EU Gumshoe Chases Internet Villains

Robert Haskins writes "The Pittsburg Post-Gazette is carrying an interesting Wall Street Journal story about a guy who works for Microsoft and chases virus writers, software counterfeiters, spammers and other suspected law breakers. Can companies really make a difference by helping law enforcement like this?" From the article: "Mr. Fifka isn't a cop. He works for Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Safety Enforcement Team. Created in 2002, the group is part of the U.S. software giant's intensifying efforts to combat cyber crime at a time when consumers and businesses are becoming increasingly frustrated with fraud and virus attacks on their personal computers, most of which use Microsoft's Windows operating system. As Internet crime proliferates, law enforcement is relying more on the private sector to help counter it. That's because tracking cyber criminals requires a different set of skills than police have traditionally used. Compounding the challenge is the speed at which new online threats are morphing."

Comments

Not Intimidating Enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well he isn't doing a very good job, maybe he isn't intimidating enough. I hear the reason there are so few Linux viruses is because Tux goes around vigilante-justice-style and beats the hell out of anyone who writes one. I don't know about you but I would crap my pants if opened the door and saw a giant overweight penguin (or an overweight Finnish guy for that matter). Don't even get me started on the BSD devil.

Re:Not Intimidating Enough?

[metaphorever]

I don't know about you but I would crap my pants if opened the door and saw a giant overweight penguin

or to quote Linus:

"Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen an angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had."

More seriously, while I'm not saying Microsoft going after virus writers etc. after they've done the damage is a bad thing, perhaps if they focused more energy on preventing them in the first place it wouldn't be as much of a problem.

Re:Not Intimidating Enough?

[Virak]

And what, you wouldn't be scared to see a giant, wavy, multicolored window flying at you?

Re:Not Intimidating Enough?

[PsychicX]

So basically, he's like Boba Fett. He seems really awesome and works for important people, but when it comes down to it he accidentally gets his jet pack button hit and flies into the belly of a monster.

Re:Not Intimidating Enough?

[WhitetailKitten]

That screensaver was intimidating at first, but after discovering it was bound within the cubic crystal ball, I was not afraid any longer.

Re:Not Intimidating Enough?

[AussieVamp2]

Tux and the Devil? Sounds like a dodgy cop show. ;)

It's Pittsburgh, not Pittsburg.

[kurisuto]

Pittsburgh is one of the very rare exceptions to the general rule that towns in the U.S. are spelled with -burg.

In the 19th century, the U.S. Postal Service pushed to standardize all the towns ending in -berg, -burgh, -berg, etc. to a single spelling. Most switched, but Pittsburgh was one city which resisted the push.

Re:It's Pittsburgh, not Pittsburg.

[Nossie]

I did :-| ... one of my closest friends is a dutchie...

hmmmm hehe :D

Re:It's Pittsburgh, not Pittsburg.

[databyss]

I did too... very odd.

I was thinking, what the hell does the Netherlands have to do with neandertals.

The reason the police do not have the skills

[Anonymous Coward]

is they cannot pay 100k+ for dedicated CS people, anybody who has the skills will be working for [somecorp] as they will pay the market rate, cant blame the individual as business is business, why work for the police for 50k when you can earn double in the market.
Of course if people want to pay more taxes (like corporations for a start) then you will get the police force society needs for a modern world, but until then you will only get alturistic people and alturism is frowned upon in America, greed is good, get rich or die trying

Hmmm...

[MightyMartian]

It was a hot dark night when she came in. You know the kind of night, and you know the kind of broad. Both could make you sweat, and knock you on your ass.

I'd sent my secretary home early. I had no cases, but a half-bottle of whiskey and a revolver. When she walked in, I was a little past feeling good and ready to shoot.

"I'm lookin' for Porn, Sam Porn. You him?" she asked in a voice that made me melt.

"What's it to ya, lady?" I asked, half-hoping she'd answer, half-hoping she'd leave.

"I've got this web site, see." she replied. "It's kinky and cute, straight tits and ass. But now somebody's busted in, all kinds of bondage. I need someone with guts and brawn, and maybe some brain. I can pay. Thousand big ones now, five more if you can catch the perv."

My smarter half said leave this dame alone. She was trouble, and that was for sure. But the rent had to be paid, and I didn't even have half a bottle of whiskey.

Re:Hmmm...

[mcrbids]

What movie was this?

Uh... Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Re:On the futility of treating the symptoms

[DrEldarion]

Spyware is usually user-installed (usually disguised as or alongside of a useful program). Any operating system where users are allowed to install software is vulnerable to spyware.

P.I.I.

[Foobar of Borg]

"It was a hot day in Brno and I was hoping to take the day off. I looked out the smudged window of my sixth-story office holding my two best friends in my hands. The first is my .9 mm, I keep it loaded. The other is a bottle of vodka. It keeps me loaded.

Yep, it was just another boring day until a client showed up. He was all boo-hooing over something that was after his business and acting all irrational, but then clients are like that. It seems some computer virus was out to get his software and I needed this mess like I needed a Windows upgrade. Which made sense in its own twisted sort of way. You see, the client was Bill Gates.

I'm Peter Fifka, and I'm a Private Internet Investigator."

Re:P.I.I.

[DanielNS84]

This reminds me of a calvin and hobbes strip...anyone have a link to it? If not I'll upload one from the actual comic in my bathroom.

Re:P.I.I.

[Red Flayer]

A .9 mm? Is that a pistol or a mechanical pencil?

Re:P.I.I.

[Infinityis]

You're thinking of the Tracer Bullet stuff, it's hilarious. Here's a link: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/1961/ch_trac er.html

Re:P.I.I.

[seifried]

Ever see a 1.5mm mechanical drafting pencil? It can draw a hole the size of a dinner plate on a piece of paper.

that's worrisome

[cahiha]

As Internet crime proliferates, law enforcement is relying more on the private sector to help counter it.

That's a big concern. People who work in law enforcement should not also have other kinds of interests. Even without deliberate abuse of power, someone who comes from a corporate environment will bring his own set of prejudices and interests to the table. For example, someone working for Microsoft may be more interested in pursuing piracy using Linux and less interested in tracking down people who write viruses that infect Macintosh. It also may lead to a situation where the primary means of getting the police to do something is to pay someone lots of money; it is even more disconcerting that those someones are ex-police, which really is getting pretty close to outright corruption.

If you think about it, it is also truly bizarre that companies like Microsoft find it easier to finance a private police force to track down virus writers than to fix their software.

Re:that's worrisome

[cheesee]

Even police officers have their own set of prejudices and interests. Everyone does, wether or not they are privately owned.

And no, it's not bizarre. Is real police tracking down people who break the law bizarre? Why don't they just make it so people can't break the law? See where I'm going here?

Re:that's worrisome

[Red Flayer]

It's not just virus-writers that he is tracking down.

FTA: "It has also filed 243 civil actions related to Internet safety threats, such as spam"

OK, Spam is annoying, but an "Internet safety threat?" Maybe phishing.

"Mr. Fifka is also combating traditional crimes like software-counterfeiting"

This is what Fifka was originally hired to do. It just so happens that tracking down people on the internet applies just as well to virus writers and spammers as it does to software counterfeiters.

All in all, this is a win-win. MS gets good publicity, and doesn't lose as much customer goodwill due to vulnerability; we get free[1] hi-tech international investigation.

It's the international part that really helps; public law enforcement has to jump through hoops to operate in a foreign country.

[1] Free-as-in-we-already-paid-for-it-through-licensin g-fees

Re:that's worrisome

[Dryth]

The state of Internet "crime fighting" as a whole is pretty atrocious. You'd think that with fraud and identity theft alone huge issues impacting millions the government would be investing more resources.

I took a computer forensics course about a year ago. We were lucky enough to have law enforcement officials from numerous sources in to talk with us about the current state of their business. The real motivator for all of them seemed to be limited to child porn, and even in this task they all made it sound as if they were grossly understaffed. And the hiring process for such jobs is hardly ideal; they'd all worked grunt jobs for years, stuff like ticketing cars, walking a beat, or even participating as peacekeepers (for the RCMP; Canadian slant, but they claimed it's the same south of the border).

I honestly think most governments assume that the private sector will step up to carry the burden, and that's a huge shame.

Re:that's worrisome

[cahiha]

Even police officers have their own set of prejudices and interests. Everyone does, wether or not they are privately owned.

The set of personal prejudices and interests individuals may bring to the police force is tightly circumscribed. If they violate the laws, rules, and regulations in those areas, those individuals are reprimanded or let go.

One of the things police may not have is personal or financial interest in private corporations that are related to their work. The reason those rules exist because otherwise we open the doors to corruption.

The approach to law enforcement described in the article gets around those rules and regulations by having corporations provide "advisors", and that is a problem.

Is real police tracking down people who break the law bizarre?

Real police are public employees; they are required to enforce the law equally for the benefit of everybody. When Microsoft supplies special "advisors" or resources to the police, it biases the police in favor of enforcing laws whose enforcement benefits Microsoft, and that is bizarre. It's not just bizarre, it is unacceptable.

And it is particularly bad because catching people who take advantage of security holes in Microsoft software just ought not to be high priority for law enforcement--Microsoft should fix their damned software and not burden law enforcement with cleaning up after their programmers.

Considering the results of the highschool hackers

[FauxReal]

I think this is a good idea given the ineptitude of most local law enforcement agencies when dealing with high tech crime.

I could say the same for the FBI, we had a guy post intimate knowledge of a cop killing from our net cafe. The killing wasn't publicised much. The FBI came and bungled the whole computer forensics operation. For one they copied the HDDs w/ some slow crappy program and then took the copies instead of the originals. Luckily some other agents caught the guy after he posted from somewhere else.

That is the problem

[Nom du Keyboard]

combat cyber crime at a time when consumers and businesses are becoming increasingly frustrated with fraud and virus attacks on their personal computers, most of which use Microsoft's Windows operating system.

That is the problem.

A more secure operating system with tools to identify and filter out malware is the solution.

This is just paint over dryrot.

Re:Stop sending Gwedo to cure crime and...

[geekee]

"If Microsoft cannot fix the security holes then they should opensouce it so it gets fixed by the Linux community. Microsoft can still sell software and support.
"

Linux software isn't secure. Why do you think Linux programmers can make Windows secure?

Nextime Gumshoe, Nextime

[EmperorKagato]

I bet he can't capture Carmen_Sandiego. No one can catch her!

Re:Nextime Gumshoe, Nextime

[PakProtector]

Where is Carmen Sandiego, Carmen Sandiego, where on Earth can she be?

(Those were fun games...)

Title has't anything to do with article text

[Barryke]

What does the title have to do with the text?
Little.

EU?
Gum?

Re:Title has't anything to do with article text

[moonbender]

Yeah, I was confused, too. I thought he was actually an EU official, in fact he doesn't really have anything to do with the EU. Apparently EU was just used to meant Europe, not the European Union, the governmental body or even the European Union, the geographic entity.

Which is interesting, because people around here (inside the EU) routinely make the opposite "mistake" (if you want to call it that way), referring to Europe when they actually mean the EU, or even part of the EU. Although the EU does encompass a large part of Europe these days. Kind of like talking about "America" when you're actually referring to either North America or the USA.

Re:Title has't anything to do with article text

[Mike Markley]

Kind of like talking about "America" when you're actually referring to either North America or the USA.

Very few people in the US use "America" to refer to North America. We do quite often use "America" to refer to the United States of America, but I don't see how that's any more strange than shortening Bundesrepublik Deutschland to just Deustschland. The whole thing together is a mouthful, so we commonly take the part of it that's actually a proper name and leave off all the modifying components like "United States" and "Federal Republic".

It just happens that the continent America is on also has that name. That's rarely confusing here, though, because we're raised considering it two continents. It's an arbitrary division, but anyone not familiar with the notion of a Europe, Asia, and Africa being separate may be confused as well. Europe and Africa may be separated by an obvious body of water, but the one separating Africa and Asia is artificial, and there's nothing but mountains separating the bulk of Europe and Asia, IIRC. So yes, borders are very arbitrary.

(I don't care that this is off-topic; this whole stinkin' article is flamebait. May as well do something useful with it.)

Re:Title has't anything to do with article text

[moonbender]

I could argue that substituting "Germany" for "Federal Republic of Germany" is less problematic because - since 1990 anyway - they really both can only refer to the same thing, different connotations nonwithstanding. But I won't argue that, because I actually think you're right, substitutung "America" for the USA is rarely confusing, either. In fact in discussions I usually argue your side, anyway, pointing out to people they don't properly use the EU/Europe thing either and how that's just a normal feature of human communication.

In other words

[Lifewish]

Half the stuff these guys do would probably not be legal for a policeperson to deal with. This is just another case of outsourcing breaches of rights to the private sector.

Electronic Crimes Task Force

[xorowo]

In specific response to these types of issues, the Secret Service established the Electronic Crimes Task Force. I had the opportunity to tour their Los Angeles operations center and was impressed by their technical resources and capability.

They described how they act as an intermediate body for all law enforcement agencies involved in computer crime. From forensic analysis to crime-scene procedure, they were designed to both advise and participate. I can't speak to any specific crimes that they had been involved in, but it seemed like the idea, if handled properly, was a good one.

When I visited in 2003, they were just ramping up. They had already been assisting local law enforcement, but seemed to still be moving in. Most of the "tech" was in place, including massive file servers and clean rooms, but the individual offices looked sparse, with boxes still unpacked. I was half expecting it to look like something out of the movies - darkened, secretive, maybe in a cave somewhere - but it was just on the 13th floor of a standard downtown office building with all the harsh amenities of a 30-year old downtown high rise.

I would certainly hope that what they spared in decoration was made up by the effectiveness at solving these crimes.

Re:Electronic Crimes Task Force

[rpj1288]

What puts people to sleep more than drab, 60s-70s era office buildings? The point, my friend, is to not be seen.

Re:Electronic Crimes Task Force

[Red Flayer]

"I can't speak to any specific crimes that [the Secret Service ECTF] had been involved in"

Yes, it wouldn't be a good idea to tell the public what crimes the Secret Service is perpetrating.

Good news

[drsquare]

It's positive to see that companies aren't just out to screw everyone, they can help society by investigating crimes like cracking, spam, piracy, fraud and spying.

If more companies were this positive, there might not be such an anti-corporate agenda on this site. I know it's Microsoft but they're not all as moronic as Steve Balmer!

Re:Good news

[Antique Geekmeister]

Please. Rent a clue. It's much cheaper to hire one person to "assist" the police and help them feel "secure" about their own Windows purchases, to leave law enforcement dangling and angry and much more happy to get subpoenas against you and refuse to use your fundamentally insecure products on a governmental level.

There are certainly good people who do such even work: this guy may be one of them. But with Microsoft's long history of patent theft, copyright theft, and major criminal anti-trust behavior, it's clear that Microsoft's focus is ot on protecting its users. This is worsened by Microsoft's history of adding features at the expense of security, including the changes in .NET that caused Peter LaMacchia to reason from the project after writing Microsoft's book on the software.

i am

[Anonymous Coward]

Carmen Sandiego, you call'd

Next he'll be chasing..

[postgrep]

Firefox users, those ones with that tricky "unfindable" cache. Surely they are the virus writers since they don't use IE, the number 1 cybersleuth recommended product!?

Re:MOD PARENT UP Re:Hmmm...

[NotQuiteReal]

You lead a sad, sad life... But that was good /.-Noir prose.

Positive Karma for MicroSoft

[whitehatlurker]

It's rather refreshing to see something like this, especially after the posting about law enforcement and their problems decoding history files on "alternate" browsers.

For those who missed the rest of the story, a previous thread talks about the target in the Czech Republic.

It is interesting that MicroSoft would allow this fellow's real name (well, at least one that shows up elsewhere) to be released. Kudos to Peter. Of course, anybody who can get a job browsing the internet deserves respect. :-]

Re:On the futility of treating the symptoms

[Tim C]

By the same token, viruses (in the strict definition) also require user interaction to spread and infect hosts - they have to run an infected executable. Worms are self-propogating, relying on security holes, and are pretty rare, even on Windows.

Wrong quantity of LSD

[A nonymous Coward]

Either too much, too little, or wrong kind. That's what would scare me.

Re:Wrong quantity of LSD

[kurzweilfreak]

I'm on the train I'm on the train I'm on the train I'm on the train....

Heck no!

[A nonymous Coward]

They can't do either, how could they do both?

Tracking this spammer almost impossible

[DavidPatterson]

A bot of some sort came by one of our clients web sites and found a hole in the 'contact us' page. I'm guessing this bot used some sort of a Google search to find likely pages. It submitted the contact us from 5 times, with various values in the fields...each time, trying to send a bcc: email to an aol address. It worked on one of the posts...they found a hole. Later that night, we had a few thousand emails sent through our server via carefully crafted posts to our contact us form. Tracing back the ip addresses, one came from a wide open proxy server in Vietnam...not much of a way to trace that one back to the source. Amazing how this whole process is probably automated. (BTW, the spam worked. It was for a particular penny stock that doubled in price over the last few days. Someone just doubled their money.)

Re:Tracking this spammer almost impossible

[Motherfucking Shit]

(BTW, the spam worked. It was for a particular penny stock that doubled in price over the last few days. Someone just doubled their money.)

That someone needs to get into hot water, as pump-and-dump schemes are illegal. If you happen to have a copy of the spam, forward it to the Securities and Exchange Commission; they can track down who sold off a big chunk of the hyped company around the date of the spam. Whether or not they'll punish him is another matter, but at least you did your part.

The address to report the spam is enforcement(@)sec.gov. Same goes for any "stock tip" spam you get.

Re:Considering the results of the highschool hacke

[rtb61]

Corporate law enforcement of any kind is a good idea (try and remember, a corporations sole reason for existance is to generate profits for it's shareholders, the amoral ass wipes even brag about this, THERE IS ALWAYS MORE PROFIT IN BREAKING THE LAW RATHER THAN THE COSTS OF PRESERVING IT)?

I thought that M$=B$ corporate cops where more interested in rooting out the penguinista's that have infiltrated their redmond re-education facility (where good coders go to have their "source" warped and have an EULA imprinted in their genes).

Re:Viruses aren't that frequent.

[Nossie]

I have to agree with the parent.. although I do find it pretty amazing...

all my symentec corp picks up these days is spyware and/or trojan droppers...

but nothing which defines a 'virus' as something that replicates itself appending or writing over your files...

Maybe I just browse different sites these days *coff*

Re:On the futility of treating the symptoms

[petermgreen]

there aren't as many worms as e-mail viruses but those that there are still produce a significant background noise that serves to infect any unpatched windows box that gets directly connected to the internet.

Re:On the futility of treating the symptoms

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Heh, I read that as "Women are self-propagating, rely on security holes, and are pretty rare, even on Windows."

about Benny

[mov_eax_eax]

an interview with Benny.
More news about Benny's job

Obligatory old one... is Windows a virus?

[Stormwatch]

Is Windows a Virus?

No, Windows is not a virus. Here's what viruses do:

- They replicate quickly - okay, Windows does that.

- Viruses use up valuable system resources, slowing down the system as they do so - okay, Windows does that.

- Viruses will, from time to time, trash your hard disk - okay, Windows does that too.

- Viruses are usually carried, unknown to the user, along with valuable programs and systems. Sigh... Windows does that, too.

- Viruses will occasionally make the user suspect their system is too slow (see 2) and the user will buy new hardware. Yup, that's with Windows, too.

Until now it seems Windows is a virus but there are fundamental differences: viruses are well supported by their authors, are running on most systems, their program code is fast, compact and efficient and they tend to become more sophisticated as they mature.

So Windows is not a virus.

It's a bug.

Crimes Against Incorporation

[Anonymous Coward]

And the reason "law enforcement is relying more on the private sector" is not just that they don't have the skills.

It's because these are no normal, human-vs-human crimes. These are crimes against IP. These are crimes against corporate America.

The corporations are just enforcing the laws they lobbied into existence. Don't worry; they'll eventually lobby to have "anti-piracy" police budgets increased enough that they won't have to overtly aid the police.

Cue the music, please

[halcyon1234]

Coming next summer to a theater near you, Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Safety Enforcement Team: World Police. {ahem}

Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Safety Enforcement Team... FUCK YEAH!

Fighting to save the motherfucking world!

Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Safety Enforcement Team... FUCK YEAH!

My brain...

[HermanAB]

is MS good or bad now?

Re:Stop sending Gwedo to cure crime and...

[Your Average Joe]

someone would fix it or take parts that are necessary so that windows apps could run on any os. Microsoft could still sell service and software apps that run on the win32 layer.

Penguin Liberation Front

[HermanAB]

Well, take this: http://plf.zarb.org/logo.php

Rule of thumb

[dormant25]

First you invent a loophole,
then you hire people to overcome it.

That's basic software engineering.

NEVER EVER HELP THE PIGS -IMPERITIVE READ MY STORY

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy is a fool. You never help the pigs. You never talk to the pigs. Anyone who has lived in the ghetto knows that. You fight the pigs with everything you have. The pigs are interested in one thing and one thing only. Projecting power. If everyone hasn't figured it out by now, the justice system is simply a smokescreen and a farce behind which that is done.

I'm not from the getto. I'm a middle class American computer guy. But I learned a lot about the ghetto, and you're about to hear my story and why this guy needs to be sent to prison himself as a wake up call to meet the SOB's face to face he thinks he's helpoing.

I'm a typical computer guy like the rest of you. I saved up $350 for my first C64 and knew how to program it before I got it home, by programming on them in the stores. I went through Macs, building my own PCs, Linux, BEOS, QNX, programming, shell scripting, webdesign, gimp editing, running a bbs, emulators, builing my own wifi repeater... you name it I've done it.

For 5 years I ran a charity that collected PCs from schools and universities, refurbished them, and gave them to the poor. It was the second largest in my state and my URL was all over the net.

Then one day, boom, it ended. Someone made an accusation against me, and I had to fight for my life to prove I was innocent. They had nothing more than an accusation... no evidence... and their story didn't even make sense. It didn't matter, and I got the shock of my life when I lost. The judge said "12! do 7... meaning 12 years, do 7... basically, a death sentence"

You don't understand. The courtroom isn't a courtroom, its an abatoir (a place where sheep are brought to be slaughtered, dazed and bewildered, like jews stepping off the train into a concentration camp). These people are masters at the slander game. They can paint you any way they want you. And they will, while you sit there quietly like a deer in the headlights being pleasant and nice not speaking a word

I spent two years in an American prison. It was absolute hell. I was tortured. I was locked in a sensory deprivation box, I was systematically deprived of sleep, deprived of food, roasted alive in a steel tin building, drilled like I was in the military, yelled at, attacked, locked in cells with two consecutive different roommates who were pyschopathic butch thugs (read flaming gay dangerous). I begged, I wrote grievances, I pleaded, please move me anywhere, and nobody lifted a finger.

I had a job, I worked

Two doors down from me was an RFDI engineer, who was in for... get this... adultery. I nicknamed him Marconi. My nickname was Einstein. A black guy stuck that one on me, because the average grade level was 6... I tested out at 13th... the highest the test went. I was always helping people spell letters, or write letters home, or helping with GED algebra which I know inside out (calculus even). I worked in the library shelving books.

I spent my time avoid all the stupidity in there, writing, making webpages on paper. I made a little harddrive out of paper and set it on my shelf for inspiration even once, it was something to know my webserver was still out there serving documents to the world. I dreamed when I got out of that hell hole of posting to slashdot on the main page... I'm not joking, for real, I've got it scanned somewhere now.

After two years, I won my appeal. That's how long the process takes, minimum, and your chances are slim at best even then. Once they have you, they are making 40K off of you a year, 90% of which goes to guard salaries, innocent or guilty, your a cash cow. America is a police state, under the surface, a huge business. I was in warehouse after warehouse where you could see heads for as far as you could see...

Esp. in the cafeteria. Imagine that scene in Star Wars Episode III, on the planet where the Genoseans are cloning Bobba Fet the bounty hunter, and all the Bobba Fet clones are eating... that is exactly what it looked like... packed in like

Re:On the futility of treating the symptoms

[Seraphim1982]

By the same token, viruses (in the strict definition) also require user interaction to spread and infect hosts - they have to run an infected executable. Wouldn't a boot-sector virus spread without the user runing an infected executable?

A Great Movie Idea

[[cx]]

Can we have Tom Hanks and Leonardo DeCaprio star in this one?

This speed trap brought to you by FORD

[poptones]

How is this any different than car makers setting up speedtraps outside small towns that may not have the "resources" to buy the equipment and pay the officers?

Hell, why don't we just turn all security over to the corporations? Look what a great job the rentacops have done for those in New Orleans!

Really makes a difference

[D4C5CE]

a guy who works for Microsoft and chases virus writers, software counterfeiters, spammers and other suspected law breakers. Can companies really make a difference by helping law enforcement like this?

Yes. Making them "part of The Good Side (that never has anything to hide) [TM] by definition" conveniently takes any contribution by their own security shortcomings out of the equation. Moreover, this finally makes it possible to expose e.g. some freshly-jailed 17-year-old fledgling worm writer as the one single pariah solely responsible for all evil on the Internet, at joint press conferences with federal agencies, along with BSA-style damage assessment.

Also ...

[Tim Ward]

... note that as the EU expands eastwards the definition of "Eastern Europe" keeps changing.

This is because the EU is "clearly" in "the West", so no countries which are part of the EU are in "Eastern Europe", even if they were last year.

So, whilst "Eastern Europe" used to mean places like Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland etc it now means Ukraine and points east.