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The following is an article which appears in the April 7 issue of Infoworld: -:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:- POLICE SET UP BULLETIN BOARD STINGS By Jim Forbes Infoworld Staff AUSTIN, TX - Law enforcement officials here have joined a growing number of police agencies nationwide running "sting" operations to catch persons using bulletin boards for illegal purposes. Based on information posted on a bulletin board it operated, the Austin Police Department said it has been able to turn off two pirate boards here and expects shortly to make a number of arrests for misdemeanor violations of Texas' newly enacted computer crime law. For more than two years, the department secretly ran a board called the Underground Tunnel, which was set up to appear as a bulletin board run by a system operator called Pluto. But late last month - to the surprise of the board's more than 1,000 users - Pluto was revealed as Sgt. Robert Ansley, a seven-year veteran of the police department. "Most of the users were people interested primarily in several on-line fantasy games or in electronic messaging," Ansley said. "To get to the levels where people posted information on how to crash corporate systems, the user had to ask for increased access. We were very careful not to solicit or entrap anyone into leaving illegal information." The Austin police department disclosure caught most of the board's users by surprise. "I liked the board's electronic messaging capabilities," said user Michael Whalen, the managing editor of the Daily Texan, the student newspaper of the University of Texas here. "I was really surprised at how the officer was able to pull this off." What the police found, according to Ansley, included access codes belonging to the world's largest credit reporting organization, TRW Information Services Systems Division of Orange, California. "Most offenders seem to be real big on TRW," said Ansley. Sting and intelligence gathering bulletin board operations are on the rise throughout the country, according to law enforcement officials. Several police departments nationwide have already used bulletin boards to track down and arrest microcomputer users who post illegally obtained calling card codes, mainframe access procedures and passwords, or other confidential information. According to one high-lvel West Coast law enforcement officer who declined to be identified, federal officials are now joining local authorities in running bulletin boards in several key metropolitan areas. "You better believe law enforcement agencies are interested and, in some cases <This is all I found. Refer to Infoworld for the complete text>