Expert: Chris Wagoner - 1/12/2012

Question
QUESTION: Can you tell me what is the proper law enforcement procedures to investigate and charge someone with this statute, and what would be needed to prove probable cause.

Thank you

ANSWER: Good Morning!

The Florida State Statue 815.06 is one of the Statues I have used the most in trying to explain to people about computer crime.

In order to violate this state statue you must meet the "elements" of the crime. Those are as follows:

815.06 Offenses against computer users.—
(1) Whoever willfully, knowingly, and without authorization:
you must do this knowing that you should not be doing it and its wrong, this is called the intent clause.

(a) Accesses or causes to be accessed any computer, computer system, or computer network;
I have included sub section 1 as its import to know that all you have to do to violate this law is to "access" anyone's network. This includes using your neighbors wireless, wireless at a hotel without being a guest, a companies wireless without the permission of the company to use it and so on.  

(b) Disrupts or denies or causes the denial of computer system services to an authorized user of such computer system services, which, in whole or part, is owned by, under contract to, or operated for, on behalf of, or in conjunction with another;

In order to deny someone use of a computer system or service which is operated by someone else like a company, hotel or other business or personal network. You violate this by using the network at all. You are denying the owner the use of the "bandwidth" that you are using and stealing services from them that they would otherwise be able to use. Which can actually be an additional charge of theft. It would be petty theft if the value of the service is under $350 dollars and a felony if its over that.

Its not hard to violate 815.06. All you have to do is use a network that is not yours without permission.

The proper way of investigating this is for the victim to report it to the police department, and they would send a uniformed officer out to take the "initial" report. The case would then be assigned to the investigator who hopefully has some knowledge of these types of crimes (they are still fairly new for many departments). The investigator would gather the needed records from the internet service providers or from the computer(s) in question to prove that access was done and denied the owner the use of (even if its only part denial) and once they have identified the suspect they file the charges with the local Florida State Attorneys office.

I hope this helps explain it a bit. Its done all the time, rarely reported and law enforcement is still learning how to investigate these types of crimes.



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: If someone is accused of accessing someone's yahoo e-mail and deleting its content, does that action fall under this statute, and if the alleged access took place in one county of Florida but the person who owns the yahoo e-mail account lives in another county which county is responsible to investigate and prosecute the case, and shouldn't the police have collected the accused's computers to check.

ANSWER: Hi Darryl,

Yes what you describe violates this Statue. And the courts have held that the crime occurs in both the victims and the suspects location and can be investigated by either place.

They must have the records from Yahoo first, then they will get a search warrant if needed to get the suspects computer. These cases sometimes take some time.

Hope that helps..

Be well and stay safe..

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: This situation was after my ex lost custody of our kids to me, she filed a report stating that I got into her e-mail and deleted them. The detective was told by yahoo that they could not ID a computer in this situation. The detective never took my computers even after he was at my home to interview me and I offered them to him, he filed 16 counts against me, ( if found guilty she would get the kids back if I went to jail). The detective stated under oath that he had no training or experience in any computer or Internet crimes. The state dropped all charges after 25 months stating that they could not prove I did it. Is there any printed documents identifying exact investigating procedures for this type of crimes, I have to prove that the detective did not do his job and had no PC to file for an arrest warrant.
Thanks

Answer
Good morning Darryl,

there are really no written procedures to follow for cases like this. Each department should have its own policy in writing as to how to handle these types of computer crimes. But the Florida Department of Law Enforcement does have a course called computer crime investigation which you may be able to get a copy of your attorney requested through public records request, and in Nantes our best to get techniques and suggestions on how to investigate these types of crimes.

I know I helped write the current version of the textbook. What he did does not sound as if he was very knowledgeable and investigation of cyber crime.

I will also tell you that what Yahoo told you was incorrect also. Yahoo can identify by IP address the computers that log into any account over a given period of time they keep records for a certain amount of time for each account of login activity they also maintain if you have a Yahoo e-mail account your e-mails for a certain amount of time which are all recoverable and can be either subpoenaed or requested via search warrants which are all part of the proper procedures for investigating one of these types of crimes.

I'm sorry that you ran into what appears to be an officer who doesn't know what he's doing, I go around the world teaching officers out investigate computer crimes and he obviously was not one of those that attended my class.

Have your attorney make a public records request of Florida Department law enforcement for the computer crimes investigation course class, course book which should give you some idea as to how to investigate the types of crimes. In addition if you should have any legal questions I would be happy to answer them for him as an investigator who does things like this and gives all police officers a bad name, and makes it obvious that they need more training in these types of crimes which are becoming more more prevalent.

Be well and stay safe.