It's happening again. Another bloated, proprietary industry is giving way to an "open-source" alternative.
The industry? Legal research.
With an increasing number of legal opinions online, rather than locked behind LexisNexis or Westlaw, Fastcase was bound to arise. Fastcase is an up-and-coming competitor to these locked-down, expensive services, offering access to a large legal database at a fraction of the cost. Fastcase still needs to scan and index all the legal opinions still held in books, but this is something that an offshore team can do at a low price.
Fastcase won't unseat Lexis-Nexis or Westlaw anytime soon, just as open-source software alternatives aren't putting anyone out of business today. But the writing is on the wall, according to a June 30 Forbes article released online this week:
Bigger law firms will continue to use Westlaw and Lexis for a long time. The established vendors have the most current and comprehensive databases, and, says Thomas Fleming, lawyers know them best....[Fleming's] firm uses Fastcase for quick searches and to cross-check citations, but he says it has a "phenomenal niche" serving smaller firms that can't afford Wexis.
Niche today, market dominance tomorrow. That's the way the open-source song goes...
It's looking like there could be a deal in the works in which Hans Reiser, the Linux programmer convicted in April of murdering his estranged wife, would lead authorities to her body in exchange for a reduced sentence. That's according a Wired report confirmed in part Friday by the prosecutor in the case, Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff.
"The defense has made overtures" to that effect, Orloff told CNET News.com Friday, declining to comment further because "it's still very preliminary."
In April, following a drama-filled six-month trial, a jury found Reiser, 44, guilty of first-degree murder in the 2006 killing of Nina Reiser, with whom he was undergoing a bitter divorce. Reiser is currently behind held without bail pending his sentencing scheduled for July 9.
Hans Reiser
(Credit: via Stanford University)Reiser is known to the technology world as the founder of the ReiserFS file system software, which is available for Linux. Nina Reiser, then 31, was last seen alive on September 3, 2006, in Oakland, Calif., as she was dropping off the couple's two children for the Labor Day weekend. Despite exhaustive searches by authorities, Nina's body has never been found.
Throughout the trial, Reiser maintained his innocence. Arguing the so-called "geek defense," his attorney maintained that while Reiser may be strange, arrogant, even abnormal, his odd behavior following Nina's disappearance wasn't evidence of murder.
A completely different story may unfold, however, if the potential deal in the works comes to fruition. Wired writer David Kravets quotes an anonymous source familiar with the deal who says Reiser's cooperation could reduce his April conviction from first-degree murder to second degree. A second-degree conviction in California carries a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life, Kravets wrote.
And the deal "would be off if an autopsy of the body somehow demonstrated that it was first-degree, premeditated murder with, for example, 'two bullet holes to the back of the head,'" Kravets wrote, quoting the source.
The Federal Communications Commission says Best Buy and other retailers must pay more than $3 million in fines for selling analog TVs without labels that explain the sets won't work after the digital TV switchover next February.
In a 41-page legal document filed last week (and dug up by Ars Technica), Best Buy essentially says, "Oh yeah? Make us."
There have been many bumps along the way to the February 2009 switch to all-digital TV in the U.S. The FCC is spearheading the transition and has established deadlines to help it along. Best Buy alone was fined $280,000 after FCC enforcement agents found analog TVs for sale in the store without this label, which the commission had previously decreed should be attached to all TVs without a digital tuner:
This television receiver has only an analog broadcast tuner and will require a converter box after February 17, 2009, to receive over-the-air broadcasts with an antenna because of the nation's transition to digital broadcasting. Analog-only TVs should continue to work as before with cable and satellite TV services, gaming consoles, VCRs, DVD players, and similar products. For more information, call the Federal Communications Commission at 1-888-225-5322 (TTY: 1-888-835-5322) or visit the Commission's digital television Web site at: www.dtv.gov.
Best Buy and other retailers like Sears, Wal-Mart Stores, and CompUSA were found to be in violation of these rules. But were the rules enforceable in the first place? That's where it gets a bit sticky.
Instead of paying the measly fine, Best Buy responded in meticulous detail to the FCC's Notice of Apparent Liability, issued last month. Here's a summary of the retailer's five main points on why it believes it doesn't have to pay a cent.
1. You can't make us label anything
Best Buy's attorneys point out that never before has the commission had jurisdiction over retailers, and twice before when it tried to, an appellate court invalidated it.
2. We didn't do it on purpose
The FCC accused Best Buy of purposely selling analog TVs without labels. Best Buy says that's not true, details its efforts to comply, and says the burden should be on the FCC to prove the intention of the retailer.
3. We tried our best
Best Buy details the steps it took to ensure the right boxes were labeled, but admits that it was difficult to determine which boxes needed them. Products with similar model numbers sometimes made it hard to figure out which had just an analog tuner and which had an analog and a digital tuner.
4. Your agents messed up
The retailer points out that some violations pointed out by FCC enforcement agents were just wrong. It does so to point out to the FCC that it's not accusing the commission of purposely making errors, so the FCC shouldn't accuse Best Buy of the same. Also, Best Buy is trying to show how difficult the process is of determining which boxes need labels.
5. You didn't go about this the right way
Best Buy quibbles with the process with which the Notice of Apparent Liability was carried out. It says that it didn't get public comment on the retail Labeling Rule, and also calls the NAL "procedurally invalid" because it wasn't give enough notice of its violation or time to respond.
The amount of money ($280,000) is so small that the retailer is likely not concerned about the fine. Rather, it's trying to make a point about the reach of the FCC's arm in handling the DTV transition.
The outcome will turn on what an appellate court has to say about this. And though Best Buy has a fairly good case, it's a tough call as to how it will turn out, according to Barbara Esbin, senior fellow and director of The Center for Communications and Competition Policy at the Progress and Freedom Foundation.
"There is no law that says the FCC had jurisdiction to promulgate and enforce a labeling rule," she said in an interview. "But the FCC doesn't claim it has express authorization."
What the agency relies on to regulate labeling by retailers is the same as used in the regulation of cable television services back in the 1960s.
"The FCC relied on this doctrine that it has some regulatory authority that is not expressly given, but is in the subject matter of the authority it has over wire and radio communication devices and reasonably ancillary to its express jurisdiction over that entity and its equipment," according to Esbin.
Indeed, when asked to cite the statute giving it authority to regulate retailers' labeling, an FCC spokeswoman pointed to the Code of Federal Regulations that govern the FCC, but are not laws.
"I can't say Best Buy has a slam dunk argument, but they have reasonably good claims," said Esbin. "The labeling rule imposed on retailers rather than on manufacturers are not reasonably ancillary to express jurisdiction."
Besides that, Best Buy (along with other retailers) appears to have gone way out of its way to comply with the FCC on the transition. Best Buy, for instance, was the first retailer to stop selling analog TVs last fall--and from a look at its argument, like a straight-A student who gets criticized by overly demanding parents for getting a B in math, it just wants a break, and maybe, the benefit of the doubt.
Despite that, the FCC probably isn't going to let this one go, so stay tuned.
A U.S. Senate panel has unanimously approved a bill that would encourage federal, state, and local police to use and create special software designed to nab child pornography swappers on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to send an amended version of the Combating Child Exploitation Act, chiefly sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), to the full slate of politicians for a vote.
All told, the bill would allocate more than $1 billion over the next eight years for a broad array of efforts aimed at tackling Internet crimes against children. It calls for hiring 250 new federal agents at the FBI, the Immigrations and Custom Enforcement Agency, and the U.S. Postal Service dedicated to child exploitation cases; for beefing up personnel, equipment, and educational programs designed to combat Internet crimes against children; and for creating new forensics laboratories if the attorney general deems it necessary to deal with a "backlog" of online child exploitation cases.
"We need to give law enforcement the funds and the tools to pull the plug on Internet predators," Biden said in a statement.
An amendment adopted Thursday also adds new sections to the original bill that would rewrite existing child pornography laws. One section is designed to make it clear that live Webcam broadcasts of child abuse are illegal, which the bill's authors argue is an "open question." Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted.
It's unclear whether the changes are necessary. The Justice Department in the past, for instance, has netted guilty pleas in cases related to live Webcam recordings involving minors engaged in sexual acts.
The bill's passage follows a hearing last month at which Biden and other senators suggested they saw considerable promise in software designed to detect child pornography sources--specifically a tool called "Operation Fairplay." The so-called "comprehensive computer infrastructure" was developed two years ago by Special Agent Flint Waters in the Wyoming Attorney General's Office, where the system is still housed, and is currently being used by online child exploitation investigators nationwide.
The bill approved Thursday allocates $2 million for the attorney general to build upon that software by creating a "National Internet Crimes Against Children Data System," which would make information about ongoing cases--particularly high-priority ones--accessible to investigators nationwide and coordinate development of new software tools designed to detect alleged child predators in real time.
Through the existing Fairplay system, investigators log onto peer-to-peer file-sharing networks as any other person would and search for files containing certain keywords that are likely to indicate child pornography is involved. Then they download files--frequently videos, sometimes as long as 20 to 30 minutes, with names like "children kiddy underage illegal.mpg" and much more obscene--to their own machines. The Fairplay software allows the investigator to obtain the IP address of the file's sender and, in some cases, display its geographic location in map form.
Once armed with an IP address and date and time of the download, investigators can subpoena the Internet service provider for more information, such as name and address of the subscriber who was assigned it at that moment. It's not clear whether any wiretaps are also conducted to monitor ongoing file-swapping.
Through that process, investigators have identified more than 600,000 unique computers allegedly trafficking in child pornography and traced them to the United States. But Biden and others have voiced dismay that they're only equipped with the resources to investigate about 2 percent of those potential cases.
Grand Theft Auto: Atlanta, anyone?
That title may not be far off, if the state of Georgia gets its way. Its latest goal, in the name of economic development, is to become the video game production capital of the United States.
Sonny Purdue, governor, Georgia
(Credit: Georgia Governor's Office)Earlier this week, the state's Republican governor, Sonny Purdue, signed into law a proposal to offer greater tax incentives not only to game producers, but also to music video, movie, and TV production projects.
"The new incentives will put Georgia among the top five states in the U.S., in terms of financial competitiveness for entertainment projects," Ken Stewart, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, said in a statement. "We expect to see an increase in the number of industry jobs and overall economic impact for the state in the coming years."
Under the 2008 Entertainment Industry Investment Act, eligible companies that spent at least $500,000 on production costs in the state would be eligible for a 20 percent tax credit on that investment, up from the 9 percent that was previously on the books.
The companies can qualify for an extra 10 percent tax credit, too, but only if they agree to embed promotional ads and animated Georgia logos in their content.
According to a statement from Peach State, the entertainment industry has contributed more than $1.17 billion to Georgia's economy since 2005, when the first wave of tax credits took effect. Georgia, of course, is home to Turner Broadcasting System, the high-power media empire that includes CNN, Cartoon Network, and game network GameTap.
Editor's note: Updated at 11:35 a.m. PST to include additional information from Matheson's office about the bill.
A new congressional proposal seeks to make it harder for kids to buy or rent games like the runaway sales hit "Grand Theft Auto IV" (scene pictured here), which bears a "Mature" rating, meaning it's considered unsuitable for kids younger than 17.
(Credit: Rockstar Games)A new bill in the U.S. Congress would force retailers to card kids attempting to buy video games bearing "mature" or "adults only" ratings.
In addition to the identification-checking requirement, Reps. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) and Lee Terry (R-Neb.)'s Video Game Ratings Enforcement Act, introduced on Wednesday, would also require stores to post explanations of what the ratings, devised by the industry-backed Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), actually mean, according to a press release. A copy of the bill's text was not immediately available on Thursday.
Rep. Jim Matheson
(Credit: U.S. Congress)"As a parent, I know that I'm the first line of defense against my kids playing Mature-rated video games," Matheson said in a statement. "But parents can't be everywhere monitoring everything and some reasonable, common sense rules ought to be in place to back parents up."
For the record, games with an M-rating, by the ESRB's description, are considered suitable for people age 17 and older and "may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language." Those with an AO or Adults Only rating "may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity" and are recommended only for people age 18 or older.
Whether the new rules are necessary may be up for debate. Some stores already attempt to verify the age of game purchasers. Wal-Mart, for example,
And interestingly, just after the bill was introduced, the Federal Trade Commission on Thursday released the results of a new "undercover" shopper study, which found the number of incidents of stores selling M-rated video games to teens has plummeted since 2000.
On average, only 20 percent of the 13-to-16-year-old shoppers were able to purchase the games from stores like Game Stop/EB Games, Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, and Toys R Us, down from an average of 42 percent in 2006 and 85 percent in 2000. (Some stores recorded a far lower percentage--only 6 percent of those shoppers were successful in purchasing M-rated games from Game Stop, for instance.)
The Parents Television Council, a group whose mission is to shield children from sex, violence and profanity in television and other media, applauded the bill's introduction, pointing to its concerns about the Mature-rated Grand Theft Auto IV, which has already broken sales records within the first week of its release.
"Video game ratings supposedly exist to protect children from material that is created for adults, but there is no consequence for irresponsible retailers who repeatedly sell these games to children," PTC president Tim Winter said in a statement. "The importance of this issue cannot be overstated when considering the array of games that include content too deplorable and disgusting to describe in detail."
Previous legislative attempts to limit childrens' access to violent or sexually-themed video games, however, have not met with much success in the courts. Earlier this year, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court's decision to block a Minnesota law that would have imposed up to a $25 fine on minors younger than 17 caught buying or renting video games rated "M" for mature or "AO" for adults-only, citing, among other things, First Amendment concerns. Similar rulings have come down in other federal courts with regard to laws in Louisiana, Michigan, and California.
The Entertainment Software Association, which represents the video game industry, said it shares the politicians' goal of ensuring children have parental approval before playing certain titles but disagreed with their proposed method of doing so.
"Empowering parents, not enacting unconstitutional legislation, is the best way to control the games children play," said ESA President Michael Gallagher.
A Matheson aide told CNET News.com that her boss believes his bill is crafted narrowly enough to survive any constitutional challenge that may arise.
The new bill joins a handful of other proposals related to video games that have surfaced in this session of Congress, including new attempts to outlaw "deceptive" video game ratings. That legislation was a reaction primarily to the "Hot Coffee" scandal a few years ago, in which a readily downloadable modification to the best-selling game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas could unlock sexually explicit scenes.
TipSoft SMS lets you send an anonymous text message about crimes to police.
(Credit: Anderson Software)You see a crime, what do you do? Most people would just dial 911. But if you want to remain anonymous and there's no no pay phone around, you can now send a text message to the authorities.
A company called mBlox, which operates a mobile transaction network, and Anderson Software, provider of law enforcement tip management software, have launched a service that lets people send in anonymous tips via SMS.
The TipSoft SMS service provides an alias for the tipster and allows for two-communication without sharing the tipster's phone number with authorities. The text messages are encrypted and routed through secure servers.
The anonymity will likely mean more tips to police, which is good. But there's also the chance there will be pranks pulled and people ratted out for unwarranted activities, which is not so good.
TipSoft is already available in 16 cities in Canada, is launching in 32 U.S. cities, and will be available in the U.K. soon, the companies said.
A jury in Alameda County, Calif., on Monday afternoon found Linux programmer Hans Reiser guilty of first-degree murder in the 2006 killing of his estranged wife, Nina Reiser, according to news accounts.
The jury made its decision after three days of deliberation following a drama-filled six-month trial. The jury had the option of considering a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.
Hans Reiser
(Credit: via Stanford University)Hans Reiser, 44, is known to the technology world as the founder of the ReiserFS file system software, which is available for Linux. Nina Reiser, then 31, was last seen alive on September 3, 2006, in Oakland, Calif., as she was dropping off the couple's two children for the Labor Day weekend. At the time, the couple had been involved in a bitter divorce.
Despite exhaustive searches by authorities, Nina's body has never been found. And there was very little forensic evidence presented during the trial--only a tiny amount of Nina Reiser's blood found on a pillar in Hans Reiser's home and another speck on a sleeping bag cover in his car.
That left the jury relying heavily on circumstantial evidence. Much of that evidence surrounded Hans Reiser's strange behavior following Nina Reiser's disappearance, such has his hosing down of the car's interior, which he said seemed a logical way to clean it; his removal of his car's passenger seat, which he said allowed more room for him to sleep in his car; and his attempts to elude police.
Arguing the so-called "geek defense," Hans Reiser's attorney William Du Bois said those behaviors may have been odd, but weren't evidence of murder. In his closing statements, he likened his client to an odd "duckbill platypus," and later stipulated to the fact that Hans Reiser "isn't normal," according to news accounts.
Wired blogger David Kravets, who covered the trial from gavel to gavel, said the turning point in the trial came when Hans Reiser, defying his lawyers' advice, took the stand in his own defense.
"By the time he was done, Reiser had succeeded only in dispelling the cloud of ambiguity surrounding his actions in the case, replacing it with a storm of very specific explanations that each strained credulity," Kravets wrote. "Jurors had to choose between Reiser's strained version of events and the plain conclusion that he was lying."
Apparently, they chose the latter. Hans Reiser faces a sentence of 25 years to life in prison. He's expected to return to court Tuesday morning to have a sentencing date set, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
This post was updated with the correct spelling of David Kravets' name.
This post was updated with the correct spelling of David Kravets' name.
The most undisputed assertion in the trial of Hans Reiser, the Linux programmer accused of killing his estranged wife, is that he's a geek to the nth degree. He's been called strange, socially inept, devoid of emotion, and paranoid...and no one disagrees.
Hans Reiser
(Credit: via Stanford University)Even the typically easy-going Alameda County Superior Court Judge Larry Goodman, who is presiding over the Oakland, Calif.-based trial, called Reiser arrogant and rude and at one point, in the jury's absence, said "there are not enough words in the English language to describe what you are,'' according to news accounts.
What remains unclear, however, as the jury starts deliberating Reiser's fate, is whether Reiser's eccentric behavior following the disappearance of his wife, Nina, was the result of his extreme intellect and nerdy personality...or a guilty conscience.
Reiser, 44, is known to the technology world as the founder of the ReiserFS file system software, which is available for Linux. Nina Reiser was last seen alive on September 3, 2006, in Oakland, Calif., as she was dropping off the couple's two children for the Labor Day weekend. At the time, the couple had been involved in a bitter divorce.
Despite exhaustive searches by authorities, Nina's body has never been found. Reiser has long suggested she could be hiding in her native Russia after stealing money from her husband's former company, Namesys.
There was very little forensic evidence presented during the six-month trial--only a tiny amount of Nina's blood found on a pillar in Reiser's home and another speck on a sleeping bag cover in his car. So the jury, which is expected to receive instructions from the judge Tuesday afternoon, is left to rely largely on circumstantial evidence, as Alameda County District Attorney Paul Hora pointed out in his closing statements last week. "We don't know it all, but we know enough," Hora said.
And much of that evidence surrounds Reiser's behavior following Nina's disappearance, such has his hosing down of the inside of his car, which he said seemed a logical way to clean it; his removal of his car's passenger seat, which he said allowed more room for him to sleep in his car; and his attempts to elude police. Arguing the so-called "geek defense," Reiser's attorney William Du Bois said those behaviors may have been odd, but aren't evidence of murder. In his closing statements, he likened his client to an odd "duckbill platypus," and later stipulated to the fact that Reiser "isn't normal," according to news accounts.
"You may dislike him--that would put you in the majority of people who know him--but he didn't commit the crime," Du Bois said, adding that the jury need look no further than this video presented in court of Reiser giving a seminar at Google headquarters about his file system to see he's a "genuine nerd," according to news accounts.
And that theory may work on some jurors, especially those who are familiar with such ubergeeks. After having seen Reiser in action--his rambling testimony, his arguments with the lawyers and even the judge, his bizarre remarks, and his lack of emotion--they may have grown to understand and empathize with Reiser and might not see him as capable of murder.
Defense could backfire
They might however, go the opposite way, and conclude that Reiser's social ineptitude makes him all the more capable of murdering the mother of his children.
And the fact that Reiser took the stand against the advice of his own lawyer, might also work against him. David Kravets, who's been covering the trial for Wired, pointed out that Reiser went into details on the stand--like admitting he was trying to hide his car from police--that the jury wouldn't have been privy to had he kept quiet. "Judging by the jurors' reactions, they didn't seem to be buying what the defendant was saying," Kravets said.
The trial has its many followers, fueled by online news coverage and forums. The San Francisco Chronicle's Henry Lee, who has been live-blogging from the courthouse, is amazed at the "vehement back and forth" on the comments section of his trial blog from people convinced of either Reiser's guilt or his innocence. (I interviewed Kravets and Lee for Tuesday's CNET News.com daily podcast.)
Alexander Lyamin, for one, who worked for Reiser's Namesys as a systems administrator and tester, has been watching the trial and doesn't see it playing well for Reiser.
"It's more like a very personal apocalypse," he said in an e-mail, noting that Reiser never could grasp that how you communicate something is just as important, if not more, as what you are trying to communicate.
"Can you be more stupid than aggravating the judge AND your lawyer? No? Oh yes. You can," Lyamin wrote. "You can aggravate the whole kernel community."
AUDIO
Inside look at the Reiser trial
News.com's Michelle Meyers talks to reporters David Kravets and Henry Lee about the "geek defense" and live-blogging from the courtroom.
Download mp3 (5.70MB)
WASHINGTON--A prominent Senate Democrat on Wednesday said federal and local police should use custom software to monitor peer-to-peer networks for illegal activity, and he wants to spend $1 billion in tax dollars to help make that happen.
At an afternoon Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about child exploitation on the Internet, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it's "pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names. He urged use of those techniques by investigators to help nab the most egregious offenders.
The software, dubbed "Operation Fairplay," was developed two years ago by Special Agent Flint Waters in the Wyoming Attorney General's Office, who, by Biden's description, is considered an expert in the field. The application is currently being used by all of the regional Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces nationwide and internationally, Waters told the panel.
Waters describes the system as a "comprehensive computer infrastructure," housed in Wyoming, that grants law enforcement officers a "big picture" of what sort of child pornography file transfers are going on across the country. It's able to help investigators conduct undercover operations involving peer-to-peer file-sharing applications, chat rooms, Web sites, and mobile telephones, Waters said.
No one's trying to demonize those technologies, Waters said. "Blaming this problem on peer-to-peer innovation is like blaming the interstate highway system when someone uses it to transport drugs," he said.
But in 2008 alone, investigators using Fairplay have "seen" more than 1,400 IP addresses tied to swapping child pornography files on at least 100 different occasions, Waters said. He didn't say how he identified what he viewed as child pornography, which can include photographs of fully-clothed teenagers taken with their parents' consent. In addition, as critiques of a 1995 law review article pointed out, trying to guess the contents of a file based on its name can be a problematic process.
Based on Waters' statements to the committee, the system appears to work like this: Investigators log onto peer-to-peer file-sharing networks as any other person would and search for files containing certain keywords that are likely to indicate child pornography is involved. Then they download the files--frequently videos, sometimes as long as 20 to 30 minutes, with names like "children kiddy underage illegal.mpg" and much more obscene--to their own machines. They're able to use the Fairplay software to obtain the IP address of the file's sender and, in some cases, display its geographic location in map form.
Once armed with an IP address and date and time of the download, investigators can subpoena the Internet service provider for more information, such as name and address of the subscriber who was assigned it at that moment. "It's not necessarily the suspect but it tells us the physical location to start," Waters said. (He didn't say whether any wiretaps were conducted to monitor ongoing file swapping.)
Investigators use the IP addresses to keep track of offenders on a "daily" basis, Waters told CNET News.com during a break at the hearing. But in about half its cases, for purposes of longer-term tracking, the software captures "unique serial numbers" from the person's computer and keeps a tally of how many allegedly illicit files that particular user is trading.
Waters provided the committee with a chart that said, for example, law enforcement had "seen" one user in Pennsylvania exchanging those files 2,792 times, one New Jersey user swapping them 1,182 times, and so on. It wasn't clear whether the so-called serial number corresponded to IP address, P2P username, or something else, and Waters wouldn't elaborate.
"It's unique to the computer, that's as far as I'll go," Waters added, saying he didn't want to divulge more details that suspects could use to circumvent detection. "We're able to get it when they're transferring child pornography."
So far, investigators have recorded more than 642,000 "unique serial numbers" that can be traced to the United States and another 650,000 of them that cannot be traced to a particular country, with the number of unique serial numbers rising steadily each month since "widespread capturing" of the details began in October 2005.
In addition to tracking the senders of the files, investigators use Fairplay to track the files themselves through their hash values or digital signatures. In one case, investigators found that an image of a toddler who'd been "horribly abused" was available in more than 1 million places around the world, Waters said.
Lt. Robert Moses, unit commander of the Delaware State Police High Technology Crimes Unit, told the committee that the software has been instrumental in allowing law enforcement to "proactively" identify criminals who possess and distribute child pornography, helping lead to arrests and prosecutions.
Grier Weeks, executive director of an anticrime nonprofit association known as the National Association to Protect Children, said the system has "revolutionized law enforcement" in the child pornography area.
Biden and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the committee's ranking member, said they were troubled that because of limited resources, investigators are able to take on less than 2 percent of what they called "known" cases of child-pornography trafficking via the Internet. Biden said he also isn't pleased to see that the FBI currently has only 32 agents working in its "Innocent Images" unit, which focuses on child pornography. Still, Biden said he isn't out to "exaggerate" the problem and acknowledged that some of those cases may involve "accidental" exchanges of illicit material.
Biden pushed for passage of a bill known as the Combating Child Exploitation Act. It would authorize more than $1 billion over the next eight years to hire 250 new federal agents devoted to Internet crimes against children, provide additional funding to regional computer forensics labs, and give out more federal grants to the regional Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces. The House of Representatives passed a companion bill in October.
"We can get our arms around it, the worst aspect of it," he said, "if we provide the resources."
Sessions cautioned the law enforcement officials to be smart about obtaining search warrants in such investigations. "You can't just go peruse everybody's computer," he said. "You train the officers in what is legal and established and approved and how to get warrants when they need a warrant?"
Waters said he "didn't know of any cases where (requests for warrants) had been overturned."
News.com's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report
