Cybercrime crackdown has nabbed 150 in USA
107360
A summerlong crackdown on cybercrime has resulted in arrests or convictions of more than 150 individuals, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Thursday.
380529
Things just aren&#39;t going well for Timothy Scott Short. Just days after a pair of tech support calls he made to printer manufacturer Digimarc&#160;resulted in his arrest, he now finds himself on the receiving end of a data breach with his Social Security number and birthdate accidentally made public via the federal court&#39;s Electronic Case Files (ECF) system.It&#39;s an ironic development, because Short, 33, was arrested in connection with the Oct. 5 theft of a Missouri Department of Revenue printer and a PC containing data on as many as 500 state residents.Short&#39;s personal information was discovered by the IDG News Service, listed on a court document called a Criminal Case Cover Sheet, which was publicly available to users of the ECF system. Normally, this document should only be accessible to those involved in the case, but it appears to have been inadvertently made public, according to a clerk with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, who asked not to be identified because she was not authorized to speak with the press. &quot;It&#39;s something on our side,&quot; she said, adding that technical staff is now looking into the problem.The U.S. Judicial Conference, which sets policy for U.S. courts, has said that this kind of information should be removed from publicly available electronic court records, but actually removing all the sensitive information has proved difficult.&quot;If you went online to various court systems, you could find social security numbers of many individuals,&quot; said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. &quot;It&#39;s a really, really difficult question to answer, just because you&#39;re dealing with so many jurisdictions.&quot;Social Security numbers are the building blocks of identity theft crime because they can be used to secure credit cards. &quot;Any time you are placing Social Security numbers online, your are subjecting that person to identity theft,&quot; Stephens said.With the push to make public documents available online, other government databases have had similar problems. Earlier this year, the states of California and Colorado were forced to take their Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) databases offline after privacy advocates pointed out that the Social Security numbers and other data they contained could be misused by identity thieves.Short, however, may have bigger problems to worry about. He&#39;s facing $250,000 in fines and 10 years in prison on charges of possession of &quot;document-making implements&quot; in connection with the theft. He was arrested after U.S. Secret Service Special Agent John Bush recognized his voice in calls placed to a tech support line of the company that makes the stolen printer.&#160;
588369
Three U.S. agencies have initiated more than 100 law enforcement actions against bogus business-opportunity peddlers and work-at-home scams, including several Internet-based schemes.
96036
More than 100 people have been arrested in the largest global crackdown to date on identity theft, hacking and other Internet-based crimes, Attorney General John Ashcroft said on Thursday.
64039
The Justice Department announced Thursday that more than 150 people had been arrested, charged or convicted in the last three months in a wide-ranging sweep of criminal activity on the Internet.
317662
Federal agents have initiated a two-pronged attack against online crime by arresting dozens for alleged cyberfraud and raiding a file-sharing network that allowed users to download copyrighted movies and music for free.
17346
VIENNA -- Investigators shut down a child pornography ring involving 2,361 suspects in 77 countries who paid for Internet videos showing children subjected to "the worst kind of sexual abuse." Officials said yesterday that 607 of the suspects were in the United States, 466 in Germany, 114 in France, and 23 in Austria. Most of those under investigation were suspected ...
189473
Hoping to clean up the Internet&#39;s reputation as a haven for scam artists, federal officials unveiled a series of arrests, indictments and convictions Thursday involving a range of cyberfraud.
244131
The Justice Department is set to announce a major crackdown on cyber-crime that will include arrests, subpoenas and property seizures of alleged e-mail spammers and online scam artists, according to law enforcement and industry sources. -The Washington Post
463560
More than 3.5 million Americans were victims of phishing scams and online identity theft in the year that ended in August, a 57% increase over 2006, according to Gartner fraud analyst Avivah Litan.
681718
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reported on Monday that 160 weapons and 160 laptop computers were missing at the FBI. The report followed a 2002 audit that had revealed that hundreds of other guns and computers were missing. An excerpt from the new report:
266643
Federal and state law enforcement agencies have quietly arrested or charged dozens of people with crimes related to junk e-mail, identity theft and other online scams in recent weeks, according to several people involved in the actions.
218921
The government calls it &quot;Operation Web Snare&quot;, catching criminals who do business online. They&#39;ve been working since June and today announced dozens of arrests for crimes that cost victims millions of dollars.
474885
As part of its recent crackdown on cybercrime, the Justice Department last week detailed major enforcement actions against copyright scofflaws and spammers.
544698
An official with the Homeland Security Department&#39;s National Cyber Security Division said the 120-person office has been able to limit the harmful effects of at least one virus and has helped to track down online criminals in 28 countries.
91392
Australian Federal Police say the arrest of more than 150 people in relation to internet child pornography should send a clear message about the seriousness of the crime.
643897
Hundreds more people face arrest in Australia one day after police arrested more than 190 in a massive crackdown on child pornography.