Champlain's budding cybercrime fighters.

BURLINGTON, VT., MAY NOT BE A LIKELY PLACE TO STUDY THE criminal mind. After all, how many bad guys can you come across in a college town? Well, a professor at Champlain College (Vt.) has a surprising answer to that question. Burlington, apparently, is a good place to study crime--especially the emerging field of cybercrime.

Since 2003, Gary Kessler, professor and director of the college's Center for Digital Investigation, has led about 160 students who are majoring in this field of study, which is part of the college's bachelor of science program. Everything is fair game: identity theft; those scare spam messages from an alleged Nigerian bank that beg the recipient to help retrieve funds; hackers; careless criminals that leave digital trails on cellphones and PDAs.

Now Champlain's cybercrime academics are teaming up with local law enforcement. Thanks to a $650,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance, two faculty members will conduct digital investigations and teach local cops and detectives how to better fight cybercrime. Kessler, too, provides pro bono services to the police. "What the cops bring us is real experience in how this stuff really works," Kessler says.

Cybercrime is a growing field, one that's bound to become more important with the proliferation of devices criminals use to contact each other or record information that is later used as evidence. Kessler asserts that some type of digital evidence is now part of almost every crime committed. "Computers are now as much a part of modern law enforcement as the baton, sidearm, radio, and handcuffs," he says.--J.M.A.