Bagged items of evidence await examination

In the four years since the unit was established, crime using e-mail, mobile phones and digital cameras has been on the increase.

In 1999, the unit dealt with 11 reported cases of internet/e-mail crime.

But this figure more than doubled the following year and with 54 cases to date this year, it is on course to double again.

Searches

Acting detective inspector Dougie Powell, who heads the unit, told BBC News Online that the use of the internet, mobile phones, e-mails and the sending of indecent images, was one of the biggest areas of criminal activity in Northern Ireland."

He said such crime would not decrease but would become more of an issue as technology improved and became cheaper and more available.

The crime unit works in conjunction with other police departments, analysing media and producing evidence for use in prosecutions.

A specialised team of detectives work in the computer crime unit

It was set up because RUC officers were finding so much computer-related evidence during searches.

"Last year we did 216 jobs in total, all parts of various investigations," Mr Powell said.

"We have produced evidence for these investigations which will be used when matters come to court - that's virtually every week."

Text messaging

Computer crime ranges from fraud to pornography, to scams, counterfeiting, hacking and copyright offences.

Offences using text messages on mobile phones have also been on the increase. These can include sending threatening or distasteful messages from the web to a phone.

Crime unit officers attend scenes where computers have been encountered and seize them for evidence. They then forensically copy the contents of any floppy discs, cds or hard drives.

To date this year, the unit has dealt with 42 cases of child pornography.

We are not immune from whatever is happening in the rest of the world

Dougie Powell

Under the Children and Young Person's Act, a child is considered to be 16 years or under.

"We have to judge in our own minds whether or not it is in fact a child under 16, and this can be quite difficult," he said.

"It really is up to the court to decide if that is a child."

He said police could become aware of alleged child pornography offences through a concerned relative or work colleague, or through information gleaned by other police forces.

The unit employs powerful resourses and advanced techniques to check if suspects have been viewing or downloading child pornography or committing other offences.

Downloading

"We can go back to files on the storage media which people have deleted. We can possibly get images back and look to see what they have been doing in the past."

Child pornography offences include downloading it, possessing it and making it.

Mr Powell said they could tell if someone was systematically searching for indecent images of children.

"Some of the images we see are quite distressing," he said.

The computer crime unit works with other departments in the RUC

"You can see a pattern in what the person has been searching for.

"If there's no evidence of it and there's maybe one or two pictures found, then the assumption can be that maybe they have come across them by mistake.

"We can tell from the time of download and the time the images at a later stage have been accessed. We can look at those issues to see if they have been accessing them on a regular basis, or if they were just downloaded and deleted."

He said there was an increase in the number of digital cameras, and related "smart media" cards being handed in for analysis.

"People involved in some child pornography have certainly been using this type of technology to do this at home," he said.

Chatroom dangers

Mr Powell said there had been four or five instances this year where children had used internet chatrooms, and had been talking to adults who were pretending to be much younger.

"In one particular case, a child, as a result of conversations which started on the internet, moved on to having mobile phone conversations."

He said it could be very dangerous for a child to use chatrooms and recommended parents read guidelines from the Internet Watch Foundation.

The television soap, Coronation Street, has featured a storyline in which a teenage girl was lured to meet a man she met on a chatroom.

"That episode really brought to light how easy it is to go to someone's house, and meet up with someone as a result of an internet chatroom," he said.

Murders

The six-member staff in the computer crime unit are all experienced detectives with specialised computer expertise.

They have dealt with other types of offences such as business fraud, terrorism, drugs and murders, where computers have been used.

"The technology has opened up another area of communications," said Mr Powell.

"The internet is all pervasive.

"We're not immune from whatever is happening in the rest of the world."