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[Posted on Tue, Oct. 15, 2002]
FBI plans computer lab in the valley$3 MILLION FACILITY SET FOR MENLO PARK TO ASSIST LOCAL POLICE AGENCIES
By Sean Webby
Mercury News
The FBI is creating a $3 million computer forensics lab in Silicon Valley, using the latest imaging software and high-end computers to sleuth for cyber-clues of child pornography, corruption, murder and more.
The 12,000-square-foot Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, at the foot of the Dumbarton Bridge in Menlo Park, will be available to help detectives from San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Alameda counties hunt for digital clues. Investigators can bring seized computers and disks to be searched for incriminating e-mails, encrypted documents and other evidence within suspects' hardware or software.
Labs like these are popping up around the country in response to what investigators are saying is an exponentially growing mass of new case evidence to be analyzed.
"Where we used to look at a homicide suspect's letters, now it's evolved into an electronic format," said Mark Mershon, the special agent in charge of the FBI command in San Francisco. "This is a quickly growing need and law enforcement needs to pool its resources to face it."
The lab is expected to be operating by next year. It will be staffed by about 15 highly trained investigators culled from the FBI and local agencies, including the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office and San Jose and Palo Alto police departments.
County project
Meanwhile, Santa Clara County is using a $250,000 state grant to start its own six-investigator computer crime lab within a month, according to lab director Kenneth Rosenblatt. Many of the functions of that lab, based in the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, are set to be folded into the FBI lab.There are two regional computer labs in operation -- in San Diego and Dallas. In the pipeline is this lab as well as centers in Chicago and Kansas City. Eventually, the FBI hopes to create computer forensics labs in every major metropolitan area of the country.
"This is where everything in law enforcement is going," said Randall Bolelli, director of the FBI's regional forensic lab in San Diego. "Almost every case these days involves a computer in some way. And as hard drive space and capacity keeps increasing, we have more things to look at."
For years, police departments and prosecutors have had to rely on computer forensics from overburdened, in-house experts. Investigators are hoping the new Silicon Valley lab will help them keep up with the dramatically growing need for processing criminal computer evidence.
Digital evidence
Digital evidence in criminal cases has exploded on to the scene in the last few years. And it has become important in all types of cases, not just white-collar crime or Internet investment fraud.Computer evidence has been at the heart of many of the area's child pornography investigations, but these days, experts say, computer evidence is involved in virtually every type of case.
For example:
- The FBI used computer forensics in this spring's Operation Candyman. Seven South Bay residents were among 40 child pornography suspects arrested in a nationwide child porn sweep.
- In Palo Alto earlier this year, detectives investigating a child molestation complaint looked in the files of the suspect's computer and found a journal where he expressed his love for the elementary school student. The man was convicted.
Jack Grandsaert, the San Mateo County deputy district attorney in charge of computer forensics, said there are people complicit in crimes going free for lack of trained investigators.
"Before we used to look at the typewriter ribbon. Now, think of e-mail, who the suspects are corresponding with," Grandsaert said. "Well, we often can't find it because it is encoded. And so we miss out on a co-conspirator that might have had a mother lode of evidence."