With an eye toward cracking down on cyber crime, officials at the College of DuPage on Monday unveiled a new state-of-the-art computer lab at the college’s Suburban Law Enforcement Academy.
There, officers will learn how to track computer criminals, from pedophiles who prey on children to shysters out to bilk people of money to hackers who infiltrate confidential Web sites.
The lab at the Glen Ellyn school also will train officers in how to conduct on-line investigations, in computer modeling that will enable them to reconstruct a crime scene, and in how to present the evidence in court.
The new lab was made possible by a donation from Microsoft Corp. and Omni Tech Corp. of 51 new personal computers, screens and keyboards; a printer and overhead projector; all the necessary software; and technical support services.
The equipment and software are valued at $250,000, college officials said, and enable the college to create one of the nation’s few specialized computer crime labs dedicated to training law enforcement personnel. No civilians will be able to enroll in the 40-hour, weeklong classes, which will cost $475 in tuition.
“The industry is very motivated in learning how to tackle the problems” of computer crime, Bob Herbold, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Microsoft, said at a Monday unveiling of the lab.
Until now, the law-enforcement academy has held its computer crime classes by borrowing computer space elsewhere on campus, and only when regular classes were out of session. The new computer lab allows the academy to offer classes virtually year-round, reaching literally hundreds of officers and prosecutors.
Already, the academy is receiving attention from police departments all over the country, as well as Canada, officials said.
College officials said that there is a real need for the training as police and prosecutors struggle to keep pace with the sometimes confusing world of computer crime.
“When this was brand-new technology, it was difficult for police departments to follow up,” said Mike Sullivan, Naperville police detective and an instructor at the law enforcement academy.
But understanding the inner workings of computers and the Internet, officials said, is no different than learning any kind of new technology, whether it be fingerprinting or the use of DNA evidence.
One unusual aspect of the lab will be that the police officers in the class will be able to pose as children and log on to pornographic Web sites or chat rooms where Internet users prey on the young. As pedophiles reveal themselves, they can be investigated and arrested, officials said.
“It used to be that pedophiles would go to the park and pick their victims,” Sullivan said. “As the Internet came along, the Internet has become the virtual park.”
Such real-life training is invaluable.
“There’s no place else that you can go in and see a felony being committed while you are doing police training,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan noted that many people wrongly think what they do on the Internet cannot be traced.
“When a crime is committed on the Internet, it makes it easier for us to track you. It’s like committing a crime and then leaving your license plate at the scene,” he said.
“You can’t go on the Internet,” he said, “without leaving a footprint.”
