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Australian Federal Police - Platypus Journal/Magazine |
Digital frontierland
There are no new wild frontiers left to explore on this planet. Space travel may open new territories for future explorers but the AFP's Director Technical Support likens the information revolution to a wild new frontier open to adventurers, explorers and fortune seekers.
Now, in the twilight years of the 20th century, the dust and din from the information revolution has settled sufficiently to reveal a broad new frontier open for exploration and exploitation. The new territories are ill defined, but they have borders with every country, and for a small investment, any person can cross over, travel anywhere inside having adventures, meeting fellow-travellers, and doing business, and then retreat back, their movements being rapid and undetected by the authorities. Although this vast cyber landscape can only be viewed through the new age crystal ball – the computer screen – it is nevertheless real, and both promising and threatening to our future prosperity.
Like their counterparts in the frontier regions of the Wild West and colonial Australia, the new pioneers are a mixed bag of adventurers, fortune seekers, peaceful settlers and outlaws. Identities are often disguised, and many do not respect privacy or private property. The rule of law is not well established, fortunes are being made and lost, major assets are at risk and national security is threatened at the borders. Inevitably, the wildest era is already drawing to a close as a new wave of honest settlers and entrepreneurs is demanding marshals who have the laws, the determination, the weapons and the skills to defend them. A new breed of lawman is needed and with it, hanging judges to hand down severe sentences to those who transgress.
But, as in the Old West, these pioneers are rugged individuals, liberal and high minded, who have learned to love the independence and freedom of movement, discussion and association that is inherent in their new culture. They will fight hard to preserve their freedoms against heavy-handed authorities attempting to construct the same oppressive controls that bedevilled their old country.
Modern liberal democratic governments must balance the obvious benefits that will flow to their economies and people from fully embracing this new paradigm, with the legitimate need to protect their honest citizens from insidious forms of exploitation from the outlaws. However, the power of governments enjoyed so much during the 20th century to regulate and sometimes to tax information and entertainment communications, will be greatly diminished in cyber space.
Jurisdictions in many parts of the world are finding it hard to accept this loss of authority, and those citizens who understand that it is inevitable must be patient while their politicians attempt to come to terms with it.
On the bright side, this is a highly positive development for oppressed peoples throughout the world. Tyrannical rulers, wherever their domain, are afraid that their subjects will escape from the walls of their mental confinement. They have carefully constructed these walls using as building materials fear, isolation, poor education and ignorance – all of which are susceptible to rapid corrosion when exposed to the acid rain of free speech. They fear that the intrusion of organised international interest groups and anarchic cyber-travellers through the cyber frontier into their closed ordered world will unravel the stability of their regimes.
Australia, relative to its near neighbours, has advanced, high quality, reliable and cheap telecommunications networks, a sophisticated software development capability, and a highly computerised business and industrial environment. The degree of penetration of computers into Australian homes is second only to that of the west coast of the USA. Just as Australian computer professionals are highly regarded internationally, a similar reputation is being earned by our computer outlaws. One might expect therefore that Australian law enforcement agencies would also be leaders in the field of investigation of this type of crime. Sadly, although efforts are being made, this is not yet the case.
Although significant successes have been achieved by the small computer crime and ‘forensic' examination teams, particularly those of the AFP and the Victoria Police, it would be fair to say that Australian police services have not yet committed the level of financial and human resources to this area that will be required to meet the investigation challenges of the near future.
The deregulated telecommunications industry, international jurisdiction issues, and rapidly advancing electronics technology and services will vastly complicate these investigations. Organised crime can be expected to use all of these complications to make tracing its activities as difficult as possible. Multidisciplinary teams, encompassing skills in investigation, information technology, law, telecommunications, covert surveillance, and accounting, will be needed to address the most complex computer crime offences. These teams will need strong technical support from specialists in accessing various computer operating systems and overcoming obstacles such as passwords and encryption. And importantly, it will all have to be done to the satisfaction of the courts as to the validity of evidence.
In a time of shrinking budgets and close scrutiny of performance against core business obligations, it is unreasonable to expect scarce resources to be dedicated to developing a complex technical capability to investigate offences that have not yet drawn the serious concern of governments. Some security specialists have expressed the view that numerous serious offences are currently being committed, but the impact is hidden because corporate victims may have reasons for not reporting such crimes and the nature of the damage is such that the offences sometimes remain undetected for long periods.
While the Federal Crimes Act, and most equivalent state legislation, makes adequate provision for computer crime offences, the lenient sentences so far given to those proven guilty indicates that judges, and presumably therefore the community at large, may not yet regard these offences as being as serious as those that take place in the ‘real' world. Time will show that this is a mistaken view.
Immense technical challenges will confront policing by the turn of the century. Most police officers would be aware of the trend to computerisation and digital telecommunications, but few would perceive just how all-pervading these technologies will become during the next decade. Information will be the major trade good and power base of the 21st century. Personal computers, modems, LANS, PABXs, private networks, satellites, compact disks, CD ROMs, GSM mobile phones have become familiar items to most of us during the last decade. However, these devices as we know them now will soon come to be regarded, like the Model T Ford and Victorola, as crude pioneering models with vastly inferior performance and ridiculously high costs.
Children, who are already more comfortable than adults with this technology, will be educated from infant level by facilitators who show them how to electronically access information sources. They will learn the traditional subjects, through computer simulation, interactive audio and video, virtual reality games and other techniques. Electronic mail, voice mail, video phones, remote databases and bulletin boards will permit global interaction by individuals and organisations with minimal control or regulation by governments. Communications will remain highly personal, with each individual having a unique number and miniature telecommunications device, not necessarily a phone, but capable of voice, data, or picture transmission and backed by store-and-forward systems in the networks which ensure that messages find their way to their intended recipients, even if they have to wait until a convenient moment to get through.
However, before being carried away by the potential benefit of this technology, it should be remembered that "data is not information, information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not wisdom". The performance of all organisations, particularly law enforcement, will depend on the content quality and speed of their information systems, as much as on human performance. Neils Bohr, when speaking about symmetry in decision making, once said that a great truth is often characterised by its opposite also being a great truth. In the IT world this symmetry might be seen in the statement that "People are only as good as the information that computers feed into them".
Criminals will find these new information technologies immensely useful. The formation of loose associations between diverse criminal groups, or secure links between elements of criminal organisations, will be greatly assisted by the communications technologies and services soon to become available. The ability to transfer information, money, or legal documents virtually instantaneously through complex international networks of organisations and businesses is already making white collar crime investigations extremely difficult. Intelligence reports now indicate that in the former communist countries highly trained agents from national security organisations, unable to continue in their former occupations, are turning their skills to commercial espionage and organised crime. These people understand the value of intelligence, communications, and organisational relationships, and there is evidence that these national and international associations are crystallising into strong transnational networks bound together by the latest communications technologies.
At the other end of the criminal spectrum there are those who find these new technologies enormous fun and who prove their skills to their peers by hacking into the computer systems of businesses or government to create havoc. Australian hackers rate highly on the peer scale of accomplishments, one having been credited, through successful prosecutions, with interfering with NASA computers and with having disrupted major telephone exchanges of a US carrier – all from a bedroom in Melbourne. Already many major businesses have been seriously damaged, and in a few cases, bankrupt, by these malicious pranksters. The agenda of a hackers' annual convention held in a major Las Vegas Hotel in July 1994 contains prizes for the best virus creation, and lessons in hacking into computers and mobile phones. Videos running 24-hours-a-day gave tips on aspects such as password breaking and decryption. Delegates were invited to connect their lap-tops into network connections to obtain copies of special hackers' programs and provide their own. This convention was advertised world-wide on the Internet and thousands were expected to attend.
Law enforcement agencies will need to match the skills of these hackers, but that alone will not be enough. Consider the requirements for an operation that may be part of a typical AFP major crime investigation in the first decade of the next century. A warrant has been obtained for an evidence search of premises leased by an organisation suspected of drug importation and money laundering. The premises are protected by sophisticated alarm systems incorporating lasers, infra-red and radar security systems. Access points are secured by electronic locks. All these systems are monitored by a computer which has a remote Telecom switched connection to other unknown premises. The office area to be searched employs a paperless system. It has five computer work-stations linked by an optical fibre LAN, an X.400 mail gateway and a file server. The operating system incorporates data encryption for all document files and password protection to control access, as well as audit software which records details of every entry to the system. The telephone and facsimile system uses ISDN technology and is part of a private network of a semi-government organisation provided by a Class Licence Service Provider, which is not one of the major carriers. One of the phone terminals incorporates a smart card key encryption device.
To be able to carry out this mission a police technical unit would have to be superbly equipped and trained. Probably, no one force could hope to maintain all of the skills required to train these people from its own resources. National and international co-operation will be required so that centres of excellence maintained by individual agencies can be shared through the provision of courses and information exchanges.
At other points in the investigation telecommunications interception warrants will have to be implemented on third generation mobile phones which have become so small and cheap to operate that almost every person uses one. The particular targets of the investigation may use the Motorola Iridium system which has the cell units in low earth orbit satellites, the nearest ground station for which is on the Pacific island of Guam. Some of the targets may be subscribers to the Hong Kong mobile carrier or global international mobile carriers. Implementation of the TI warrants will only be possible if international cooperation has reached the point where common standard telephone interception systems are automatically included in all licensed telecommunications systems and agreements are in place for sharing product between jurisdictions. The public policy and legislation implications of these telecommunications interception requirements should not be underestimated.
The ready availability of strong data encryption, and difficulties associated with the interception of voice and data on new sophisticated digital de-regulated telecommunications networks is threatening the continued viability of established investigation methods. The effective conduct of computer crime investigations will require new legal measures to cover operations involving many jurisdictions, and also new technical methods for tracing, intercepting and data logging of calls through multi-carrier and multi-national networks. The same problem is being encountered throughout the world and the AFP has received approaches seeking help and mutual assistance on the technical and legal issues from several overseas law enforcement agencies.
Expert witnesses, with high credibility through academic qualifications, experience and international forensic accreditation, will be required to support evidence. However, there is no direct correlation between organisational independence and true credibility. The expert hired consultant may be more compromised by financial and career conflicts of interest than staff member experts who are on salary and therefore not relying on the success of their testimony to enhance their reputation as a reliable witness for future cases. The expertise and ethics of expert technical witnesses may be better managed, through in-house training programs coupled with an internationally recognised accreditation system.
The cyber world also has much to offer to traditional policing through appropriate use of dedicated multi media police Web sites. Using these, informants will communicate very discretely via electronic mail, and governments will encourage the anonymous dobbing-in of offenders, or the identification of missing persons and stolen property. The availability of still and motion pictures, audio recordings as well as text, news and e-mail, with the ability to up-load and down-load this information, will make these sites into virtual police stations with enormous service areas, and operating much more cost effectively than traditional establishments. An explosion of publicly available information available on-line is already happening and, by using appropriate queries and analytical tools, it is already often possible to glean valuable intelligence from these sources. Through appropriate e-mail security systems, investigators in different corners of the world will be able to liaise quickly and cost effectively on operations and also discuss methods in the same way. On-line data bases and news groups will help investigators to share tips on how to perform particular functions. Unfortunately, criminals may also organise through similar methods.
Law enforcement officers fighting computer crime must use the tools of the information age in their pursuit of offenders. Returning to the Wild West metaphor, just as native indian and aboriginal trackers helped the early lawmen to track down their culprits by following the faint traces left behind by the outlaws on the desert landscape, so must the computer crime team have people who can interpret the trails left behind by criminals moving through the cyber frontier. Telecommunications networks keep accurate records of switched calls for billing purposes and modern exchanges have additional features built-in to the software to help carriers identify people who are harassing their subscribers or attempting to damage or defraud them. All governments require carriers to provide assistance to their law enforcement agencies by passing on data records or activating call tracing or interception systems.
Similarly, computer network providers maintain access control and billing systems for the security and management of their systems. When unauthorised access is detected, many of the operating systems and security software packages have some provision for tracing the offender. Most computer systems have a plethora of telecommunications connections for remote access, often via other computer networks, and many are linked in this way to the Internet or other global networks. Investigators therefore have to develop strategies and tactics that combine computer and telecommunications tracing and interception methods. They will need to work in association with carriers and computer systems managers, and their colleagues in other countries. This will not be an easy task and the goodwill of carriers and computer operators to assist in this process is limited by the boundaries of their own self-interest.
No sane citizen would want to live in a ‘big brother is watching' Orwellian 1984 society. Nor would a rational person choose the safe but almost comatose existence offered by Huxley's stupefied, indulgent and ultimately self destructive Brave New World. For all its problems and dangers, even the pseudo Wild West environment of the late 20th century cyberspace would be a preferable atmosphere for intelligent, creative, competitive and ambitious human beings. But we can improve on this by ensuring that the rules of behaviour governing the real world also penetrate this virtual space.
The price of governability has always been paid in the currency of personal freedoms. If the turbulent history of this century has taught us anything at all, it must surely be to develop a society that balances the needs and legitimate rights of the individual with the often-conflicting demands of the community and the nation. Establishing fair laws and enforcing them firmly and effectively is the key to this, and we must not permit the computer and telecommunications revolution to erode the ability of our police services to maintain their efficiency. The new evidence gathering tools that police officers will have to be given and have to learn to use, if appropriately constrained by legislation to the investigation of serious crime and used under judicial warrant, should be seen as being no more than an effective force multiplier, and a continuation of more traditional surveillance procedures into the environment of the 21st century.
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URL: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUFPPlatypus/1998/12.html