Challenges to Prosecuting Cybercrimes
In todays fast pace world of technology many of us leave ourselves vulnerable to become victims of a cybercrime. With people using the internet to do everything from paying bills, personal banking, and on-line shopping their financial and personal information is available at the stroke of a key to a hacker. Often someone is unaware that they have been attacked and had their information stolen. The use of the internet has grown exorbitantly throughout the world. Nelson Online reported that as of December 31, 2014, there were 360,985,492 users of the internet throughout the world. (2015) With so many users in so many countries accessing the internet, prosecuting cybercrimes is nearly impossible.
Many people do not know where to turn when they fall victim to a cybercrime. When you get into a car accident you call 911 and the police respond. When you are sitting at home and your computer with all of your data and information has been compromised do you still call 911? Often when our credit card information has been breached the company will notify their customer of suspicious charges and stop the charges from going through. In those types of cases the police are not notified. There needs to be a better reporting system in place. If a bank or credit card company notices a breach to a client’s
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account they should contact the local authorities. Police departments may start looking into hiring or training officers specifically for cybercrimes. If agencies all around the world had specific officers to handle cybercrimes the cooperation and follow of information would be amiable. But with that comes funding for these officers, which is normally scarce to begin with. For one officer to attend one-week long training course on computer forensics it is not uncommon to cost over $1,500. (Britz, 2013) There would also be a need for update training almost constantly. Then the question becomes who does the turn the investigation over to once it’s completed for prosecution if the cyber attacker lives in another state or country. Living in Morrow County, I know our local sheriff’s department and prosecutor’s office are not equipped to handle and investigate cybercrimes. If there was a reported case of cyberstalking within a local area and the case went before a jury, most jury members would be so lost when a prosecutor, defense attorney, or cyber expert gave information. Many prosecutor’s offices lack the resources and knowledge to take on cybercrimes cases. Marjie Britz summed it up best, “A lack of knowledge coupled with general apathy toward cybercriminality has resulted in an atmosphere of indifference.” (2013) Law enforcement often looks at many of these crimes as nonthreatening and an interference with their normal assigned duties.
Arresting drug dealers, removing illegal weapons from the streets, arresting impaired drivers, and combating gang activity is why many went into law enforcement. Most did not go in to law enforcement so they can investigate a computer hacker. Even with new studies showing that two-thirds of all agencies had dealt with or responded to a computer-related incident (Britz, 2103), many agencies are still dragging their feet on training officers or having a fulltime officer to conduct cybercrimes
investigations. Even if having fulltime investigators and a voracious prosecutor many cybercrimes will never be brought to trial mainly because the suspects committing these crimes are overseas. Many countries have extradition policies with the United States government, but many do not. We have seen countries hide wanted American citizens in their country such as Edward Snowden in Russia. As of July 28, 2015, Wikipedia lists 110 countries around the world with an extradition treaty with the United States, but bring a cybercrime suspect to justice is not that simple. With many cybercrimes being based on a monetary gain, it is often not cost effective to go after these suspects for prosecution. It is easier for a credit card company to refund your account, issue you a new credit card, and offer you free credit monitoring.
In the United States, local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, including FBI, Department of Homeland Security, among others, have taken on roles to fight computer crimes and terrorism. The roles and responses of these law enforcement agencies concerning digital crime have created challenges that limit enforcement efforts against digital crime.
When it comes to cyber crimes we can’t put a face to the crimes being committed, it’s easier to find ways to prevent hackers from gaining access to important data than searching and putting them in handcuffs. Traditional police theories will not work for cyber crimes, so cyber police theories need to be developed.
Every year, cybercrime costs businesses $400 billion and by 2019, cybercrime will have cost the global economy 2.1 trillion dollars (Morgan 1). But, economic loss isn’t the only problem caused by weak cybersecurity; weak cybersecurity measures could allow hackers to collect data on citizens, cause widespread death, and destroy entire nations. Despite the massive threat the problem poses, no one has yet to institute an effective solution. Although government regulation and website blocking attempt to eliminate cybercrime and cyberwarfare, an ideal solution exists in government guidance and collaboration with the private sector.
Computer crimes have been occurring since the late 1960’s. Computers and technology has evolved very much so since the 1960’s and it is now nearly impossible to do business without them. With the invention of small thumb drives and cards that can store large amounts of data it can be very easy to steal valuable information from a computer without anyone knowing. Since much of this valuable information is made up of people’s financial and health information as well as trade secrets and company information this is an important issue to be addressed. Laws need to be continually updated or created in order to adapt to computer crimes and to punish those committing them.
Hence one of the most controversial of all is international law regarding cybercrime. The first convention on cybercrime was in 2001 in Budapest for European Council, therefore named Budapest Convention on Cyber Crime that became effective in 2004 where countries of Europe tried to “harmonize national laws, improve investigative techniques and increase cooperation among nations.” Now Budapest Convention contains 42 ratifications from countries of various continents. Such means has been effective within the European Council and the signed members in the sense of recognizing cybercrimes and the dangers it contain, however in global scale, there still needs to be more effort in unifying the international law against cybercrime. The victim countries cannot sufficiently retaliate against cybercrimes as global cooperation is meager in its effectiveness which leads to threat to glob...
Crime is everywhere in today’s society. One of the scariest things is that you can become a victim of many different types of crimes while using your computer. Just last year there was a reported loss of $525,441,110.00 (www.ic3.gov) due to internet related crimes. This is because people are able to access another person’s personal information through the internet. You may even be committing crimes without even being knowledgeable of it by downloading illegal content. With activities such as these occurring every hour of everyday; the internet needs to become more restricted to help protect the public and industries affected by these sorts of crimes. Another major problem is the impersonation of legitimate websites to scam unsuspecting people. If there is nothing in place to monitor and shutdown illegal websites that commit these crimes, they will only increase as times go on; becoming even harder to detect and could possibly do ...
Every day millions in some cases billions of dollars are made by businesses from income brought in by online sale of products and services. As businesses continually develop and expand their client base with online products and services so does the desire by criminals to exploit vulnerabilities in their e-commerce setup. The mass worldwide internet usage growth within the last 20 years has been “an approximate 16 million users in 1995 to an estimated 2,937 million in March of 2014” As the importance of e-commerce increases so does the need to protect the technological infrastructure that will carry out online transactions for each business regardless of its size. I will attempt to highlight and review the history of a few cyber crimes to show the progression of the crimes within the last 30-40 years. I also plan to review how the economy and consumers are impacted by cyber crimes. Finally I will make an effort to contribute with information gathering on how to lower the risk of a cyber attack from and individual user to a large scale business.
In today's society, many aspects of crime committed on a regular basis. Civilians take advantage of people all the time using online resources such as a fraudulent website requiring credit card information to get a free monthly trial. Other examples of cyber crimes are online chatting website, full of predators or websites needing a downloadable program that contains a hacking virus. Sadly, there are many cases of cyber crime all over the internet. The acts of cyber crimes are considered violent acts like any other. Every day citizens are constantly losing money and being victimized due to these fraudulent activities. Cyber crime, including fraud, identity theft, stalking, and hacking, is a growing problem which can be prevented by taking the proper precautions.
Wide spread globalization and the great technological advancements over the past decades have left society viable to cyber-attacks. Cybercrimes are crimes conducted through the use of computers and the internet. However to date one of the greatest debates in society is; if cybercrime differ from conventional or traditional crimes.
Cybercrime and social media are two major global problems that impact society. Today, are more accessible to computers and the Internet than in years prior. Nonetheless, perpetrators attack social media with illegal activity to facilitate their crime. There are different strategies or practices by various countries to combat cybercrime. However, identity theft, cyberbullying and phishing are three major type of cybercrimes which are impacting social networking websites.
The 90's internet boom gave rise to new ways of writing in through access to cyberspace. What used to be printed or handwritten on physical surfaces such as paper, cardboard, or bulletin boards has changed to 0's and 1's, bits and bytes of digitized information that can be displayed thru the projections of computer screens. Moreover, the internet has made the process of publishing one's works, writing letters, or chatting with one another much easier and convenient for everyone around the globe. The internet became a universal tool, giving much freedom and flexibility to the users; it gave them opportunity to deliver their thoughts with little or no restrictions. Since it's impossible to regulate all cyber-activities, internet users are often unrestricted by the normal laws or authorities that would set boundaries around the various online transactions. More importantly, the fact that a net user can take on different identities in cyberspace brings about several ethical and social issues. These anonymous and unrestrictive characteristics of cyberspace often permite abusive users to easily involve themselves in serious cybercrimes such as cyberstalking, cyber-rape, and cyber-harassment through chatting services, emails, cyber communities, and other online communication.
Cyber crime has become an important concern for not only the business firms, government, law enforcement agencies but also for the common people because these kinds of issues are related to the consumer’s day-to-day activity (Polivanyuk, 2005). Due to these types of crimes, consumer’s money, children, business organization’s integrity, consumer and company’s privacy, etc. are in danger.
In most instances, victims are not aware or do not know the perpetrator of the crimes. In some instances, this may include the perpetration of crime and actually committing the crime. With the advancement in technology, there seems to be a new way to commit cyber crime each day and a great number of unsuspecting individuals eventually becomes victims. There are various types of cybercrimes that can be committed with the common ones being Computer Viruses and identity theft which can have damaging effects on individuals and businesses (Search security, 2008). Some of these crimes such as the computer viruses have crushed main servers of companies and thus crippling these kinds of companies since some of them lose important data and information which they have stored electronically. Everyone who makes use of the computer seems to be at risk of becoming a victim to cyber crime if not on the lookout. As a matter of fact most perpetrators of such crimes are not caught since technology seems to be too advanced and the various crimes seems to be taking place rapidly making it almost impossible to catch the perpetrators of the crime. The home users are the most likely group to be targeted since they are less likely to have any security measures in place. A major way to deal with cyber crime at an individual level is to install antivirus software’s, firewalls and make use of intrusion detection system (Web Root, 2015).
Once the police educate themselves, they can work to educate local businesses and people to combat cybercrime as well. Individuals and law enforcement agencies must take steps in raising awareness and educating themselves in order to take action against cybercrime. Cybercrime is a global issue that threatens the cyber security of citizens, businesses, governments, and the entire international community. The globalization of the world has increased cybercrime due to the new way that technology has been incorporated into so many aspects of daily life, and the risk that the increased use presents to the users. Law enforcement also lacks the means to combat cybercrime in an effective way, which only further increases the threat of this security threat.
As the internet has evolved it is now a part of many people’s daily lives and with that, many could not function or conduct their daily business or lives without it. It is impressive that we can now communicate and even see someone all the way across the country with just a few clicks of a mouse. But as technology changes and progresses seemingly for the good, many will always find ways to exploit technology and use it with the intent of committing crime, turning a positive tool into a negative one. As such the negative side of the World Wide Web, cybercrime has evolved as just one of the major disadvantages of the internet. Cybercrime itself is a broad term and can and does include any crime that is committed via the internet or computer network including seemingly minor acts as downloading music, to denial of service attacks, to even acts of cyber-terrorism. With the newly formed threat of cybercrime has also come new ways for law enforcement to attack and prevent it as well but with limited resources not much can be changed but to continue to prevent new methods from approaching the cybercrime world. This is not only just in our own neighborhoods but is at an international scale. This paper generates the insight about the overall rise of cybercrime among our societies. The main focus of this paper is to describe the types of computer crimes and its effects on individuals and businesses.