As the blindfold was removed, my eyes blurred, adjusting to the strip lighting. The room was small and didn't really ooze crime fighting. This was the kind of office you would expect to see in a US sitcom: neat desks, pictures of New York's Flat Iron building and rows of labelled lever arch files. This was no hardcore unit investigating drug trafficking or gun running. It was too corporate. This was an office full of software piracy investigators.
I'd arrived at the office under a veil of secrecy, blindfolded and bound by countless terms and conditions. Death threats to staff have meant that the location of the office and the identity of investigators are strictly confidential. I had half expected to be in more bohemian surroundings, with technical whiz kids wearing ponytails, jeans and "I Love XP" T-shirts. Far from it. There were suits and handshakes, no high fives and Kiss FM. Cyber policing is a sombre business.
The office has been set up by Microsoft and the Business Software Alliance (BSA), an anti-piracy body, and contains three investigators whose sole remit is to bring down websites that contravene software piracy laws.
Microsoft has lost billions of dollars to software pirates over the years - £364m last year alone. It's no great secret that there is money in software piracy. The rewards are so great that the market for illegal software has attracted a mix of unscrupulous individuals and organised crime groups across the globe, at least according to Microsoft, and the software giant blames the growth of the internet for fuelling this attraction.
Microsoft claims there are more than 2m websites dedicated to software piracy offering a mix of pirated boxed software, illegal downloads and code cracking programs designed to bypass security features such as the recent Product Activation Key in Windows XP.
In fact the launch of Windows XP last month triggered a new wave of interest in code cracking tools as Microsoft proudly trumpeted the arrival of its product activation key. For the team of investigators, it has been a busy period. During major product launches it embarks on special projects to search and destroy piracy websites.
"On one day we took down 800 sites," said the spokeswoman with the US accent and probable owner of the New York pictures.
This is a phenomenal figure given that the unit's monthly average for "takedowns" is anything between 200 and 300 sites.
One of the investigators was following up on some leads and browsing heavily. "Every lead is followed up," he said. "The unit gets between 600 and 1,000 leads a month from a mix of the BSA, law enforcement agencies and the general public.
"We check out every site and if there is an infringement we have to try and bring it down," he added.
Bringing down sites is the ultimate goal of the unit, although it plays a major part in gathering evidence should an offender consistently resurface and then be liable for prosecution.
"Firstly we capture the entire site using a tool called Grab-a-Site," explained the investigator. "This captures everything - the code, email addresses, links - and gives us a date and time of capture so we can use it to prove the site existed."
He also checks that the links and downloads work, constantly taking screenshots to pile on the evidence. For boxed software, the lead is passed to a network of test purchasers, who are "made up of private investigators and ex-policemen," said the spokeswoman, who will then follow up and buy software through bogus companies.
It suddenly became very clear that while this office was small, it was part of a much larger process. This becomes even more apparent when you hear that the unit has received threats from disgruntled pirates. Microsoft claims that organised crime is at large in the software piracy world so it's no surprise that the threats are taken very seriously.
The investigator moves on. With the evidence bagged he pulls up a copy of Sam Spade, a readily available application for tracing IP addresses across the internet.
"Anyone using the internet can be traced through their IP address," he said with a wry smile. Within minutes he had traced the ISP for the Back Ups site. "We'll send them a takedown notice requesting them to remove the site and replace it with a BSA holding page, saying the site had contravened the copyright law."
Pulling sites down more quickly than the pirates can put them up is the challenge. One persistent offender that refused to comply was sent a "We Know Where You Live" type email message after he had been located through another readily available application called NeoTrace. After receiving an email with a map and aerial photo of his street, he was singing like a baby.
If only it was always that easy. As I was ushered away the investigator was already working on his next batch of leads. The growth of the internet and increasing sophistication of pirates suggests that the unit will soon be looking for bigger premises because this is undoubtedly a crime show that will keep on running.
