MONTREAL - Con artists, terrorists, pedophiles as well as 14-year-old hackers recruited by eastern European mobsters fill Frederick Gaudreau's day.
Where some would flinch at such a daily dose of dealing with the worst the Internet has to offer, Gaudreau and his Quebec provincial police team approach their jobs with gusto.
Gaudreau, 32, is head of the provincial force's cybersurveillance and monitoring unit.
The force has a group of about 20 cops who tackle cybercrimes, assist other units in complex investigations and bring back the forensic computer evidence, such as hard drive contents, needed to put online criminals behind bars.
"It's a huge place," Gaudreau says of tackling crime on the Internet. But not impossible.
"The fact is, when someone is posting information on the Internet, he has to know the information will always be there," says Gaudreau, who has been fascinated with computers since he was a kid. "It will always be possible to trace where the information has been posted."
The unit got a higher profile than usual in the last few months in the wake of gunman Kimveer Gill's rampage at Montreal's Dawson College.
Gill, who posted a hate-filled blog on the Internet with chilling messages and disturbing photos of him posing with guns, killed one student and injured 20 other people before killing himself in the attack at the college last September.
Gaudreau's team was involved in the Dawson investigation and in the following days helped round up several other people who were suspected of making death threats against people or institutions on the Internet.
"We see a lot of those things on the Internet," he said in a recent interview at his office at the force's east-end headquarters.
"But there are so many web pages and so many blogs - I think it's 10 blogs a minute that are created in the world. How can you monitor all the blogs? It's impossible technically."
That's where the public comes in.
"It's really important that when someone goes on the Internet and sees something related to hate crimes or terrorism, for example, he has to call the police," he said. "Even it's anonymous, we'll accept it and try to investigate it."
Sexual predators, for instance, can be reported at www.cybertip.ca as well.
While Quebec provincial police have been investigating cybercrime since 1996, its activities were ramped up after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. The cybersurveillance unit is even moving out of its cramped office to bigger quarters.
But Gaudreau isn't a fearmonger about the Internet.
"It's basically a safe playground. It was made for universities to exchange information and it's a great tool.
"But if you go on the Internet, like you go on the street, without warning signs - for example if you go on Ste-Catherine Street and don't mind the lights or the stop signs - you will have trouble."
Some of that potential trouble was highlighted in a recent report released by technology security company McAfee Inc.
Its 2006 Virtual Criminology Report says so-called phishing e-mails - used to trick unsuspecting people into divulging personal data - are on the rise. Hackers are trolling social networking and community sites not only for fraud but to gather information for identity theft.
Data is also seeping out without need for sophisticated attacks through the proliferation of passwords that can be easily guessed and through unsecured removable devices such as USB sticks.
Internet criminals are also making wider use of so-called botnets - networks of illegally linked computer networks that can be remotely controlled - to spread pornography, steal identities and conduct illegal spamming.
The report predicts new targets will be the new smartphones and multifunctional mobile devices and the increasing use of Bluetooth and voice-over-Internet protocol communications will lead to a new level of phone hacking.
"We as a company have started investing heavily for the past few years on providing adequate counter-measures or protection on smartphones, PDAs and the like as you see them become more and more your common day PC," said Dean Carey, a security and senior systems engineer for McAfee in Toronto.
"There's the next threat vector for sure."
Both Gaudreau and Carey agree the hackers being recruited by organized crime are getting younger and younger. The McAfee report put some as young as 14 and said recruiters are often from eastern Europe.
They're usually approached through forums when they're seen posting a lot of replies on security and technical questions. Then comes the offer of a challenge and a lucrative reward.
"If you say to them 'I'll give you $1,000 if you can find one security hole in Vista, (the new Windows operating system), guess what?' " Carey said. "Just like a video game, they will stay up day and night to provide that because there is now a reward."
And status. But it's not the braggers who worry Carey.
"The ones that don't brag are the ones that scare myself and other security professionals because those are the ones that are not letting you know what's happening. They're trying to remain anonymous."
Carey had praise for the police patrolling the information highway but said, "They pretty much have a thankless job."
The software and computer companies work closely with police to keep them on the cutting edge.
Most cities have cybercrime units in Canada and Gaudreau's unit works alongside the RCMP and Interpol among others in investigations that can go cross-country or to other parts of the world.
The youthful investigator said the unit handles about 400 cases per year of all types. He acknowledged child exploitation is the most difficult to investigate.
"Because I have two kids, maybe, but it touched me really right in the heart because I don't know how they can do this," Gaudreau said. "There are a lot of pedophiles around the Internet and we are trying to stop them from abusing children.
"This is the most horrific thing we can see on the Internet."
