It's billed by the FBI as "the lifeline of law
enforcement" - a federal database used to catch criminals, recover stolen
property and even identify terrorism suspects.
But authorities say Edwin Vargas logged onto the restricted
system and ran names for reasons that had nothing to do with his duties as a
New York Police Department detective. Instead, he was accused in May of looking
up personal information on two fellow officers without their knowledge.
The allegation against Vargas is one of a batch of corruption
cases in recent years against NYPD officers accused of abusing the FBI-operated
National Crime Information Center database to cyber snoop on co-workers, tip
off drug dealers, stage robberies and - most notoriously - scheme to abduct and
eat women.
The NCIC database serves 90,000 agencies and gets 9 million
entries a day by users seeking information on stolen guns and cars, fugitives,
sex offenders, orders of protection and other subjects, according to an FBI
website. The NYPD system - called the "Finest," as in "New
York's Finest" - also allows access to state criminal and Department of
Motor Vehicles records.
How often the database is used for unauthorized purposes is
unclear. The NYPD insists that officers are under strict orders to use it only during
car stops, ongoing investigations or other police work. The department assigns
them login names and passwords that allow supervisors to track their usage on
desktop computers in station houses or on laptops in patrol cars.
NYPD recruits are warned that "if you misuse or you
access information in an inappropriate manner ... you are in serious trouble -
such as being prosecuted, being fired and also big fines," a police
academy instructor testified at the trial of Gilbert Valle, who was convicted
in March in a bizarre plot to kidnap, cook and cannibalize women.
In addition, an FBI compliance unit conducts spot audits to
examine users' "policies, procedures, and security requirements," the
FBI said in a statement. The FBI also requires each state to have its own audit
programs and claims that "malicious misuse is not commonly
discovered."
But both the instructor testifying at the Valle trial and an
Internal Affairs Bureau investigator who took the witness stand in an earlier
case have conceded that officers can easily circumvent safeguards.
The investigator testified as a government witness at the
2010 trial of an NYPD officer accused of using the database to conduct
surveillance of a perfume warehouse in New Jersey before an armed robbery
there. He told jurors that officers often do searches while logged in under
another officer's name - either out of neglect or, in this case, intent.
"Unfortunately ... it's not unusual that it
happens," the investigator said.
The instructor, when asked about an officer's ability to
effectively log in anonymously, responded, "I know it occurs. I wouldn't
say it's common, but I know it does occur."
At a trial where Valle was convicted in March, prosecutors
alleged that the officer used the database - sometimes accessing it while
riding in a patrol car with his supervising sergeant - to help compile dossiers
on women that listed their birthdates, addresses, heights and weights. None of
the women were harmed, but prosecutors alleged he went as far as to show up on
one woman's block after striking an agreement to kidnap her for US$5000 for a
New Jersey man who wanted to rape and kill her.
In another database abuse case last year, federal
authorities charged NYPD patrolman Jose Tejada with being a member of a crew
that posed as police officers while staging more than 100 robberies of drug
traffickers that netted more than 250 kilograms of cocaine and US$1 million in
cash.
Tejada "ran the names of co-conspirators through law
enforcement databases to determine whether there were active warrants in the
names of the co conspirators," prosecutors said in court papers. "In
connection with these searches, Tejada advised co conspirators whether they
could re-enter the United States without being arrested by law enforcement
authorities."
The cases aren't confined to New York. In the last six
years, authorities have accused a Memphis police officer of using the NCIC
database to leak information to a confidential informant about a watch dealer
who the informant believed had stolen a Rolex; a reserve patrolman in
Clarkston, Georgia, of running names and license plates for marijuana dealers;
a Montgomery County, Md., officer of running checks on cars belonging to a
woman who later reported that the vehicles had been vandalized; and a Hartford,
Connecticut, police sergeant of supplying database records to a woman who used
them to harass her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend.
In the case of Vargas, the NYPD detective, prosecutors
allege he hacked into the email accounts and passwords of 21 fellow officers
and nine others. At least two times, he used the NIRC database without
authorization to look up information on two officers whose private email
accounts he'd secretly obtained, authorities said.
Prosecutors didn't give a motive, but police officials
suggested he was looking to see who his ex-girlfriend, also a police officer,
was chatting with. His lawyer said he was "shocked" by the allegations.
If convicted, Vargas would be fired from the force and face
a year behind bars.
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