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From... Surfing with U.S. Customs
October 20, 1999 by Tom Spring FAIRFAX, Va. (IDG) -- In the high-tech game of cops and robbers, online thugs are still one step ahead of the law. That's the lament of Glenn Nick, assistant director for the U.S. Customs Service's CyberSmuggling Center. Once upon a time, it was easier for Customs agents to catch crooks trying to smuggle contraband across the U.S. border. Their targets were heroin-lined suitcases, teddy bears packed with hundred-dollar bills, and brown paper bags stuffed with Danish pornography. But now Customs agents police the country's "e-borders" for the invisible threats of online child pornography, virtual money laundering, illegal drug sales, and music and software buccaneers. "It's a high-tech Wild West out there," Nick says. Last year, Customs agents made 228 arrests, but that barely scratches the surface, he adds. It's the music, Ma'amSitting at a computer in a nondescript building overlooking a highway in this Virginia suburb, Delbert Richburg looks no different from any office worker taking a digital music break.
But this is Customs' CyberSmuggling Center, and today the special agent's job is to crack down on a rough MP3 music site illegally hosting thousands of hours of copyrighted music. This site, and dozens like it, come to his attention each day from tips forwarded by organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America. Richburg, one of about 20 full-time agents working at the center on enforcement projects, types in a URL and sees a Web page hawking thousands of illegal MP3s. He shakes his head. "I could find a new MP3 site once a minute for the rest of the day if I tried," he says. While it takes little time to find illegal sites, it takes weeks or months to gather evidence, identify the owner, and shut down a site. Arrests of music pirates are extremely rare, Nick says, because the threat of prosecution is enough to make them disappear. With Customs' help, the RIAA says it has sent out thousands of cease and desist orders. The RIAA says only five civil suits have been brought against Net music pirates who violated federal copyright laws. The Pedophile PatrolOn the other hand, Customs agents arrest someone every other day in child pornography cases. Just down the hall from Richburg, colleagues are posing online as children conversing in public chat rooms with suspected pedophiles. Others probe confiscated PC hard disks for damning evidence. And still other agents, armed with a court order, monitor suspected criminals as they surf the Net. "The Web is like the biggest city on the planet. Wander around long enough and you're going to trip over something illegal," Nick says. Those somethings have included poached ivory and Peruvian antiquities, and manufacturing equipment for building triggers for nuclear warheads. Other seizures include companies selling chemicals used as main ingredients in poison gases, snake venom do-it-yourself suicide kits, and, yes, even Cuban cigars. "If it's on the Net, we are there and looking at it," Nick says. On the borderCustoms' primary mandate is to protect to the nation's borders from the flow of illegal goods into the United States and to guard trade interests of U.S. companies. But in 1980 Customs created a child protection unit after it began intercepting alarming numbers of overseas packages containing child pornography. Eight years later, when the agency noticed computer bulletin boards were being used to transmit child pornography, it began policing the Internet. Today, Customs says nearly all the crimes it is mandated to prevent, from child pornography and smuggling to financial crimes and fraud, can be found on the Net. It estimates related computer crimes cost U.S. business $10 billion a year. The music industry alone, it says, was bilked $300 million last year in lost revenue to digital downloads of MP3s. Are the good guys being outgunned?The Customs Department's CyberSmuggling Center has an annual $2.4 million budget, a sliver of Customs' $1.7 billion budget. Come April, the agency will have spent $2 million building a new state-of-the-art computer crime lab here. To help turn the tide on Net crimes, Customs is hoping its facility here will serve as a prototype for other centers to be built around the country. "We are at the very beginning stages today," Nick says. Along with adding new investigative hardware and software tools, Customs hopes to triple current staffing levels over the next year. But even then, Customs will still be playing catch up, Nick says. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other federal enforcement agencies investigating cybercrime each complain they are strapped for funds and hampered by outdated laws. Customs, for example, is pushing for increased penalties for crimes conducted over the Net that use encryption technology as part of the crime. It also advocates an industry standard for record retention by Internet service providers, making it easier for law enforcement to retrace the steps of suspected criminals. And yes, you should be concerned, Nick says: "We are all potential victims." Just as credit card fraud drives costs up for banks, merchants, and ultimately consumers, Internet crime is having the same trickle down impact on Internet goods and services.
RELATED STORIES: The hacker in all of us RELATED IDG.net STORIES: Who polices the Net? RELATED SITES: United States Customs Service
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