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Officers Learning How To Patrol Internet Hot Spots

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By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, The Associated Press

Published: November 4, 2007

ARLINGTON, Va. - Raise your hand if you've heard of "Second Life," police Lt. Charles Cohen asks a room of about 75 law enforcement officers from around the country.

"Second Life," a sprawling online universe, has had technology circles abuzz for a while. But here, it might as well be a watch repair shop. Only a few hands go up. Cohen has some explaining to do.

So begins another session in the traveling classroom of this fast-talking Indiana state trooper at the forefront of the idea that police officers need to be better at incorporating the online world into their patrols.

More and more, online and real-life investigative boundaries don't make sense. Whether it's on MySpace, Facebook, "Second Life" or other Web flavors of the moment, criminals and victims - especially young ones - are leaving clues in plain sight online, even for offline crimes. Things people once wrote in private diaries now cascade through Web sites that stimulate free expression - and are open to anyone who comes looking.

"People under 25 tend to think about what is public versus private information differently from the rest of us, and that is great for law enforcement investigators," Cohen, 37, tells his audience in Arlington, at a conference of the National White Collar Crime Center.

But the anonymity and the sheer scope of the Internet also can make it easier for criminals to cover their tracks. Today's hot online hangout is tomorrow's dead zone. The trick for police is to figure out how to keep up - a proactive step that doesn't come easy, given that most police departments have to concentrate their limited resources on reacting to crimes.

Learning To Work Together

Steven DeBrota, a federal prosecutor in Indiana, argues that too much separation between cyber-specialists and other cops can be dangerous.

Typically, he says, detectives will transfer a suspect's computer to forensic examiners who might need months to produce a full report on the contents, especially with hard drives ballooning to monumental sizes. In that time, DeBrota fears, the opportunity to find a suspect's associates or additional victims may be lost.

So DeBrota has pushed an alternative approach in Indiana. Now, computer specialists get out of their labs and assist detectives on sweeps and arrests. At the same time, front-line officers have been trained to do some of the basics.

They can take hard drives out of computers, attach "write-blocking" clips that prevent data from being altered, and then do initial, targeted searches for evidence - Google searches typed, videos watched - that might be valuable in interrogations.

For all the logic of this approach, it is far from common. At best, several departments have launched profiles on social-networking sites like My- Space, so people can report tips or informally chat with cops.

"Not everyone watches the news at night. Not everyone reads the paper. Not everyone even reads news online. But it seems like everyone is on My- Space," says Stephanie Slater, a police spokeswoman in Boynton Beach. Her department's MySpace page gets more hits than its general Web site does.

Clues From Online World

Yet for all that MySpace reveals in its 200 million profiles, it's just one of innumerable online avenues. Spending some time in Cohen's class shows just how hard it is to track them all.

He suggests ways to hunt for clues not only on obvious social-networking zones like Facebook and MySpace but also the likes of Xanga, Bebo and Orkut. Given that people often don't use their real names online, officers might have to ask friends of suspects and victims not only where they hung out in the physical world, but also which Web sites they frequented.

To listen to Cohen is to walk through dark corners of the Internet. There are gang members boasting on MySpace, killers revealing their obsessions on LiveJournal, teenagers sharing drug-making tips on YouTube, prostitutes hawking themselves on Craigslist.

Yet Cohen, in a matter-of-fact manner, is measured in his approach.

"Social networks are not a bad thing. It's a great thing," he says. "It's like any community, communities we all live in. There are going to be criminals in it."

At the recent three-day conference of the National White Collar Crime Center, Cohen's presentation was in such demand that it was the only one offered twice.

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