COMPUTERS Ashcroft to target high-tech criminals

Ashcroft said the emphasis would be on material pirated for large-scale sales.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- With San Jose's Tech Museum as a backdrop, Attorney General John Ashcroft vowed Wednesday to more aggressively prosecute computer and intellectual-property crime, from software piracy to the rampant illegal downloading of music and movies on the Internet.
Ashcroft, releasing the results of a national task force study on a multibillion-dollar problem, plans to expand the number of Justice Department prosecutors devoted to high-tech crime, including adding two to the Bay Area's six-member computer crimes unit.
At the same time, Ashcroft's plan to side with private industry in ongoing copyright feuds -- particularly in the entertainment arena -- immediately drew criticism from civil liberties groups.
Among other things, the task force recommends the Justice Department intervene to defend the ability of companies to issue subpoenas to find the identities of alleged music, movie and software pirates without filing lawsuits in court.
The recording industry just this week failed to get the U.S. Supreme Court to address the issue after losing a lower-court ruling on the subject.
Objections
Civil rights advocates say the subpoenas amount to witch-hunts that violate consumer privacy rights.
"The taxpayer groups and conservative groups should wonder why the government is sticking its nose in a whole lot of private disputes," said Wendy Seltzer, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News, Ashcroft stressed that the Bush administration's legal attacks would be focused on organizers of peer-to-peer networks who illegally pirate material on the Internet and distribute it on a large-scale basis. But the attorney general also said prosecutors need to curtail illegal downloading by individuals.
"Serious damage has been done to the music industry," Ashcroft said after a news conference with U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan, who is in charge of enforcing federal laws in Northern California.
For the most part, Ashcroft said the new high-tech initiative would build on the methods federal prosecutors have used in Silicon Valley and San Francisco in recent years, reaching more into other countries to nab high-tech pirates under U.S. laws.
The attorney general cited two ongoing cases in federal court in San Jose -- one involving the extradition of a Ukrainian national from Thailand who allegedly sold millions of dollars of counterfeit software on the Internet.
Rare case
The other is a rare case under an economic espionage law against two San Jose businessmen accused of stealing trade secrets from major valley companies to set up a competitor in China.
Overall, the Justice Department approach would call for prosecutors to get more involved in pursuing cases under criminal laws that have traditionally been fought out in civil lawsuits. Experts say the department should proceed carefully in deciding when to use criminal laws in those types of disputes.
For example, David Shapiro, who served as San Francisco's U.S. attorney for a year before Ryan took over, said local prosecutors chose not to pursue a criminal case when controversy swirled around Napster and the downloading of music off the Internet.
A federal judge eventually ordered Napster to shut its free song-sharing service after the recording industry sued under copyright laws.
"There is a point at which federal prosecutors should be cautious about entering into what has traditionally been the civil world," Shapiro said.