By CLARISSA ALJENTERA
Herald Staff Writer
Behind the slick flat-screen monitors and souped-up hard drives are millions of information bits zinging along the Internet. Alongside e-mail messages and daily news are photographs, movies and music being downloaded onto computers to trade or to keep.
Computer-related crimes involving fraud or child pornography aren’t too prevalent in Monterey County yet, but police departments are gearing up for this new wave of criminals.
Equipped with extensive software, high-tech equipment and special training, police officers are learning to find the data clues left behind.
“Everything you do on a computer leaves a fingerprint,” said Salinas police Cmdr. Dan Perez.
Computers are making it easier to steal, store and send information that was fairly inaccessible before the Internet came along.
Computer forensics issues came to light recently with the case of a University Park Elementary School teacher in Salinas, Larry Mead, who is charged with downloading pictures and intending to distribute child pornography from his school computer.
Last month, Mead pleaded not guilty to one felony count of possession of child pornography with the intent to distribute and 16 misdemeanor counts of possession of child pornography. He has been placed on administrative leave.
After Salinas police were alerted to the alleged crime, the school computer was taken into the shop for a thorough check.
Armed with software and high-tech devices, investigators siphoned the information onto another computer and began digging through its contents.
Using computer forensics, investigators can tell what was deleted from the hard drive and what the image or file was. They can also tell if a file is really a photograph or if it is a text file with a photograph inside.
“There are constantly new things coming up,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Kevin Oakley, who handles many of his department’s requests.
In the late 1990s, police began noticing a spike in computer-related crime.
The Salinas Police Department has named a five-member team to begin studying cyber-related crimes and computer forensics to help combat what could be a big problem in coming years.
The team, which is set to start up early next year, will go to work as computer-related crimes arise.
Several law enforcement agencies in the county use Encase, forensic software that allows investigators to virtually pull apart the inside of a machine.
“When people are erasing, it means they are trying to hide something,” said Salinas Sgt. Tracy Molfino.
Scanning a device like a PDA or a computer can take days or weeks depending on what is on it and how much is on it.
“Anything that has a memory, we can see what they are hiding on it,” Molfino said.
Salinas police get two or three inquiries a month for computer forensics, he added.
Monterey County has so far done little with it, said county district attorney’s investigator Melanie Rogers.
“It is kind of low-tech around here,” Rogers said. “It is not something a lot of people use yet. I don’t think there has been a marked increase.”
The attraction for child pornography users is the privacy of viewing and sending pictures, she said.
Mead allegedly downloaded pornography onto his classroom computer. His lawyer, Joseph Cisneros, said hundreds of people could have had access to Mead’s computer.
However, Salinas City School District officials said each staff member is assigned a log-in name and password.
“Each teacher has their own computer,” said Terry Ryan, director of informational technology, maintenance, operation and transportation for the Salinas City School District.
The district’s policy requests that passwords be kept secret.
“They are required to log off when they are not using it,” Ryan said.
Safeguards are in place to help keep teachers and students honest about their computer usage.
The Internet service provider that the Monterey County Office of Education contracts with is a statewide company that keeps track of sites that aren’t acceptable on school computers.
There are daily updates sent on the statewide as well as countywide level to prevent people from viewing sites related to gambling, sex or music.
Technicians at the county Office of Education are constantly checking to see what was downloaded and how often a user downloads items from a site. If a user hits a site multiple times for copyrighted or one-time use items, such as music, photographs or educational material, a red flag goes up.
Checks on the system aren’t to see what is being looked at, but to look at the network’s performance, said Irwin Iida, director of information technology for the Office of Education.
“We check to see patterns,” said Iida. “We can’t tell what site they visit but we can tell by the downloads... We can block sites so they won’t have access.”
If a forbidden site is accessed, a message saying the page is unavailable comes up.
In the world of computers and the Internet, nothing is completely safe or fool-proof, however.
In the most recent case, though, “The system worked and immediate action was taken,” said Garry Bousum, assistant superintendent for administration and business services. “It catches things.”
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