Digital clues help police land
high-tech pirates
Last month, the
Sacramento Valley Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force, along with the
U.S. Attorney's Office and the Secret Service, busted what
they described as a massive DVD pirate ring.
They seized
more than 50,000 disks from a Stockton, Calif., storefront,
including movies not yet available in stores, such as "Deuce
Bigalow European Gigalo," "The Wedding Crashers" and "The
40-Year Old Virgin."
When the case
goes to court, the prosecuting attorneys should have some
strong evidence, thanks to both the cybersleuthing prowess of
the detectives and additional information provided by
optical-disk forensic software. This software can read
information embedded on DVDs and CDs that can't be viewed by
normal means.
The Sacramento
Valley Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force was formed in 1995 to help
investigate cases involving computers and technology. A
partnership between Sacramento Valley law enforcement agencies
and resident IT companies, the force investigates identity
theft, online child pornography, counterfeiting and other
cybercrimes.
Police
nationwide see more and more cases involving movie and music
piracy, thanks to the proliferation of low-cost consumer
electronics that can reproduce and package digital content.
"In a digital
environment, you can do just about anything you want," said
Lydell Wall, a detective in the Stanislaus County Sheriff's
Department who was assigned as a computer forensic examiner to
the task force. The Motion Picture Association of
America estimates that the movie industry loses about $3
billion annually to unauthorized copying and selling of
movies.
Bootlegging
is easy
On Wall's desk
is a DVD of "The Passion of the Christ." When Wall pops
the movie into his Dell laptop, it is immediately obvious that
this is an unauthorized copy. The picture is grainy, as
if it were recorded by a video camera aimed at a movie theater
screen. As if to confirm Wall's suspicion, a moviegoer a
few rows in front of the camera operator can be seen in
silhouette getting up and walking to the aisle.
This copy of
"Passion" shows how easily a move in the theater can be filmed
and transferred to DVD using standard DVD authoring software.
Wall picked up
this copy of "Passion" when he was called in to check out a
local flea market vendor who had more than 1,000 music CDs and
movie DVDs--including the top five box office films at the
time long before they hit the video store shelves.
When the task
force finds a store or street vendor selling such illegal
copies, there is plenty of clear evidence. Usually the
artwork on the case is amateurish and does not resemble the
official artwork, which the Task Force can obtain from the
movie's production company. This particular copy of
"Passion" was marked as the work of Homey Productions, in all
likelihood not the actual production company behind the Mel
Gibson flick.
In addition to
these telltale signs, the task force also looks for other,
harder-to-pinpoint signs that the disks are unauthorized.
Here is where disk forensic software helps. Wall uses
CD/DVD Inspector from InfinaDyne Electronic of Grayslake,
Ill., to decipher all sorts of useful information hidden on a
disk's secret layers.
"Typically, we
see the master software that may have been used. There
might be imprints of the author's name," Wall said. The
software could reveal the time and date the disk was made.
The disk's hidden sectors can also reveal what type of
recorder was used, and even what kind of computer was used to
master the disk.
