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one
set of responses to criminal activities such as money laundering,
IPR violations, and drug trafficking, and devising other tactics
to combat terrorism. Today, in a post 9/11 environment, agencies
such as Customs and Interpol understand that the inter-national
underworld is a breeding ground for terrorism, providing groups
like al Quaeda, Hammas, Hazbollah, and the Irish Republic Army
(IRA) with funds generated by illegal scams and with opportunities
to launder millions in terrorist dollars. Behind the army of
hijackers, suicide bombers, and terrorist gun ment stands an
even greater number of “company men”—criminal
entrepreneurs and financiers in suits who understand the best
way to bankroll Armageddon is through the capitalist system.
They
run what looks like legitimate businesses, travel to “busi-ness
meetings” in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and New York, and pay
fictional “employees” with money that feeds and
houses terrorist cells. They run computer manufacturing plants
and noodle shops, sell “designer clothes” and “bargain
basement” CDs. They invest, pay taxes, give to charity,
and fly like trapeze artists between one international venture
and another. The end game, however, is not to buy a bigger house
or send the kids to an Ivy League school—it’s to
blow up a building, to hijack a jet, to release a plague, and
to kill thousands of innocent civilians. Interpol and Customs
join forces against IPR violations. Financing terrorism is something
that Customs and Interpol are taking seriously.
Soon
after the attacks on New York and Washington, Interpol hosted
the 1st Conference on IPR in Lyon, France. Enforcement and security
experts outlined the relationships between global commerce and
global crime—instances in which profits from counterfeit
merchandise funded terrorist activities—and partici-pants
agreed that Interpol needed to create a meeting of the multi-agency
IP Advisory Group on July 23. The group met again on October
3, and law enforcement officials from U. S Customs, Finnish
Customs, Ireland, Northern Ireland, and the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police joined forces with the corporate community to hammer
out concrete responses on an international scale. The World
Intellectual Property Organization, Pharmaceutical Security
Institute, International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, Procter
and Gamble, World Customs Organization, Pharmaceutical Security
Institute, International Federation of Phonographic Industry,
Global Anti-Counterfeiting Group, European Union, and REACT
Services (UK) all had representatives at the table.
“Our
objective,” says Erik Madsen, a crime intelligence officer
with Interpol, “was to raise awareness, to create a strategic
plan to fight this kind of crime, and to take action.”
In the end, all agreed the evidence was indisputable: lucrative
trafficking in counterfeit and pirated products—music,
movies, seed patents, software, tee shirts, Nikes, knock-off
CDs, and fake drugs—account for much of the money the
international terrorist
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network
depends on to feet its operations. New York’s Joint Terrorism
Taskforce reported a counterfeit T-shirt ring had used sales
profits to subsidize the bombing of the World Trade Center in
1993. In 1999, an international Chamber of Commerce official
reported the IRA was financing its operations by selling videos.
In 2000, a naturalized Paraguayan citizen born in Lebanon was
charged with selling millions in counterfeit software out of
a headquarters operation in the piracy haven of Ciudad del Este.
Allegedly, the proceeds went to the militant Islamic group,
Hezbollah. Last year, Microsoft officials based in London charged
counterfeiters were using the Internet to sell pirated software,
an effort they described as one designed to support drug running
and terrorism.
Losses
from counterfeiting and piracy outstrip 9/11 impact on airlines.
For years, legitimate manufacturers have cited huge financial
losses, the run-off from IPR violations, as a primary reason
to pass tough IPR legislation and enforce anti-counter-feiting
laws. What policymakers sometimes failed to note was the sheer
enormity of those losses. After 9/11, leaders in both the public
and private sectors described the loss to the U. S. airline
industry as “catastrophic.” While the airline industry
accounts for about 10% of the Nation’s gross domestic
product, copyright industries generate more foreign sales and
exports than the aircraft and aircraft parts industries combined.
The new link between commercial-scale piracy and counterfeiting
has redirected public attention since 2002, and law enforcement
agencies such as Customs and Interpol are going after the organized
crime syndicates in charge of what is too often viewed as a
“victimless crime.” September 11 changed the way
Americans look at the world. It also changed the way American
law en-forcement looks at intellectual property crimes.
(By Tim Trainer from the November 2002 Customs Service newsletter)
METRO
NORTH TRAIN SAFETY ROLLS ALONG
Transit officials say an advertising campaign encouraging commuters
on Metro North Railroad and elsewhere to report suspicious packages
or people has increased awareness about terrorism threats. Since
launching its “If You See Something, Say Something”
campaign last month, the New York Metropolitan Transportation
Authority has reported a hike in the number of calls about suspicious
behavior. The ads coincided with the U. S. led invasion of Iraq
and the raising of the Nation’s terror alert level to
orange, the second highest in the color-coded 5-point scale.
Although he had no numbers showing an increase in reports, MTA
spokesman Tom Kelly said the campaign is working. “We
know it’s a success simply because the interactions between
customers and MTA Police, National Guardsmen, or state troopers
happens much more frequently than it ever did before,”
Kelly said. “This has given people a reason to be more
communicative because this is something that we as a railroad
and overall transit system are encouraging them to do.”
Source: www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/local/scn-sa-mta2aapr08.0.7875802.story?coll=stam-news-local-headlines.
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