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 Hero Hacker Hunts Pedophiles On Net
By Gary Dimmock
A British Columbia hacker who retrieved an electronic sex diary from the computer of a senior California judge says he ignored "intimidating" orders by Canadian officials to drop the case.
Instead, the hacker, known as OmniPotent, pressed ahead because the judge's journal entries showed an apparent plot to sexually exploit young boys at a private health club.
OmniPotent has spent night after night penetrating up to 3,000 private computers in search of child predators from his home in Langley, B.C. Though the police have yet to credit him publicly, OmniPotent is the same mysterious hacker who led the Mounties to the capture and conviction of an Alberta man who offered his eight-year-old daughter up for sex via the Internet in 1999.
During his online predator hunting, which has led to several arrests, OmniPotent, dubbed by police as "Citizen Tipster", found himself under investigation for possessing vast quantities of child porn files, retrieved using a Trojan Horse program that allowed him to extract e-mail from suspects the world over.
His latest investigation has led to the U.S. indictment of Orange County Superior Court Judge Ronald Kline, who is now under house arrest awaiting trial on six counts of possession of child pornography. In all of this, the Canadian hacker has remained anonymous -- even in police affidavits. In an exclusive statement, the hacker explains why he chooses to remain a shadowy figure.
"My sources that I have worked on gaining trust over a number of years, see me as someone they can trust and not worrying about being exposed. These sources have been very beneficial over the years and have produced some spectacular leads."
"As long as I am in not any sort of spotlight, I can work with them without any scrutiny.
"And they will continue to supply information on who is doing what on the trading scene. One source indeed has been very vigilant in supplying information on who some of the more evil people are in the underground. My second reason, I just like anonymity. Nothing can be gained for someone like me to reveal myself.
"I can do far more from behind a veil than I could ever do under light," he said.
The hacker, who uses several aliases in chat groups, says he measures his success by his "contribution" to protecting those who cannot protect themselves.
In the case against Judge Kline, U.S. detectives credit him alone for breaking it open. "The diary he retrieved gave us the probability that we needed to get the search warrant," said California Det. Ronald Carr.
The search warrant unearthed more than 100 images of young children engaged in sex acts.
According to police affidavits, Judge Kline, up for re-election later this month and currently the front-runner, admitted that he authored the journal. The judge has not been charged with any crime for keeping the electronic diary, but has been charged with possession of more than 100 images of child pornography. Since that indictment, an alleged molestation victim has come forward and the judge now also faces sexual-assault charges dating back to 1976.
In the electronic journal, excerpted in police documents, the author writes exclusively about his sexual interest in young boys. The journal entries span May 2000 through March 2001 and detail the author's deviant sexual urges and the times and places where he meets young boys. These details and his written thoughts about cases before him made it easy for authorities to conclude the retrieved diary was genuine.
The judge, a Little League umpire, had contact with numerous boys at ball games, in a mall and at a private health club -- where he befriended vulnerable young boys with the hopes of exploiting them.
"You can't just charge in like you did with (a boy) too. How do I encourage him without pursuing him too hard? You have great entree in the separation of his parents," says an entry dated June 6, 2000.
The next day, the author writes: " I gave a lot of thought today about this business of approaching these kids too fast ... He doesn't strike me as a lonely boy like (boy) was. You have to make them come to you or it just doesn't work," says a diary entry dated June 9, 2000.
After reviewing the journal, Det. Tracy Jacobson concludes in an affidavit that the author is a pedophile. "He refers to the child as "gorgeous" and writes about the child's body in a sexually interested way. The author writes about how and when to approach the child, and plans his moves carefully. It is further my opinion these are the type of comments only a pedophile or a child molester would make," Det. Jacobson said.
In the journal, the author seems fixated with young boys and often writes about the problems of enticing them to be alone with him. He talks about buying them baseball tickets and giving them a tour around town in his Porsche Boxster. According to California Motor Vehicles records, a 2000 Boxster with the licence 4HTV361 is registered to Judge Kline.
Sometimes, he found it hard to control his urges. In one entry, the author writes about sitting next to a young boy at a pizzeria, and rubbing his back "with no resistance at all." Other times, the author wrote that when he was preparing to give a drive to a boy to a baseball game, he likened it to getting ready for a date.
In some entries, the author would keep track of a number of boys, writing down the times and places where he encountered them. At a private health club, the author wrote that he leered at young boys, describing their bodies in sexual ways and expressing disappointment when he was unable to see the boys' undress.
Because the author was noting the names of the boys and tracking their movement, OmniPotent feared he would molest one of the targeted boys. In turn, he forwarded the electronic journal to Predator-Hunter.com, an Internet organization created to stop child exploitation.
"We use creative and legal means, often through Internet technology, to bring pedophiles who prey on children to justice," said president Wendell Krueth.
It was Mr. Krueth who first verified the electronic journal was genuine by cross-checking details found in the entries. Then, Predator-Hunter.com forwarded the material to Julie Posey, founder of a Colorado-based Internet watchdog group, Pedowatch. It was Ms. Posey who forwarded the diary to justice officials in California. In a police affidavit, detectives say that Ms. Posey told them that the Canadian hacker said he was working as an informant for customs agents.
"OmniPotent was concerned because of the prominence of the person involved. We were very cautious before handing over the files," Mr. Krueth said.
On May 8, 2001, Irvine Police Det. Ron Carr was assigned to assist the California Department of Justice in a probe into alleged child pornography.
The detective then echoed Predator-Hunter. com's investigation, cross-checking all the details found in the diary, ranging from the judge's involvement in Little League to the names of the boys who held memberships at a private health club.
He concluded the journal was genuine, then set out to track the informant. He found that the U.S. Customs Service had issued a summons for computer records in an earlier attempt to identify the mysterious Canadian hacker. The June 13, 2001, summons was served during an investigation into the distribution of child porn.
Several records showed that OmniPotent had used bogus subscriber information so well that he was in fact undetectable. Meanwhile, a child advocate told the detective that OmniPotent had told her that he ran a Web site. The detective was then able to trace the domain to a name and address in Langley, B.C.
On Aug. 16, Det. Carr travelled to Langley, just outside Vancouver, to interview Citizen Tipster. In the interview, held at RCMP headquarters, the hacker told police that he had created a Trojan Horse program and successfully loaded it on some 3,000 computers worldwide. The program allows Citizen Tipster to retrieve e-mail, graphics, text and other files from targeted computers. This form of computer virus is usually attached to another file masquerading as a benign application or other file. If the unsuspecting user downloads the file with the attachment, the Trojan Horse is automatically attached to the targeted computer.
In the interview, Citizen Tipster agreed to hand over his hard drives to police in exchange for new ones. And while the hacker was the key to launching the case against the judge, he will not be called as a witness, and remains anonymous to this day.
It will be the judge's defence that because the electronic diary, the cornerstone of the case, was stolen, the federal grand jury charges should be dropped. The defence will also argue that the diary was stolen by a hacker who was working on behalf of law enforcement. It is also understood that the defence will argue that a hacker so skilled would have also been able to "doctor" the diary.
Police detectives working the case say the hacker was not working on behalf of them and that stolen or not, the judge is not charged with keeping an electronic sex predator diary so it doesn't matter.
Yesterday, Judge Kline remained secluded in his two-storey home, the last house on the north side of a cul-de-sac. He is wearing a security bracelet while under house arrest awaiting trial.
[Ottawa Citizen]
(source - http://www.dimmockreport.com/herohacker.htm )
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03-07-2002 05:57 PM
