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http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990528/V000605-052899-idx.html

Police Get Personal in Online Crime 

                     By Calvin Woodward
                     Associated Press Writer
                     Friday, May 28, 1999; 2:35 a.m. EDT

                     LEESBURG, Va. (AP) -- Go for a walk, drive a car or
                     dance in the moonlight and chances are, no one notices.
                     Journey on the Internet and a trail is left. 

                     And police are hot on that trail in a growing number of
                     criminal investigations. 

                     Armed with search warrants, police are looking into the
                     online activities of suspects, and sometimes victims, by
                     seizing evidence from Internet service providers and finding
                     material that people online never dreamed would end up in
                     the hands of the law. 

                     Private e-mail between lovers. The threatening missives of
                     haters. The true identities of people hiding behind screen
                     names in a medium they thought was the essence of secrecy. 

                     ``Ultimately, if you break the law, it can be traced,'' said
                     investigator Ron Horack of the Loudoun County, Va.,
                     sheriff's department. Horack helps police around the
                     country apply for search warrants to get material from the
                     county-based America Online, the world's largest Internet
                     service provider with 18 million customers. 

                     ``I know who you are and where you live,'' an anonymous
                     hatemonger e-mailed a 12-year-old girl in Lancaster, Pa.
                     By peeking into the accounts of Internet providers, police
                     can often say the same thing: They know who the
                     threatening people are and where they live. 

                     This week federal authorities said they had charged a
                     northern Virginia pediatrician with possessing child
                     pornography after investigating his AOL account and
                     finding at least 22 explicit images sent to him via e-mail
                     over the course of nearly six months. They said they then
                     found more child pornography on his computer. The doctor
                     could not immediately be reached for comment. 

                     With a warrant, law enforcement authorities can look at the
                     electronic mail and other online communications of people
                     suspected of a range of serious crimes, getting information
                     not just from a home computer but often the company that
                     provides the Internet, e-mail or chat service. 

                     They can do the same with victims, in the process seeing
                     mail from people who corresponded with them but had
                     nothing to do with a crime. Everything from humdrum
                     to-do lists to love letters from illicit digital dalliances
                     becomes potential evidence, and eventually a matter of
                     public record. 

                     ``It is a growing risk to privacy,'' said Marc Rotenberg,
                     executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information
                     Center, who says police should stick to traditional methods
                     such as stings, informants and forensic evidence, which
                     don't invade people's communications. 

                     Said Horack: ``If they're going to use the Internet for their
                     crime, we're going to use the Internet to catch them.'' 

                     Authorities turned to AOL to see some of the online
                     activities of the two high school students who killed 13 other
                     people and themselves in Littleton, Colo., last month.
                     They've used it to try to track down some of the copycat
                     threats that have closed many schools since. 

                     They took the same route, thus far with inconclusive results,
                     after a woman in Pennsylvania was told in a chat room, ``I
                     guarantee you I will hurt you if you don't listen to me,'' and
                     when a man in New York was charged with attempted
                     murder of his wife, who, police say, was having a passionate
                     online encounter her husband happened to see. 

                     ``AOL is extremely law-enforcement friendly,'' Horack
                     said. ``They don't hold anything back.'' 

                     America Online tells its nearly 18 million customers it
                     won't read or disclose private communication or personal
                     identifying information except under a ``valid legal process.''

                     Other major Internet service providers, or ISPs, as well as
                     separate online e-mail services and Internet hubs like
                     Hotmail and Yahoo, say much the same, although the
                     disclaimers may be hard to find in screens of small print. 

                     ``We have a long-standing policy of cooperation with law
                     enforcement,'' said AOL spokesman Rich D'Amato. 

                     Communications such as e-mail are disclosed only in
                     criminal investigations and with a warrant, he says. In
                     response to orders in civil cases, AOL may give out
                     information allowing someone's real name to be matched to
                     a screen name. 

                     So if a spouse is found to be having an online affair with
                     someone known only as Heart4U, the identity of that
                     cyberlover might eventually be uncovered in a divorce
                     proceeding. 

                     Raytheon Inc. obtained subpoenas to identify 21 people,
                     most of them employees, said to have been spreading
                     corporate secrets and gripes in an anonymous online chat
                     room. 

                     It then dropped a lawsuit it had brought against the 21, each
                     identified as ``John Doe,'' indicating to privacy experts that
                     the company had gone to court in the first place only to
                     learn the identities of the chatters. Four employees quit;
                     others entered corporate ``counseling.'' 

                     Privacy advocates worry that authorities could go on
                     increasingly invasive fishing expeditions. 

                     ``There are simply many more events that are recorded
                     (online) that would not be recorded in the physical world,''
                     said Rotenberg. ``I think it is going to become an enormous
                     problem as people become more and more dependent on
                     ISPs.'' 

                     Meanwhile, tools continue to be developed to protect
                     anonymity -- a site called anonymizer.com, for one, will
                     relay e-mail, stripping out the sender's identifying
                     information. 

                     So far, at least, few warrants going to AOL look like goose
                     chases, an impression formed after a review of the more
                     than 100 that have been filed in Leesburg this year. 

                     Most involve alleged pedophiles, stalkers and harassers who
                     have used the Internet to find prey and left evidence of their
                     intentions with victims or undercover police. 

                     Horack prepares warrant applications for police from other
                     parts of the country, some so new to digital detective work
                     they need their children's help to get online. Once they are
                     approved by a magistrate, he takes them to AOL and
                     retrieves the information. It's almost a full-time job, offered
                     by the sheriff because the company gives such a big boost to
                     the county. 

                     The warrants are especially effective against child
                     pornographers, Horack says. ``Pedophiles are pack rats. They
                     don't throw away anything.'' Even when they do delete
                     material from their computer, it might be found at the
                     service provider. 

                     In the case of the 12-year-old Pennsylvania girl, nothing
                     turned up in the AOL search. Most of the time, something
                     does. 

                     For example, police in Hendersonville, Tenn., turned to
                     AOL to see the Internet activity of Dennis Wayne Cope, 47,
                     shot and found dead in a crawl space of his home in
                     February. 

                     In an affidavit seeking access to Cope's e-mail, ``buddy list
                     content'' and other online activities, police said he had been
                     corresponding online with the estranged wife of suspect
                     Robert Lee Pattee. They also say Pattee's hand print was
                     found at the scene. 

                     Pattee has been charged with first-degree murder.