NCJ Number
193985
Journal
Law Enforcement Technology Volume: 29 Issue: 2 Dated: February 2002 Pages: 92-94
Date Published
2002
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This article examines the activities of the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) regarding the investigation of cybercrimes.
Abstract
The Edmonton Police Service (EPS) has seen complaints involving online criminal activity increase. The 1,500-member EPS serves more than 919,000 citizens across the 36 municipalities that make-up Canada's fifth largest city. Most of the department's cyber cases involve the trafficking of child pornography. In response to this increase, the EPS established the Technological Crimes Unit, a team charged with detecting, tracking, and assisting in the prosecution of cyber criminals. The unit moves into action when officers assigned to other units within the departmentsuch as Child Protective Servicesforward leads regarding Internet-related complaints to its attention. Unit investigators then go online to pinpoint the physical location of the server on which the material in question is stored. While EPS Technological Crimes Unit uses a variety of monitoring tools to investigate complaints of cybercrime, VisualRoute stands out for its ease of use and thorough reporting capabilities. VisualRoute's most useful capability is its ability to trace the route messages have traveled across the Internet. VisualRoute represents a path between the origin and destination on a world map. In most cases it is impossible to determine the physical location of an Internet user, but VisualRoute provides a clue: the name of the sender's Internet service provider (ISP), showing the city, State, and county of the Internet connection used by the sender. This is significant because most users access the Internet through a local provider. VisualRoute also provides contact information for networks used by a particular Internet connection, so investigators can easily contact the ISP concerning the activities of a particular customer. Armed with this knowledge, the EPS investigators are able to apply for a search warrant and secure individual subscriber information associated with the account in question. The Technological Crimes Unit has used Visual Route to track some 100 complaints, and over a dozen cases are now being adjudicated in the Edmonton court system.