[free-sklyarov] [declan@well.com: FC: Sen. Hatch "commends" DOJ for Sklyarov arrest, IP prosecutions]

[Jon O .]

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Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:20:27 -0400
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From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
Subject: FC: Sen. Hatch "commends" DOJ for Sklyarov arrest, IP prosecutions
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This is an excerpt from transcript of Monday's hearing of the Senate 
Judiciary committee. "Free Sklyarov" activists had hoped that the case 
would be brought up during the confirmation hearings, but I suspect this 
isn't what they had in mind. Robert Mueller, of course, is President Bush's 
pick to be FBI director.

Info on hearing:
http://judiciary.senate.gov/hr073001f.htm

Politech archive on U.S. v. Sklyarov:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=sklyarov

Politech archive on DMCA:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=dmca

"Congress is more than doubling number of federal copyright cops"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-02321.html

-Declan

*********

    SEN. HATCH: One of the areas of prosecution for which you are particularly
known is that of computer and intellectual-property crime. As U.S. attorney for
the northern district of California, you created a section called the Computer
Hacking and Intellectual Property, or CHIP. Recently Attorney General Ashcroft
recognized your success in the most sincere and flattering way possible by
announcing the formation of nine additional CHIPs units around the country. And
as you know, a subset of this area, criminal copyright enforcement, is of key
importance to this committee. We've devoted considerable energy over the past
number of years to Internet enforcement in particular.

    In 1997, we enacted the No Electronic Theft, or the NET Act, combining
criminal penalties for certain non-commercial Internet pirates. In 1998, we
passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or the DMCA it's called, which
helps combat trafficking and hacking devices designed to defeat technological
protections for copyrighted material. We also enacted the Digital Theft
Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act to speed the implementation of
the NET Act and to improve on-line theft deterrence generally. And we have even
earmarked additional funding for DOJ specifically for the investigation and
prosecution of cyber-crime.

    The committee's work is starting to bear fruit in the form of criminal
prosecutions of Internet piracy. So far this year, the number of NET Act
prosecutions appears to be up, and we have just recently seen the first 
criminal
prosecutions brought under the DMCA. Just this week, the Department of Justice
announced a series of new prosecutions of Internet crimes.

    I commended the Department of Justice for what I hope is a commitment to
cyber-crime enforcement, and I hope this becomes a priority for the FBI as 
well.
Would you please outline for us, if you can, your plan as FBI director on
protecting the nation's computer infrastructure and intellectual property?

    MR. MUELLER: If I may go back briefly to what I saw when I took over as 
U.S.
attorney in San Francisco. We had Silicon Valley in my district, and one of the
great issues was how do you protect -- or how do you not protect, but how 
do you
combat high-tech crime?

    And the first thing I had to do was determine what do you mean by high-tech
crime, and I came to the conclusion that it should be broken down in four ways:
First of all, computer intrusions, denial-of- service attacks; secondly, theft
of intellectual property, economic espionage; third, frauds on the Internet,
distribution of child pornography on the Internet; and fourthly, the theft of
high-tech components such as computer chips, hard drives and the like, all of
which are critical to the high-tech industry.

    We put together a unit in San Francisco and in San Jose because it was
important to develop the expertise in the United States attorneys, the 
assistant
United States attorneys, who would be handling these cases. It was important
that we develop the relationship between the FBI agents, who had the expertise
to do these cases, the assistant United States attorneys who were doing these
cases, and the community.

    In addressing high-tech crime, it is critically important that we 
develop the
relationships with those victims of high-tech crime in the high-tech industry.
And consequently, we will support -- should I be confirmed as the director of
the FBI, the FBI will support not only the unit that was set up in the northern
district of California, but also the other units to be set up, announced by the
attorney general last week.

    One other point I might make, and this goes to the issue of working closely
with the state and local authorities. There are too few investigators with the
skills we need to address this. And one of the developments that has been 
useful
is what has been known or called a computer forensics lab, which was 
established
in San Diego with a number of contributing participating agencies, both federal
and local. And it is that type of combined enterprise that we are going to have
to adopt if we are to address this new wave of separate technological crime in
the future.

    SEN. HATCH: Thank you. Mr. Mueller, as you know, the 2002 Winter 
Olympics in
Salt Lake City, they're going to be the largest planned public safety and law
enforcement in our country in the foreseeable future. The law enforcement
community, including the FBI, has been working on the plans and 
preparations for
several years.

[...] 




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