The greatest challenge facing law enforcement agencies in investigating the exploitation, cyber stalking, and obscenity is the interconnected nature of technology that forms the internet, making it a global problem. It implies that various cyber crimes have spread to an extent beyond the control of these enforcement agencies. The regional agreement like the Europe convention on cyber crime has thus failed to keep pace with the rapid technological advancements hence leading to their imperfection (Clough, 2012).
The conventions in the form of regional agreements are also not a model law as others argue it out. However, they are just framework upon which particular crimes can be based which permits countries to modify their laws where necessary in order to be at the same pace with the changing technology. The fact that countries can change their laws makes it hard to have a common law for all countries that will enable them to deal with exploitation, cyber stalking, and obscenity. In addition, other countries like the United States seem to benefit a lot economically from operations of internet technology. A good example is the US Census Bureau information released concerning the seasonal adjusted estimation value of US retail e-commerce sales for the second quarter of 2011, which amounted to US$47.5 billion. If it is the case, then we cannot expect US government to participate fully in the process of eliminating these crimes. As a result, the law enforcement agencies will find it difficult to carry out investigation concerning the same (Clough, 2012).
The specific challenges faced include Rights and patents theft, digital piracy, copyright infringement, childhood pornographic, transmission of hate messages, and more so hacking that dominates the global cyber crime. Malware and denial of service attacks on websites are also part of these challenges. In other words, the specific challenges only exist with online or computer enabled environment. One major solution to all these challenges is to come up with tough legislation that are free from various loopholes. This kind of legislation should be an uniform kind of governing laws for all stakeholder countries. The common law in this case can easily help law enforcement agencies to carry out their investigation in the case of any cyber crime (Kirwan & Power, 2013).
In fact, the states should can work with one another when a cyber-crime is carried out across state lines. As explained earlier, countries are permitted to change their laws that govern various types of crimes. The result is the laws that vary across countries. It means that every state may end up having its own way of dealing with such crimes. The people’s republic of China, for instance, is a leading nation that is conducting cyber espionage campaigns on a universal scale (Carr, 2011). Therefore, we cannot expect all states to have the same trend on this type of campaign. One big question one should ask is what will happen if states fail to work together yet there is a serious cyber crime across the state lines while at the same time one or two states are leading in these campaigns. It means there will be lack of agreement among states on which action to take. Finally, the criminals will end up taking the advantage.
Therefore, the issue of states working together is the best option if cyber criminals are to be dealt with. It is also common knowledge to say that even if the common law for all countries is formulated as proposed above, then it will still not be effective as such unless the stakeholder countries are ready to work together. Having that ability to work with one another will thus be a kind of commitment to participate in the elimination of any internet based crime.
References
Carr, J. (2011). Inside cyber warfare: Mapping the cyber underworld. " O'Reilly Media, Inc.".
Clough, J. (2012, December). The Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime: DefiningCrime’in a Digital World. In Criminal Law Forum (Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 363-391). Springer Netherlands.
Kirwan, G., & Power, A. (2013). Cybercrime: The Psychology of Online Offenders. Cambridge University Press.
