Computer crime refers to offences that involve a network or a computer. They can be divided into 2 categories. The first category is crimes that directly target computers. The second category is crimes where computers or networks are used to facilitate the crime. Crimes in the first category include malware, virus attacks and denial of service among others while crimes in the second category include offenses such as identity theft and fraud, cyber stalking, phishing scams, information warfare among others. The top five computer crimes in the US have been identified as malware, identity theft, cyber stalking, child pornography and spam (Pot, 2010). Here, we delve into the issue of identity theft, how people are victimized through it, how susceptible society is to it and how law enforcement is tackling it.
Identity theft refers to obtaining financial or personal information of a business or person with the aim of assuming their identity to make purchases or transactions (Richardson, 2013). It happens in different ways using computers or networks. The United States Department of Justice rated it as the fastest growing crime in the US in 2001 and it remains as one of the fastest growing crimes since. The FBI defines identity theft as the criminal act of assuming another person’s identity for some gain, generally monetary (Locke, 2005).
The concept of identity theft is simple, once a person gains access of another person’s personal information; they can easily use this information for their benefit. For example, by gaining a victim’s bank account and password details, an offender can use these to gain access to the victim’s account and siphon them of their money or access credit or loans by posing as the victim. On the same grain, a person may steal another person’s social security number and pose as him or her thereby using it to his/her (offender) benefit. Identity thieves can make a lot of money out of this type of crime from their victims. According to the Federal Trade Commission, on a financial basis, the average victimization is $4800, which on average, will cost the victim $500 and around 30 hours to correct (Locke, 2005).
According to the Department of Justice, identity theft entails theft of identification information such as credit card numbers, names and social security numbers. Opportunities for theft occur when performing common daily chores like trading stocks online, paying for gas and other utilities, receiving emails and many other such instances. In this sense, anyone, irrespective of who they are in society, is susceptible to this form of crime. Theft can be accomplished in many different ways. The techniques range from bribing of employees to divulge customer’s personal information to organized databases and backstreet thefts. It may also be a result of intentional theft of digital identification information or sharing of personal information carelessly. Identity theft can be committed with ease and anonymity and the result on the victim can be devastating.
On a legal perspective, identity theft has been illusive to prosecution owing to a number of factors. Prosecution in most cases is rendered ineffective by the many hours taken before the crime has been identified and the anonymity of computer technology. Lack of internationally standardized definitions of computer crime, ranging from the name to definition of the crime, is another reason why computer crime is hard to prosecute. The rapid advancement in technology also impact on the difficulty of prosecution. This owes to the fact that, the laws required to prosecute the crime have not been able to effectively catch up with the pace of these advancements. These issues have made it difficult to quantify identity theft, statistically analyze it and allocate resources to it among law enforcement agencies.
Ed Dadisho, a sergeant in the Los Angeles Police Department in the state of California points out that from a survey in Michigan, most law enforcement officers are of the idea that new policies would help curb identity theft. The survey was conducted by the Public Interest Research Group in Michigan, PIRGM. A similar study in California conducted by CALPIRG Education Fund unearthed similar findings. Among other issues recommended by these studies include stricter guidelines by financial institutions aimed at preventing the vice, standardization and clarification of jurisdictional issues and improvement of cooperation between police investigation and financial institutions. Establishing of an interagency database that would facilitate cooperation within multiple jurisdictions was also floated as an idea to control identity theft (Dadisho, 2013).
In Colorado, law enforcement plays the role of prevention of identity theft through education and outreach efforts and assists identity theft victims by taking police reports in a timely fashion and investigation of these crimes. Colorado law enables a victim to put a stop to filing of negative credit information resulting from identity theft. This can be done by filing a police report with the credit reporting bureaus. Here, the policy is not to refuse a victim a police report even when they do not have the ability to investigate the crime (Colorado Department of Law, 2009).
Of all other computer crimes, the threat and eminent losses accruing from identity theft are undisputable. The Federal Trade Commission has continued to issue worrying statistics on the colossal losses resulting from the vice over the years. The Department of Justice has also labeled identity theft among the fastest growing crimes in the US. Different jurisdictions have gone ahead to create laws and procedures to curb the vice. It is worth noting however that standardization of laws across jurisdictions, new policies among enforcement agencies and education of the public on the vice are yet the best ways to bring the offenders to book. In addition, establishment and use of national resources to help in investigating identity theft is subtle to ending the piling cases of unresolved incidences of identity theft.
References
Colorado Department of Law, (2009). Identity Theft and The Law. John W. Suthers, Attorney
General, Colorado Department of Law. Retrieved from http://www.coloradoattorneygeneral.gov/initiatives/identity_theft/identity_theft_law
Dadisho, E., (June 2013). Identity Theft and The Police Response: The Problem. The Police
Chief. Retrieved from http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display&article_id=493..
Locke, K., (2005). Identity Theft via Cyber Crime; The Computing and Networking Perspective.
Pot, J., (May 13, 2010). Top Five Computer Crimes and How To Protect Yourself From Them.
Make Use Of. Retrieved from http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-five-computer-crimes-protect/
Richardson, E. O., (2013). Computer Crime Identity Theft Laws. Small Business. Retrieved from
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/computer-crime-identity-theft-laws-5274.htm
