Online Crime a Tough Collar
By Julia Scheeres
2:00 a.m. July 11, 2001 PDT


Few state and local police departments are prepared to handle the onslaught of electronic crimes because of a lack of resources and training, according to a nationwide survey of law enforcement agencies.

"These are very complicated cases to prosecute. We're not talking about street crimes," said Ronda Ellcessor, the spokeswoman for the National Cybercrime Training Partnership, a joint effort between the Justice Department and the National White Collar Crime Center.

The NCTP arrived at its conclusions after organizing a series of focus groups with state and local authorities and interviewing top-level law enforcement agents across the country.

According to the group's research, many local police officers fear that their departments don't have the expertise or equipment needed to prosecute electronic crimes.

Small town police departments are the least prepared, said Jim Riccardi Jr., an electronic crimes specialist with the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center.

"A lot of them just tell the victims to call the state police," Riccardi said. "It's an awareness issue. They need to come to their senses and realize this is a huge problem."

Take the case of Georgia. Of the state's 159 counties, fewer than nine are equipped to deal with computer crimes, said Steve Edwards, a special agent in charge of financial investigations for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

"We're way behind the curve on this," Edwards said.

Funding is a big part of the problem, he said. It costs the state $82,500 to train and equip each computer forensic expert. Retaining them is another matter. The golden carrots offered by the private sector often prove too tempting for some blue suits, who abandon the force to practice their new skills in higher-paid environs.

Despite the obvious difficulties of fighting electronic crime, untrained police may also foul computer evidence, Edwards said. In the process of extracting pictures of child porn or fragments of e-mail related to identity theft, they may alter the hard drives, making evidence inadmissible in a court of law.

The GBI, which does computer forensic work for police departments in Georgia that lack their own specialists, analyzes 20 to 25 computer hard drives a month and is running four months behind schedule, Edwards said.

"It's very frustrating for law enforcement in that it takes us so long to build a case," he said. "It delays the process, and sometimes the (criminals) move on."

But even metropolises such as Los Angeles are running a deficit when it comes to combating cybercrime.

Of the LAPD's 9,000 employees, only five of them belong to the department's computer crime unit, writes unit director Det. Terry D. Willis, in the March 2001 issue of the Informant, a newsletter published by the White Collar Crime Center.

The LAPD's computer crime unit was sorely underfunded until a case broke that proved that tech-savvy criminals had the upper hand: In an Internet gambling investigation, the unit seized 65 servers but found it had no equipment to duplicate the seized evidence.

Funding for the unit quickly became a priority, Willis wrote.

Yeah, and you can't forget all the "crimes" that happen not as a result of not an intention, but a mistake.

My frosh year of college I had a credit card whose balance, etc I could check online, and they had a online bill pay, they never verified if the bank account I designated the funds to be taken out of was mine or not. So I found my dad's largest one and bought eighths of chronic all year!

Recently when I signed up for online banking for my checking account (on the phone) they asked me, "Lokil, would you like to be able to view your home equity line of credit as well?" and I said, "sure."

It ended up being my dad's as well. The internet is full of fuck ups, it's embarassing...

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You're in a laundry room, you're in a laundry room, the clue just came to you? oh.

[This message has been edited by Lokil (edited 07-11-2001).]

quote:

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Few state and local police departments are prepared to handle the onslaught of electronic crimes because of a lack of resources and training, according to a nationwide survey of law enforcement agencies.

These are very complicated cases to prosecute.

local police officers fear that their departments don't have the expertise or equipment needed to prosecute electronic crimes.

Small town police departments are the least prepared

they may alter the hard drives, making evidence inadmissible in a court of law.

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good to know.




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Brute force is easy to conquer, Intelligence is harder to overcome, but brute stupidity is impossible.

One day stupidity is going to destroy us all.