COMMENTARY--Trained in martial arts, sworn to secrecy, famous for high-tech earplugs and icy stares, the oldest law enforcement agency in the federal government--the U.S. Secret Service--is now protecting our national interests online.
"Cybercrime today is the equivalent of counterfeiting in the 1860s," said special agent John Frazzini, speaking to security professionals at the NetSec 2002 conference in San Francisco last week. Frazzini related the simple rationale behind the decision to make the Secret Service, a law enforcement agency best known for protecting the U.S. president, our nation's elite cybercops: The country needed someone to protect the economy.
BACK IN 1865, when the Secret Service was formed, counterfeiting was rife and law enforcement nonexistent. With no centralized banking facilities to issue and store official U.S. currency, local banks often printed their own--which was often nonstandard and easily altered. Recognizing that counterfeiting threatened to undermine the U.S. economy, President Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch created a branch of the U.S. Treasury Dept. to protect the nation's money supply.
Over the years, this law enforcement agency within the Treasury acquired other responsibilities. In 1894, 13 years after the assassination of President James Garfield, the Secret Service was charged with protecting President Grover Cleveland. In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt transferred a few agents to the Justice Department, effectively forming an early version of the FBI. In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson assigned the Secret Service to investigate espionage. In 1984, when Congress made credit and debit card fraud a federal offense, it put the Secret Service in charge of violations relating to credit and debit card fraud, federal-interest computer fraud, and fraudulent identification documents
Fact is, amid the recent buzz about the FBI's need to upgrade its computer technology, the Secret Service has been quietly handling cybercrime cases for some time--and with great success.
Still, the public introduction to the Secret Service's role as the nation's team of top cybercops was not very auspicious. In May 1990, federal and local agents raided homes in 15 different cities, seizing computers suspected of hosting bulletin boards containing illegal software, credit card numbers, and telephone access codes. Operation Sundevil, as the action became known, grew out of a joint effort by the Phoenix Secret Service and the Arizona Attorney General's office. It was one of the first major cybercrime events; one that, according to Bruce Sterling's 1992 book, Hacker Crackdown, did little to stop the spread of illegal software, credit card numbers, or telephone access codes.
ANOTHER RESPONSIBILITY of the Secret Service is to help local law enforcement with computer crime investigations. When called upon, the Secret Service offers police an Electronic Crime Investigation unit that handles Internet fraud, network intrusion, network destruction, and identity theft. To make these groups as effective as possible, the Electronic Crime Special Agent Program (ECSAP) trains agents in computer networking and digital forensics. The program, said Frazzini, is funded entirely by the forfeiture of money and property from prosecuted criminals--no taxpayer money is used at all.
The Secret Service has also aided local law enforcement by forming special task forces that combine federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies; private companies; and universities. The first one, located in New York City, was called the New York Electronic Crimes Task Force (NYECTF). This model--which combines public, private, and academic resources--proved so successful in combating computer crime that the Secret Service is now creating other task forces in Houston, Cleveland, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Las Angeles, Miami, and Washington, D.C.
Prior to Sept. 11, the NYECTF office was housed in Building 7 of the World Trade Center. The destruction of the World Trade Center claimed all the case files and evidence residing within the NYECTF, but none of its agents. Within 48 hours, the agents were back in business with help from other law enforcement agencies, corporations, and universities--all of which donated equipment and volunteered man-hours to rebuild the office. Apparently, a decade of quietly rebuilding its image after Operation Sundevil paid off for the Secret Service.
While the FBI makes headlines for lacking up-to-date computing skills, the Secret Service is slated to settle into the new Department of Homeland Security. But you probably won't hear much about it. They're the quiet men and women dressed in black, working the background, just doing their jobs.
Do you approve of the Secret Service functioning as our nation's cybercops? Would you be interested in assisting their task force in your area? TalkBack to me below.
