'Operation Cyber Sweep' Nets 125 Arrests

unassimilatible writes "Attorney General John Ashcroft said Thursday that law-enforcement agents had arrested 125 suspects in a crackdown on Internet crimes ranging from hacking and software piracy to credit card fraud and selling stolen goods over the Internet, according to Wired. The investigation, begun Oct. 1 and dubbed Operation Cyber Sweep, involved police from Ghana to Southern California and uncovered 125,000 victims who had lost more than $100 million. Seventy indictments to date have led to arrests or convictions of 125 people, with more expected as the probe continues. The cases range from a Virginia woman who sent fake e-mails to America Online customers asking them to update their credit card numbers to a disgruntled Philadelphia Phillies fan who hacked into computers nationwide and launched spam e-mails criticizing the baseball team. 'The information superhighway should be a conduit for communication, information and commerce, not an expressway for crime,' Ashcroft said."

Comments

As bad as he is...

[Kilka]

I know he's one of the worst people in high places, but I think this is a good thing. He's not invading peoples privacy or instituting some terrible law, he's actually helping people.

-Kilka

Re:As bad as he is...

[El Cubano]

I know he's one of the worst people in high places, but I think this is a good thing. He's not invading peoples privacy or instituting some terrible law, he's actually helping people.

I agree. Even better: if they can publicly show that these people's rights were actually preserved, I would be very impressed.

Re:As bad as he is...

[cgranade]

Even better: if they can publicly show that these people's rights were actually preserved, I would be very impressed.
Problem is, that's proving the negative, a difficult task, if not impossible. Also, given Ashcroft's record, you'll excuse me holding out a healthly, if large, amount of distrust toward any action of his. If these actions wind up being good, then so be it. In the meantime, I will expect the worst and hope for the best.

Re:People really still fall for 911 scams? (519)

[ericspinder]

I belive that they are called 519 scams. Good it is about time that these spammers are getting their due. It has always befuddled me that they could get away with what is clearly fraud. Perhaps the J-dept is finally getting their act together on the Internet. Of course knowning Ashcroft his next target will be porn, but at least that guy is swinging the bat in the right direction for now.

Finally !!

[Tensor]

I took them this long to shift from copyrights violators to actual, real theft.

Kudos ! Its nice to see them focusing on "real" crime with "real" victims, with tangible losses for a change.

Subject category

[momerath2003]

I'm glad the editors didn't classify this story as "Your Rights Online" and turn it into another anti-Ashcroft-fest. To stay on topic, identity thieves and the like are the right people to go after. Maybe the salaries for the RIAA's lawyers should go to fighting crime like that.

Thank You Ashcroft!

[Pavan_Gupta]

I'm not an Ashcroft fan, but this situation has allowed me to grow a slight bit less angry with this tyrant -- and for good reason. See, the Internet is much like the "wild west" with vigilantes trying to police the deserts (spam prevention organizations, SpyBot Search and Destroy, security groups, etc), but the problem is, our once epic vigilante is dwarfed by a simple DDoS in the virtual world of the internet. The real world is where the problem stems from, and it's a waste of time to stop attacks launched from "the real world" on the internet. It's about time our government stepped up and put a stop to aggregious crimes happening on the internet.

I see this as a first step in the right direction. People need to learn to stop rampant abuse of an amazing tool. Ashcroft should stamp on illegal filesharers too. It's about time people started playing the game of life legally again. Come on now, leave the blackmarket for IRC.

Re:Thank You Ashcroft!

[1lus10n]

YEAH ! because crime in the real world doesnt exist or cause anyone problems.

We cant keep our troops from getting killed, we cant stop people from ramming planes into buildings and we cant stop CHILDREN from doing drugs, shooting each other, and "sharing" copyrighted materials. yet somehow arresting far less than 1% of the "cyber" criminals out there is somehow a great thing. right. somehow i fail to be amazed.

why dont we take the money they spent on this nice government action and put it to some good use, like education.

The government (any)cannot and should not police the internet since the internet is NOT owned by the government.

i personally think an international organization seperate from real world government should be created from elected (prefferably knowledgeable, unlike the people currently trying to ruin/run the internet) people who then govern cyber space. using a universal set of laws to prosecute people. its the only way this will be fair to all 6 billion people on this planet.

Re:Thank You Ashcroft!

[SiliBelgian]

The government (any) cannot and should not police the internet since the internet is NOT owned by the government.

Wrong.
If the Internet is used by a criminal to steal from people by means of credit card fraud, the government can and should prosecute that criminal. Criminals have to be punished, no matter what channel of communication or infrastructure is used in the crime. How would you react to credit card fraud if it happened to you? "Damned, I got robbed. But hey, it happened over the Internet and the Internet is free, so I can't and won't do anything about it." ? I think not.

The government should try to find a subtle balance, punishing real cyber crimes that harm honest internet-user, while still respecting civil rights like privacy and free speech.

We cant keep our troops from getting killed, we cant stop people from ramming planes into buildings and we cant stop CHILDREN from doing drugs, shooting each other, and "sharing" copyrighted materials. yet somehow arresting far less than 1% of the "cyber" criminals out there is somehow a great thing.

Wrong again.
You simply can't solve society's problems by focusing on them one by one, starting with the great ones. You could begin by establishing world peace and putting all your resources in that, but then the people being robbed on the street would feel abandoned by the government, not doing anything about petty crime. (Wait, isn't that happening already?) The only way to deal with problems is when they arise, and, as impractical as it may sound, all at once. And cyber crime is a real problem.

why dont we take the money they spent on this nice government action and put it to some good use, like education.

Excellent plan. Allow me to make small adaptation:
Why don't we take the money they spend on the military and put it to some good use, like education?
The Pentagon is the only institution in the US that gets more than 1 billion dollars a year. On top of that, it is also the only institution that doesn't have to open the books for auditing. They spend the money, no questions asked...

and

[Anonymous Coward]

doesn't this cover ATM machines as well... it's a transaction over a network...

bunk

Re:Dude

[danielrm26]

"Why are you talking shit about Indonesian people? "

Easy there, killer. I wasn't talking shit about anyone. This is for real, and the guy told *me* he was in Indonesia. I just happened to find the news ironic after being told by numerous people (who do online retaling with ebay and such) that I should be very careful about Indonesia in particular because there is a lot of credit card fraud coming from there.

This is not somthing I came up with; I just found the shit out for myself today.

"... worst people in high places"? Hardly.

[John Jorsett]

I would urge you to exercise independent judgement before concluding that he's "one of the worst people in high places." Such pronouncements come from George Bush's political opposition, who are hardly objective in their criticisms. To begin with, ask youself why terrorists are blowing up overseas targets and not any in the U.S. Do you think that's their first choice? No. Could it be because Bush/Ashcroft/Ridge have managed to cripple the U.S. operations of terrorists (while getting their ankles chewed on by people more interested in scoring political points than protecting us)? I think the answer is yes. And they're managing to do it without sending people to the ovens, despite the picture their political opponents are trying to paint.

Re:"... worst people in high places"? Hardly.

[TGK]

Uhhhh.... this is an example of assuming causality. Because there have been very few terrorist attacks in the United States since Sept 11, 2001 the Bush administration must be doing a good job combating terrorism.

This assumes a few things.

1 - Legions of bloodthirsty terrorists wish nothing more than to see the United States reduced to a smoking abrasion in the earth's crust.

2 - These people have decided that the best time to act on these urges would be right now, while the Bush Administration is hunting for them.

3 - These terrorists are being found, tried, and convicted in secret military courts while the president's approval ratings sink ever lower as the US population grows more and more convinced that the world isn't nearly as dangerous as Mr Ashcroft would have us think.

It also has, implicit in it, at least one conclusion that those that advance it probably won't like.

1 - Three acts of terrorism have occurred in the United States since Pres. Bush took power. (9-11, Anthrax, Sniper). Thus Bush averages 1 attack per year (3 years in office, 3 attacks). Clinton, in comparison averages 1 every 4 years (World Trade Center Bombing and Oklahoma City). By the parent post's logic Clinton did a better job of protecting against terrorism.

But let's not get into that particular quagmire. The real question is this. At what cost? Terrorism isn't the leading cause of death in this country. More people die from pretty much everything than die in terrorist attacks. Want to protect the US Citizenry? Sink that $87 Billion for Iraq into Cancer research.

Ok... lets go with Cancer though. Apparently this country is unwilling to use the stem cells from a fetus that was aborted to try to cure cancer. I can accept a religious problem with that.

So here's the (hypothetical) trade. A cure for cancer, today. The price: The government gets to tap your phone, confiscate property without due process, track your internet usage, spy on you without judicial oversight, conduct secret searches of your home, and check up on your library readings. Oh, they also get to use your car to spy on you and can detain you indefinitely in a military base with no hope of appeal or civilian trial. Is it worth it? Remember, we're talking about curing cancer here... one of the biggest killers of US citizens of any age.

Gut feeling, if you're not willing to give up the rights of a bunch of dead tissue that someone didn't want to carry to birth to cure this disease you're probably not willing to give us a bunch of your own personal rights to do the same. So why is it that what Ashcroft is doing is so great? Why is it that for the POSSIBILITY of preventing terrorism we're willing to let this man and his minions trample upon our civil liberties?

I don't have an easy answer for this question. I can tell you that people with the attitude expressed in the parent post are part of the problem, not the solution. Ben Franklin was right, "those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither."

Cripple terrorism? Plunk pool chlorine tablets into a two liter of coke and twist on the cap and you've got a chemical munition. Nothing Ashcroft does can prevent a desperate individual willing to die for his cause. We're throwing our freedoms away for the tattered remnants of a dream.

Peanuts Compaired to Wall StreetWhite Collar Crime

[berwyn]

Open up to the financial pages of any newspaper this week and start adding up the financial scams from some of the most respected financial institutions in America. Add that to the Enron and all the other incidents that were suppose to reform the business world.

Re:Hook, this is line, Sinker, Line this is hook.

[Artifakt]

This is something that can be criticised either way. If the AG goes after a bunch of petty criminals, and it costs more to prosecute them than the average take, its a publicity stunt. If his office focuses on crimes with high enough consequences to be cost effective, well that $150,000 per count for copyright violation makes that one of the laws worth enforcing. As long as some rather trivial offenses have such big penalties, challenging these actions on cost effectiveness grounds is not even approximately challenging them on ethical grounds. If you let "them" turn it into an economic arguement, the system is rigged against you. It can give you what you said you wanted and still not prosecute violent crime, big corporate fraud, or people who don't maintain their furnaces when they rent to little old ladies.