Cybercops fuel Internet privacy debate
Richard Temple
By JON FRANK, The Virginian-Pilot
� January 15, 2003
VIRGINIA BEACH -- When 35-year-old Richard C. Temple entered an Internet
chat room called ``Daddy's Lap'' last year, he thought he'd meet young girls.
Before long, he met one who claimed to be 15. He sent her messages
sprinkled with X-rated references and transmitted pictures depicting sex
acts between youthful-looking girls and men.
Temple's 15-year-old chat room friend turned out to be 44-year-old police
officer William Krieg, who was working undercover for the Illinois State
Attorney's Office.
Krieg saved the instant messages.
He read them Nov. 13 in Virginia Beach Circuit Court, where Temple was
found guilty of proposing indecent liberties with a minor.
Increasingly, Internet communication like Temple's is attracting the
attention of law enforcement ``cybercops'' who cruise the World Wide Web in
search of illegal activity. These electronic investigators have created a
debate within the legal community.
Are these cybercops setting up high-tech entrapments for fantasizing
adults? Or are they members of new-age vice squads, patrolling a virtual
red-light district where predators roam 24/7?
Both sides have their advocates.
Civil libertarians worry that the government is not only entrapping
otherwise law-abiding citizens but also invading the minds and computers of
people who have little or no intention of acting on their private fantasies.
Child advocates counter that such investigations are needed to protect the
young and to keep the electronic superhighway from becoming even more
littered with pornographic trash.
``It is our feeling that this is a great proactive tool for law
enforcement,'' said Kathy Free, program manager for the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children in Northern Virginia. ``There is a lot of
illegal activity going on.''
Jeralyn Merritt, a spokesman for the Washington-based National Association
of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the government should not invade personal
computers.
``If the person never left their living room and never intended to, but
merely was engaging in fantasy and role playing on the Internet, should
that be a crime?'' Merritt said.
Temple's attorney, Moody E. ``Sonny'' Stallings Jr., claims his client was
entrapped.
There's ``no crime in talking dirty to a 44-year-old man,'' Stallings said.
Temple's prosecution, Stallings said, is an example of how the worst fears
envisioned by writers such as George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, about a
government that is everywhere, snooping into the private lives of citizens,
have become reality.
``Big Brother is out there on the computer,'' Stallings said. ``And you
better watch out.''
In November, a Virginia man was arraigned in federal court on charges that
he crossed the Virginia-West Virginia line with the purpose of engaging in
sexual acts with a juvenile girl.
The man, 53-year-old Frank G. Bonds, was arrested on Oct. 15 in the parking
lot of a West Virginia hotel, where he had gone to meet Ashley, a
13-year-old he'd met in an Internet chat room.
Ashley was actually Stephan P. Lear, a U.S. postal inspector who created
the persona in an online training exercise for other inspectors.
Last month, Alvin Knowles, 31, of Norfolk was charged with trying to
arrange a sexual encounter via computer with a 13-year-old girl. The
``girl'' was a police detective.
Knowles was charged with one count of use of an electronic device to
facilitate crimes against children and one count of attempted indecent
liberties, both felonies.
Last week, Regent University law student Robin Vanderwall was charged with
two Internet-related crimes: Use of a communication device for crimes
against children and attempted indecent liberties with a child 14 or younger.
According to Virginia Beach prosecutors, Vanderwall contacted a Virginia
Beach police officer who was posing as an underage boy in an Internet chat
room. Vanderwall, 34, was arrested Jan. 10 when he went to a Virginia Beach
park to meet the boy.
Law enforcement officers are pounding the Internet beat, according to Orin
Kerr, an associate professor at the George Washington University Law School
who specializes in constitutional issues surrounding computer crime
investigations.
``This is by far the most prosecuted of all computer crimes,'' Kerr said.
Close to 1,000 cases are prosecuted annually in the United States, Kerr
said. Most of them, he said, end up in federal court, where penalties are
stiffer and interstate crimes are more easily prosecuted.
Because these investigations tend to be conducted by police officers
working solely in cyberspace, state lines are insignificant, Kerr said.
Perpetrators may be far away from the investigators who catch them.
In Virginia, for instance, investigations are coordinated by a task force
based in Bedford County, just east of Roanoke.
The federally funded task force involves more than 30 law enforcement
agencies, including the Virginia Beach Police Department. The task force
began work in 1998, according to its leader, Lt. Michael J. Harmony of the
Bedford County Sheriff's Office.
Because cybercrime is ``a global problem,'' Harmony said, the Virginia task
force has great reach, working cases with Great Britain's Scotland Yard,
the FBI and U.S. Postal Service inspectors. Harmony said the task force has
worked more than 200 cases. About 25 percent of them have involved Virginia
residents.
More than 30 such task forces are operating nationwide, Harmony said.
Although it may appear that people are being ``entrapped'' by these
computer dragnets, federal appellate courts have so far supported most of
the investigations, Kerr said.
Two issues commonly are raised on appeal, Kerr said. The first is that the
investigator is an adult, so no crime has been committed.
This has been ``universally rejected in these type of cases,'' Kerr said.
The second issue -- entrapment -- has been marginally more successful, Kerr
said.
In at least one case, a conviction was overturned when a court determined
that police actively attempted to ``trick'' a suspect into having sex with
a teenage girl.
The perpetrator answered a ``foot fetish'' advertisement, according to
Kerr. That enticement was switched by investigators into a proposal to
engage in sex with the underage girl.
The court determined that the police actively entrapped the defendant.
The key, Kerr believes, is for police officers not to aggressively pursue
the perpetrator.
``As long as the cops remain passive targets, I am not too worried'' about
civil rights being trampled, Kerr said.
But Merritt of the defense lawyers group said electronic entrapments
threaten basic liberties.
``The job of law enforcement is to police crimes, not to patrol private
thoughts,'' she said. ``The places one visits on the Internet in the
privacy of his own home should be protected. We need to avoid a `one click
and you're guilty' standard of justice.''
Reach Jon Frank at 446-2277 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
