DarkMarket_ Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You - Misha Glenny [84]
When he entered the office area on the fourth floor of 2000 Technology Drive, the Turkish policeman was struck by the appearance of the place, which looked more like an insurance company than the frenetic high-tech environment familiar from TV programmes like CSI New York. One room that was tucked away was littered with the tools of computer forensics, machines that offer up the innermost secrets of any digital device. But this tech examination room was barely visible and was sealed to prevent the intrusion of any trojan or other malware from contaminating objects under investigation (as with their organic counterparts, computer viruses are sometimes airborne). That aside, the offices were quiet, orderly and unremarkable.
On that first morning, Keith showed Bilal the whiteboard in his office with the name ‘Cha0’ atop the pyramid of criminals connected to DarkMarket. Inside, the Turkish policeman felt a twinge of shame. With the support of colleagues in Britain and Germany, the Feds had taken down two of DarkMarket’s most energetic administrators, JiLsi and Matrix, six months earlier. Arrests had already been made in Britain, Germany, Canada and France, and further arrests in the United States were being prepared. So the officer from Ankara felt it a stain on his national pride as well as on his personal reputation that his fellow Turk was now among the most-wanted cyber criminals in the world.
Turkish police, and particularly its organised-crime department, had come a long way in the previous decade, and Bilal was determined to prove that even with many fewer resources available to him than to his counterparts in Western Europe and America, the young Cyber Crime Unit based in the Turkish capital, Ankara, was capable of playing in the big league.
Police officers from around the world were always dropping in and out of the FBI offices. They came to learn from their American counterparts, but also to build networks of mutual assistance. Cooperation between police forces from different countries usually groaned under the weight of intolerable bureaucratic procedures, and personal friendship among cops was the quickest way to bypass that.
Bilal had come on a three-month attachment. As a Turk, he was a novel, if potentially very useful contact for the Feds. In 2003 he had been one of the two co-founders of the tiny Cyber Crime Unit in Turkey’s Anti-Smuggling and Organised Crime Division. And compared to the perpetrators, the inspector had no resources.
For his part, Bilal Sen wanted to learn from the FBI. Not that he was inexperienced. He had joined the police as a fifteen-year-old in 1989, signing up for the gruelling eight-year officer training course – the longest in the world. This was odd, as with his small stature and thoughtful manner, Inspector Sen resembled a Turkish Hercule Poirot more than the traditional image of a tough Balkan cop moulded by rural bandits, urban narco syndicates and a brutalised criminal-justice system.
Police college had proved a taxing regime. However, what pained Bilal most were not the spartan quarters and unforgiving assault courses, but the complete absence of computers. From a young age he had taken any opportunity to sneak into the local games arcade in his home town of Eskisehir that sits midway between Istanbul and Ankara in northern Anatolia. He was only about six years old when he came across the game River Raid. Every minute of his spare time was spent flying a two-dimensional fighter plane up a river, firing on tiny helicopters, ships, tanks and dirigibles while trying to refuel at the same time. Gripped by that mysterious fusion of repetition and occasional reward that keeps so many children, adolescents