LAPD Is Not Ready to Fight Online Crime, Report Says

A confidential Los Angeles police report on computer crime warns that the department is woefully ill-equipped to pursue cyber criminals with a force that now consists of one detective and a computer with no Internet access.

The report suggests that seven full-time detectives--including one whose sole duty would be investigating online child pornography--be trained and assigned to computer crime, and that city funds be spent on nine Pentium computers, two laptops and related equipment.

The report, obtained by The Times, warns that more police resources are needed to deal with online child molesters, pornographers, software pirates, prostitution rings, con artists and assorted thieves it says are responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in crimes per year.

But its portrait of the perils of the online world is challenged by some experts.

“There is crime on the Internet, and there is a potential for very high-stakes crime,” said Donn Parker, a consultant at SRI International who has compiled computer crime statistics for the U.S. Department of Justice and advises companies on data security.

“[But] we have files on reported computer crimes going back to 1958. In all, we have about 4,000 cases, a relatively small number.”

Although he is an advocate of a greater police presence on the Internet, Parker dismissed some assumptions in the LAPD report, such as: “Losses from computer crimes in the past three years are estimated to be between $164 million and $5 billion.”

“I’ve been fighting against the publication of these fictitious figures for 25 years,” Parker said from his office in Menlo Park. “There are no valid statistics on computer crime or high-tech crime, and all the numbers that have been put out there are total nonsense.”

The LAPD report was written at the request of the City Council. Its author, according to police officials, was the sole detective in the computer crime unit, who has retired since writing it last summer. He could not be reached for comment.

Councilwoman Laura Chick, who sponsored the motion that requested the report, said the council would need more thorough research before deciding whether to foot the bill--not calculated in the report--to arm the LAPD for a new role.

“At this point I don’t think we are even ready to start contemplating what kind of staffing we will need,” she said. “The first step is to get a reality-based picture of how big a problem this is.”

Lt. Ken Welty, who oversees the LAPD’s computer crime unit, defended the spirit of the report, although he said he did not know the specific sources for its statistics. He said much of the information available on computer crime is contradictory and confusing.

“It depends on who you talk to and what you read,” Welty said. “This is a lot of guesswork.”

The lack of accurate information on computer crime is the first issue that needs investigation, he said, adding that the problem will remain until a wide range of law enforcement agencies are given the basic equipment and personnel needed for research.

The report points out that although the LAPD created a computer crime unit in 1986, it had no computer until late 1994. Funds for Internet access have never been allocated. The only online access was through the lone detective’s private CompuServe account, for which he paid out of his own pocket.

One of the detective’s primary duties was the retrieval of information from computers seized in crime investigations. He also participated in the internal investigation that led to the conviction of a Devonshire station detective who sold information from the LAPD database to a private investigator.

Welty said many high-tech crime cases come to the attention of his department, such as “a Department of Water and Power case, which we don’t have any leads on, where someone hacked into their lines and made $40,000 worth of unauthorized calls.”

“We turn down a lot of things because we don’t have the manpower and resources to do them,” he said.

Parker, meanwhile, said the media often focuses on computer crimes that are relatively uncommon, such as online child pornography.

“We have reports of prosecution proceedings around the country . . . maybe once every two or three months,” he said. And while online prostitution solicitation exists, he said, the vast majority of it originates in countries such as Thailand, where it is legal.

He also disputed the weight given in the LAPD report to the discovery that an unnamed financial service network had been hacked--broken into--six times. Two of the intrusions were for the purpose of laundering drug money, the report said.

“That was the Citibank case,” said Parker, “and what you’re talking about there is a period of two or three years, for which they found six intrusions. That’s relatively few.”

Another nationally known computer crime consultant, Jay BloomBecker of Santa Cruz, also took exception with some parts of the report. But he, like Parker, said there is “a serious menace” in computer viruses and the actions of some hackers.

Researching and fighting computer crime is only part of the headache for law enforcement.

“People can’t even agree on what a computer crime is at this point,” Welty said. “A computer is a tool, like a gun. If a bookmaker uses a computer to keep track of bets, does that make it a computer crime? No.”

Then there is the problem of jurisdiction. The Internet crosses state and national boundaries, making it difficult to determine which agencies should investigate.

The LAPD report will next be presented to the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, chaired by Chick, which will decide whether to make a recommendation to the full council.