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Part one of this blog piece asked if hackers have been rewarded for their "dark-side" behavior - and the answer from the CR4 community was "yes", in some cases. Inspired by those earlier comments, part two looks at public and private solutions to policing the worst hacking offenders: Interpol and NBC's Chris Hansen.
INTERPOL
The International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO) was founded 1923, in Austria, and is headquartered in Lyon, France.
<-- Logo of the International Criminal Police Organization, more commonly known as "Interpol". Photos courtesy Wikipedia.
To ensure neutrality, Interpol's founding document forbids involvement in crimes that do not span several member countries. Along with other mandates, one of Interpol's missions is to prosecute computer crime, hacking included. Among the many member countries is the United States, and the current Secretary General leading Interpol is an American, Ronald Noble.
FUNDING IMPEDING COMPUTER CRIME PROSECUTIONS?
According to CNET, Interpol's funding level of $90 million was set with traditional missions in mind - drug and human trafficking - and does not take into account resources required to tackle its newer computer crimes responsibility. A security analyst interviewed by CNET suggests that additional funding from the U.S., European Union, and other G-8 countries may be required, to go after hackers similar to "Chao" - an alleged Turkish automated teller machine (ATM) skimmer. What may be preventing governments from being more supportive is underreporting of computer crimes from banks - often embarrassed after becoming victims of phishing attacks.
PRIVATE SECTOR FILLS THE VACUUM: DATELINE'S CHRIS HANSEN 
After many years of cleaning up and protecting against the dark-side hackers of the world - both for myself and for people at work - it was a breath of fresh air to finally see someone take action at a national level, with the action coming from an unexpected place.
The sheriff of the Internet wasn't an Attorney General of New York State, but instead a television personality without a fear of travelling to the remotest corners of the world to chase after the cyber bad guys.
TV journalist Chris Hansen from NBC Television's "Dateline" program was the new sheriff policing the wild-west bandits of the Internet.
Chris first became noteworthy for his quality coverage of Columbine, Oklahoma City, Una-bomber and TWA Flight 800 tragedies. After those successes, he shifted his journalistic lens to the Internet with his "To Catch a Predator" child predator series.
This series was so extremely popular that it spawned a spin-off. Sticking with the theme of Internet crime, Chris went on to investigate Internet credit card theft.
With undercover camera in tow, and without fear, Chris traced fraud from its source - the on-line trading of credit card numbers in underground hacker chat rooms - and followed the crime from "small-fry" American partner households to the fraud scheme originators in far-flung locations in Europe and Africa.
By exposing overseas fraudsters and their hapless U.S. collaborators to the world's camera lens, Chris made all of us who shop on-line a little more secure.
- Larry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hansen
http://news.cnet.com/8301-12640_3-10074525-91.html
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/turkish-police.html
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Re: Voodoo People: Hire, Jail or Forgive Young Hackers? (Part 2 - Final)
