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[Posted on Mon, Feb. 10, 2003]
Chicago gets FBI lab tuned to computersChicago Tribune
Computers often leave clues that criminals don't think to hide--and that cops aren't necessarily trained to find.
Gathering evidence from hard drives, cellphones and handheld devices has become just as important to solving crimes as knowing how to dissect a room or interview a suspect.
Now the FBI has tapped Chicago to become part of a national network of crime labs dedicated to computer forensics, the country's fastest-growing segment of law enforcement.
Six Chicago-area agencies, including the police force of the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Illinois attorney general's office, will help the FBI staff the $2.3 million lab scheduled to open March 1.
The 15,000-square-foot facility at 610 S. Canal St. will investigate the technology behind an array of criminal activities, including global terrorism, identity theft, Internet attacks and trafficking of child pornography. It will be one of three labs to open this year. Two are operating in Dallas and San Diego.
"We have to work together because resources are limited, and the world is changing fast," said FBI Special Agent Ross Rice, spokesman for the bureau's Chicago office.
"Five years ago, a typical case involved one person and one computer," Rice said. "Now we see conspiracies involving 40 or more computers and victims all over the world. Global terrorism has raised the stakes dramatically."
Indeed, computer crime rates are soaring, and some of the nation's most important online operations, including banks and emergency call centers, remain surprisingly vulnerable.
The Federal Trade Commission recently reported that about 43 percent of the 380,000 complaints received last year regarded identity theft--much of it fueled by information surreptitiously gleaned from computers--and that about half of all other types of fraud complaints had some connection to the Internet.
The "Slammer" Internet attack that struck hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide last month caused more damage to vital national services than experts had thought possible.
The Chicago lab's 12 initial examiners are trained in how to navigate most computer operating systems and how to recover data from damaged, deleted or encrypted files. They will also collect and preserve digital information from crime scenes and examine evidence submitted by Illinois authorities in police investigations.
Two years ago, the flagship lab in San Diego helped convict a woman accused of staging her husband's death to look as if he had been attacked while jogging. She might have gotten away with it had the lab not inspected the man's computer.
The machine contained a file of diary entries he created. Though the electronic document had been deleted and partially overwritten, examiners were able to view its original contents using customized software designed to indicate even the slightest changes in a file. The journal entries detailed marital strife and directed police to the man's therapist, whose records helped solve the case.
Examiners study a variety of information to ferret out computer evidence. They look for the hours a computer is typically in use and the time stamps on questionable files. They search for viruses that could allow an outsider access to the computer.
But the most fruitful results often come from the computer's hard drive because many users mistakenly think they have covered their digital tracks by pressing the delete button. Records of every document created or deleted, every e-mail sent and every Web site visited are stashed in nooks and crannies throughout every computer. A computer's trash bin is never really emptied without scrubbing software.
"People sometimes know how to clean in a couple of corners, but they rarely hit all of them," said Mike Hrabik, chief technology officer of Solutionary Inc., a computer forensics firm in Omaha.
The quality of training and technical tools in the FBI's new labs, at an estimated cost of about $100,000 per examiner yearly, surpasses what is available to most investigators in the agency's 700 locations and the nation's largest police departments.
"They're putting in first-rate equipment, and it will be more advanced than what we have," said Sgt. David Hudspeth of the Chicago Police Department, which will assign one officer to work in the lab. "Everyone needs access to collaboration like this."
That is precisely what the FBI hopes to deliver, particularly as it strives to convince the Bush administration and skeptical members of Congress that it deserves to remain the nation's chief counterterrorism authority. The new labs figure prominently in FBI Director Robert Mueller's efforts to demonstrate that the agency is dramatically improving performance by shedding notoriously old technology.
The bureau is dispatching teams from its computer forensics labs to law-enforcement agencies across the country with hopes that Congress will provide funding for additional labs.
"There's hardly a crime in this country anymore that doesn't involve a computer somehow," said FBI Special Agent Jason Weiss, who works with the San Diego lab. "Technology touches the perpetrator, but it also touches the victim. Its reach opens up entirely new ways to piece the truth together."
[ Original Article on the Tribune Web Site ]