophisticated computer. A large-screen monitor dominates the boat’s interior, Tank’s eye on the world. In front of it is where Tank spends his hours, where he ekes out a modest living developing Internet systems for a handful of appreciative customers. And where he fondly remembers the good, old times, back when he was a successful and innovative thief.

What Tank really liked to do was tap into Bank of America’s computers, confiscate profit revenues and put the funds into the bank accounts of individuals whose bank balances showed them to be people of modest means. He did this for personal education, and because, he said, it made him "feel like Robin Hood." But he wasn’t above taking some for himself.

Tank is retired now, having fled the felony business before the law’s long arm wrapped around him.

It was a lot simpler in the beginning. Tank knew a few guys whose talents were limited to rooting around in banks’ trash bins and retrieving little bits of paper containing big information that, placed in Tank’s very capable hands, could easily be transformed into cash.

Tank wasn’t greedy. He’d take his time, sifting through paper bags filled with receipts, copies of account statements, and other banking documents, looking for the perfect victim. Tank’s usual target would be a male with a large bank balance, the logic being that a guy with money might be too busy to notice in a timely manner a few thousand missing dollars.

Using data collected from the trash by his cadre of gleaners, Tank would hack his way into his mark’s account. He would patiently wait for a deposit to be made, and then wait another day. That was about the time, he figured, when his mark would no longer be looking at, or thinking about, his bank balance. Then, using a few of those secret numbers and tapping momentarily at his keyboard, Tank would transfer a modest appropriation of his victims’ money to his own sheltered and hidden account.

"I never took too much. Just a paycheck or two, and only when I needed it. That’s how I got away with it for so long," said Tank recently.

Well ahead of the techno-curve, Tank was one of a few pioneers in the computer crime business who managed to ply his crooked trade during an era when law enforcement was three steps behind the criminal element and losing ground fast. He stayed low-profile, in what proved to be a successful effort to remain out of the cross hairs of the law.

This he was able to do simply because there weren’t any cops around then with either the savvy or the equipment to catch him. For guys like Tank, it was a safe, easy, convenient, and fun way to make a living.

Tank’s circle of acquaintances during those nostalgic early years included a man named Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick, who would go on to become the most-wanted computer criminal in U.S. history, shared none of Tank’s conservative characteristics.

Mitnick admitted using a number of techno-tools to commit his crimes, including "social engineering," cloned cellular telephones, "sniffer" programs placed on victims’ computer systems, and hacker software programs. He eventually was captured and pleaded guilty to a series of federal offenses, including four counts of wire fraud, two counts of computer fraud, and one count of illegally intercepting a wire communication.

As part of his scheme, Mitnick acknowledged altering computer systems belonging to the University of Southern California and using these computers to store programs that he had misappropriated. He also admitted that he stole e-mails, monitored computer systems, and impersonated employees of victim companies, including Nokia Mobile Phones Ltd., in his attempt to secure software being developed by those companies.

Hackers with criminal intent are no longer uncommon. Anyone with the tools and an inch of knowledge can use a computer to commit crimes. In fact, some of today’s better techno-crooks have left the business because it’s gotten too easy, both for the perpetrators and for the cops.

Certainly not all computer-related crime is sophisticated and other-worldly.

"Most so-called high-tech crime is really low-tech," said Tank. "It’s the same old dumb crook thing, which is why cops can catch these people."

Take the case of one San Luis Obispo woman, for example. She decided to report her computer stolen after she had actually sold the machine to a friend.

When the "stolen" computer turned up in a warrant-authorized search, San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department investigators called in Officer Jeff Joynt of the Cal Poly Police Department, who peered into the computer and discovered that it had been used extensively after it had been reported stolen, and always by the woman herself.

Faced with unassailable evidence, she admitted the fraud and was sentenced to jail time.

These cyber-crooks all had different reasons for their actions, but the results of their anti-social behavior is unmistakable: There has been over the past several years a rapid rise in the numbers of police officers whose principal assignment is to spend their days puttering around on a computer, exchanging information with other agencies, and searching the ether for the bad guys.

A law enforcement cottage industry has been born, and a brand-new era of cop cooperation has been cultivated.

No single issue has been more conducive to creation of a nationwide cybercop network than the use of the Web to transmit sexual images.

And therein lies what might be the biggest threat of all–to the basic freedoms of Americans.

Ken Paulson, executive director of the First Amendment Center, a Washington, D.C., constitutional think-tank, believes every successful mass communications device in history has been financed, generated, and perpetuated by sexually oriented creativity.

"From chalk on rock, to comic books, to film, and eventually VCRs and the Internet, people have utilized these tools to depict sexual activity–art to some, pornography to others, smut to still others," Paulson told 500 journalists gathered recently at a national writers’ conference in Fullerton.

Because sex continues to rear its head and slither into every new mass medium, Paulson said, "The next 10 years will be a time of some of the biggest First Amendment battles in our history."

New, sophisticated technology will amplify the same old debates centering on the banality and legality of exploiting carnal human activity, he said.

The driving economic force behind the Internet’s exploding success, many experts agree, is its "adult" appeal–sexually explicit thought and action instantly and often anonymously exchanged, and ultimately marketed and financially harvested.

"This made plausible the eventual commercial capability of this remarkable communications device," said Paulson.

Cal Poly’s Joynt is typical of the new breed of investigator who does his gumshoe routine anchored in front of a computer screen. And for a guy who couldn’t have lulled a secretary at the FBI into picking up the telephone just a couple of short years ago, Joynt runs these days with some pretty heavy company. He can be found most days hunched over a keyboard connecting him to an ordinary-looking computer, which in turn sprouts an extraordinary array of wires and cables. Those cables are connected to banks of the most intensive computer systems ever assembled–most of them in Washington, D.C.

Joynt is president of the Central California chapter of the High Tech Crime Investigation Association (HTCIA), a group of about 50 investigators from various police and law enforcement agencies whose emerging specialty is the computer.

"What we have now is a larger and more efficient tool with which to fight crime," said Joynt last week. "One reason we wanted to do it here at Cal Poly is that we have such tremendous resources on campus."

Those resources have helped create high-tech labs in law enforcement offices all over the county.

Most of Joynt’s efforts help agencies other than his own. Last year, for example, he worked about 20 different cases, only three of which concerned Cal Poly campus situations.

But the larger good is being served, Joynt believes.

"Some hackers are very determined, and they have a lot of time," said Joynt. "There are some out there who don’t think they will ever be caught. But it’s not just being smarter than me. It’s being smarter than the federal government."

He’s right about that. When hackers first dared to tap into the computers of this country’s security agencies, they caused the launch of the full federal force against the presumed legions of demon computer hackers.

Today, there are probably more government agencies with people assigned to combat computer crime than there are competent hackers.

At the top of the chain, the federal government goes after big fish.

A recent example is that of Tse Thow Sun, a Singapore national, arrested in March in Monterey. FBI officials allege that Sun contacted the president of Language Line Services and offered to sell to him proprietary information of the company’s chief competitor, Online Interpreters, for $3 million. Attorneys for Language Line Services contacted the FBI. With help from both companies, the FBI arranged a meeting with Sun on March 24. Sun provided documents to prove that he had access to trade secrets of Online Interpreters. In return, Sun got $5,000. He was arrested at a second meeting after collecting $3 million.

In a case last month in Sacramento, investigators discovered that confidential customer information had been "misappropriated" by 22-year-old Suzanne Scheller, a bank employee. Tracking backward, officers found that some of the information provided by the suspect was actually used by another individual unknown to her as part of an identity theft scheme. Impostors used the customer account information to steal the identity of customers and conduct transactions at the financial institution.

Cases handled by the federal government tend to be relatively complicated. According to some, however, most computer crime is small-time con job stuff.

Tank, the retired pioneer, thinks techno-detectives are sitting around with expensive computers, flush budgets, and too much time on their hands. That adds up to cops seeking crime to investigate, and in some cases, creating it.

"My great fear is that this activity will cut greatly into our freedoms. Police will demand to have more equipment, money, and rights to stop this horrible plague. But it’s really a sky is falling kind of thing," said Tank.

Today’s hackers, he added, "are more of an annoyance than anything else."

"It’s a self-perpetuating profession," he said. "And for most police agencies, it’s the same, and it’s a complete waste of time."

He cited the reality that most cybercops spend a great deal of their time assisting other agencies with computer-related crime investigation.

"As a result, these investigators are working all their time outside their jurisdiction. And most cops I’ve met are ill prepared to deal with today’s hackers."

Joynt, Cal Poly’s computer expert, cited identity theft as one of the most profitable hacker crimes, and one that demands lots of official attention.

But he readily admitted that nailing child pornographers is a major priority.

"I’m convinced," said Joynt, "that sophisticated, modern computer systems do feed child porn. I really believe that there are more people getting into this than ever before. At times it is very disappointing," he said.

That’s the most unpleasant part of his job, said Joynt. "It gets to the point where you just find what you need and move on. But I can recall specific images I’ve seen over the years that still kind of bend you a little bit. When I think it can’t get any worse ... " his voice trails off. "How could someone do that to a child and then take a picture of it."

Police investigation of child pornography carries its own inherent legal dangers. Police agencies, by trading child porn evidence with one another, cumulatively have become one of the largest child porn distributors in the world.

A misdemeanor case being prosecuted in Redondo Beach has dragged on for more than three years because police initially refused to show their evidence to defense attorneys, for fear of being accused of transmitting child porn.

The issue was solved by the involvement of a special judicial appointee who acted as "middle man" for the evidence exchange.

"It’s cutting-edge in terms of how we’re handling the [evidence], "said Redondo Beach City Prosecutor Mike Webb. "There’s no one uniform method. We’re all struggling through it."

In this age of computers, because of the volume or the unusual way in which evidence is housed, things become a little more tricky.

When police seize cocaine or a sawed-off shotgun, they can send them to laboratories operated by the federal Department of Justice for analysis, Webb said. "But responses are still being formed to deal with materials stored in computers and posted on the Internet."

"On a lot of these Internet offenses, we’re having to pour old wine into new bottles," said Loren Naiman, deputy district attorney in charge of HALT, the Los Angeles-area High Technology Analysis and Litigation Team. "We’re looking at situations that we’ve never seen before and having to craft new processes to deal with them."

Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court decided last month to strike down a federal pornography law that made it a crime to have computer-generated pictures that look like real children engaged in sex acts. The High Court majority ruled that the law’s prohibitions were too broad, and unconstitutional.

It’s just the beginning of a long, hard road. Many critically important tests involving basic freedoms lie ahead, people on both sides of the law fence agree. That’s probably because, as Will Rogers once said, "Liberty doesn’t work as good in practice as it does in speech." Æ

‘New Times’ news editor Daniel Blackburn can be reached for comment at [email protected].




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