Cybercrime watchdog agency revitalized under new leader

White-collar crime, often conducted with a computer as an accomplice,will be under scrutiny by the new head of a state task force.

So will intellectual property espionage.

And company database theft.

James Earl, newly named executive director of the advisory board for Nevada Task Force for Technologic Crime, is charged with beefing up the agency that investigates identity theft, child pornography, and a host of other crimes aided and abetted by technology.

When it comes to cyber crime,"People think about computers and forensic analysis on computers used in Internet crime," says Earl."But it's much broader: it includes networks of servers, cell phones, and PDAs."

Due to limited state funding, money is the main challenge, he adds.

So the agency accepts in-kind donations from the FBI, Secret Service,Homeland Security, county sheriffs, city police, and federal local law enforcement agencies.

That's paid in personnel, equipment and space.

"I need to expand the task force to new cities," says Earl.

In Las Vegas, the metro police department is a major player, but surrounding cities are not.

In northern Nevada,Washoe County sheriff and Reno police are on board, but Sparks and Carson City are not formally affiliated with the task force.Neither are the rural counties.

Individual task force members may look at a computer hard drive for evidence of crime, such as photos of child pornography.

Or for a spreadsheet that might have been used by a drug dealer to keep accounts.

Or for evidence linking to a murder case.

Business crimes such as identity theft can be prosecuted in either civil or criminal courts.

The task force is concerned only with criminal cases.

The Legislature also directed the board to tap members of private industry for help, to secure government information systems, and to coordinate training and education to prevent and detect technological crimes.

"The mandate is broad enough to include input by private tech companies," says Earl.

"We're considering how best to do that."

No tech company representative sits on the current nine-member advisory board, although at least one member must be from the business community.

The board was formed in 1999 after concerns arose with cramming and slamming as well as early computer fraud.

(Slamming is the surreptitious switching of a consumer's long-distance phone service provider.

Cramming is putting false and unexplained charges on a consumer's phone bill.)

These abuses have since fallen by the wayside, says Earl.

"I am very pleased that we were able to attract someone of Mr.

Earl's caliber," said Attorney General George Chanos.

Earl previously worked as the telecommunications attorney for the U.S.

State Department and as a senior member of the competition division in the general counsel's office of the Federal Communications Commission.He worked at several international organizations, including International Mobile Satellite, which provided communications to and from ships and aircraft.

He also worked at COVAD, a Silicon Valley network company that pioneered DSL service.