The director of Cyberangels collaborates with cops to fight a shadowy Internet menace.

Attorney Parry Aftab became interested in the Internet as a resource tool in 1990 after opening a private law practice in northern New Jersey. She had been working at a large Wall Street firm, where she specialized in international corporate takeovers, and found that corporate law had not prepared her for the demands of her new clients. So Aftab went online to seek out colleagues who could answer her questions about real estate closings and other small-town legal needs. n 1994, she read about the Epson e-mail privacy lawsuit -- one of the first newsworthy cyberlaw cases -- concerning an employee who was fired for refusing to agree to the monitoring of her e-mail by supervisors. Aftab wrote a few commentaries about the case, publishing them herself online. Aftab, a graduate of New York University School of Law, quickly forged a new career as an Internet expert. By June 1998, she was considered such an expert about online legal issues that she was asked to be a keynote speaker at a White House summit on online content in Los Angeles. Following her appearance at that conference, she was approached by Curtis Sliwa, head of the Guardian Angels, a citizens street patrol organization that originated in New York. He asked Aftab to get involved with Cyberangels, a group the Guardians started to "patrol" the Web. Despite a strong belief that the Internet is "breeding sexual molesters," Aftab isn't able to produce any statistics to support the claim that there is a cybercrime epidemic in which children are being hunted by adult molesters. Just last week, however, Aftab signed on with a new law firm -- in the private sector. Cyberangels is a cyber-911 for the Internet helping law enforcement with cybercrime investigations.