

The Secret Service employs 125 special agents nationwide - eight of whom work out of the New York field office - who are trained in computer forensics techniques. Weaver is the first to acknowledge that law enforcement is hog-tied by a lack of technically seasoned investigators. "We started with the telecommunications service providers and moved forward from there." "From the very first day we started, we worked with industry," he says. In all, the ECTF is responsible for 788 arrests, the recovery of more than 2,000 cloned cell phones and the resolution of more than 2,100 identity thefts, all with a measly budget of $100,000, which even Weaver calls embarrassing.īut if it weren't for the assistance of those hand-selected members from the private sector, the ECTF wouldn't have nearly so much to brag about, according to Weaver, senior Secret Service special agent and point man for the ECTF.

crime group for telecommunications fraud and tracked satellite interceptors of New York police car computer transmissions. The ECTF set the precedent for e-mail wiretapping, arrested 44 members of the John Gotti Jr. Since its formation, the ECTF has put away large drug cartels, organized crime groups and individual crackers like Smires. It's also a way to get better and faster assistance from law enforcement when their technology is under attack. It's a place to coordinate efforts, share information, review cases and learn from other investigations. While the ECTF is careful to guard its top-secret data, it also welcomes new members to its network, which consists of about 60 companies from the private sector, mostly from the telecommunications, banking/finance and vendor/services communities.įor these private-sector groups - which are either handpicked by the ECTF or turn to the organization after falling victim to crackers - the ECTF has become the most important single point of contact and resources in the law enforcement community. Secret Service and boasts a membership of 180 top federal and local law enforcement agencies and prosecutors. The ECTF, a sort of central cybercrime clearinghouse for all arms of local, state and national law enforcement, is headed by the New York office of the U.S. The 5-year-old ECTF focuses primarily on the New York area, but its network is expanding to include the Washington area. Just another example of the private/ public partnership for which the ECTF is becoming known. Now Smires, who pleaded guilty to charges of computer fraud and misuse in the Eastern District Court of New York, awaits sentencing. Abdelkader Smires, formerly ITTI's chief programmer, is still at the keyboard when they catch him at a New York college where he taught night classes. Stroz called the ECTF on behalf of ITTI.įour hours later, they nab their man.
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"Have you ever seen a movie with a kidnap scene - agents sitting around monitoring equipment and phones? It's that type of setting you now have in the corporate sector," says Ed Stroz, founding president of New York-based security consulting firm Stroz and Associates.
