Introduction:
According to a brief analysis, the rising issues of digital crime and digital terrorism requires training of law enforcement workers. In current situation, the law enforcement is not talented enough to handle the cases of digital crime and terrorism. There is no doubt in the fact that world is getting digitized every coming day so the knowledge of this world is mandatory in order to solve its issues. Following are eight forecasts which have been formulated after collecting data and analysis in many different situations.
Forecast 1:
Technology is changing rapidly and so are the ways to digital crime and terrorism. This is biggest reason behind the increased number of crimes related to storage media and computers. The problem of the coming era will be that, criminals are more educated with Technology than law enforcement personnel. Special trained investigators and police specialties will have to be hired in order to control computer and internet fraud. This will help them stay one step ahead of the criminals and stop them with skilled tactics.
In last few decades, electronic devices like mobile phones, tablets, satellite phones and internet has given a new dimension to the digital crime. For example, now property crimes can be done throughout the globe without even leaving your room. All criminals need is some personal data access to steal someone’s money from anywhere around the world.
This is indeed a big challenge for law enforcement agencies so they need to have computer professionals in their team in order to bring down this crime rate and deal with such cases. Not only they need to hire professionals but every law enforcement staff member needs to get this knowledge to minimize the threat to digital terrorism .
Forecast 2:
Identity theft is also taking major part in biggest crimes. The rise in computer crimes will also affect local law enforcement agencies who are dealing with cases of monetary loss causes by identity theft on internet. In identity theft, criminals use personal data of someone without their permission and cause huge personal or financial damage to them. In 2010, 3.5 % of population became victim of identity theft with reported losses of around $1.7 billion.
One common example of this type of crime is Nigerian email fraud. In this case, an email is sent to the victim from an assumed Nigerian head of state who posses millions of dollars and the victim is convinced that he is about to share this wealth. In order to claim this money, victim had to share several thousand dollars lawyer’s fee. Many people were victimized by this email and they received nothing in return.
According to the Federal Identity Theft and Assumptions Deterrence Act of 1998, this becomes a Federal crime when someone uses or transfer someone else information with the intention to commit any unlawful activity. Thus strict law needs to be set in order to avoid digital crime through identity theft.
Forecast 3:
The expansion in computer networking and social media sites will increase the digital crime rate as well. The best way to avoid these issues is prevention and that needs to be done by Federal law enforcement agencies as well as administrative authorities. People should be made aware of the common virtual crimes with the help of web pages and other public service announcements. New laws need to be defined in order to investigate, educate and prevent people from this fraud.
Hunting down a cyber criminal is lot more difficult as compared to catching traditional criminals so the Police and Law personnel also need to be more efficient in computer networking and Social media networking .
Forecast 4:
With the rise of computer networking, the hacking will become more common especially in developing countries. This will motivate criminals to threaten and do illegal activities against their enemies. This could be any religious, financial or political reason which led them to hack computers and threaten them via malicious attacks.
Hackers have affected hundreds and millions of people around the globe. A single hacker can hack millions of computers located in other parts of the world without even leaving his room. According to analysis, there have been very rare cases when law enforcement agencies were able to catch any hacker. This is such a big networking system that it is becoming harder for any law enforcement to keep up with this. Need of the hour is to spread awareness among masses about hacking and how this is a real crime with real victims and real criminals. According to judicial point of view, majority of hackers are young people and they have to show leniency towards them because of the people considering them not criminals. If people start taking hacking as a serious crime, this will become somewhat easy to pass strict law against them .
Forecast 5:
The organized crime groups are more likely to commit computer crimes in order to enhance their criminal activities. In this attempt, they will use computerization as a criminal instrument and cyber terrorism will eventually increase. The most common illegal activities done by these organized criminal groups include identity theft, black market, telecommunication fraud, illegal immigration and gambling.
In order to minimize the act of organized cyber crime, FBI developed Internet Crime Complaint Center. As soon a cyber crime is entered into this system, these complaints are examined by ‘Supervisor Special Agents’ with the help of Internet fraud specialists. They received around 30,500 complaints against these organized crime groups only in first year. They have also decided to help law enforcement to get hands on cyber criminals.
The law enforcement and police agents need to be trained on all these cyber crime issues and their details to let them understand their functionality. Only then, they will be able to fight against these issues and eliminate them altogether.
Forecast 6:
In past few decades, terrorists have started using Cyber world to accomplish their terrorist activities. The use of technology and internet will increase tremendously in coming years. There has been proof of global networking being involved in the religious terrorist activities against Western countries and this involvement will more likely increase with the passage of time. Though the cyber terrorism has not approached to the level of traditional terrorism yet adding all the financial and human losses, this cannot be taken lightly.
Forecast 7:
According to the U.S. Department of Defense study, the national security is more concerned about economical issues as compared to political and geographic issues. In many developing countries like Malaysia and Thailand, governments have introduced technology centers as the economic sectors of global economy.
In 2003, series of attacks on private industry contractors and government occurred by using intellectual and information technology. Massive amount of files were stolen from NASA to damage the infrastructure and it caused huge loss. The law enforcement agencies revealed that many security software were hacked and attacked by cyber criminals usually drug traffickers in Europe and Asia. Most commonly, these cyber terrorists attack via malicious software so their growth has to be stopped to minimize the internet security breach risk.
Forecast 8:
In coming future, the use of technology-based instruments will be increased by national states, patriots, anarchists and even criminal terrorists. This immense use of technology will secretly capture more data from all around the globe and the communication method can be disturbed by that.
There are many steps by law enforcement agencies and other administrations to take in order to minimize the risks of digital crime and terrorism in future. Many countries believe that some standard laws must be introduced in law enforcement investigations against cyber crimes. Also, the technical assistance by computer and internet professionals must be offered to lawyers, police inspectors and judicial departments.
Conclusion:
Thus Law enforcement agencies need to cater all these above mentioned forecasts in mind and formulate some standard yet strict laws to threaten these cyber criminals. Common awareness about threat of cyber crime needs to be spread among masses to make people ready of the consequences. Laws need to be changed and strict laws need to be regulated among these digital criminals. This will be a hard and long term process but some initial steps need to be taken soon.
This is how they enlist people to complete terrorist acts. The laws must be international and cover all transnational criminal activities. They cannot just be based on things that are happening in the states. It has to cover all other countries as well, because these organized crimes are becoming more central now that technology is improving.
References
Kunz, M., & Wilson, P. (2004). Computer Crime and Computer Fraud.
Levinson, M. (2011, November 15). Why Law Enforcement Can't Stop Hackers. Retrieved from CIO: http://www.cio.com/article/694071/Why_Law_Enforcement_Can_t_Stop_Hackers?page=5&taxonomyId=3089
Taylor, R., & Fritsch, E. (2011). Digital Crime and Digital Terrorism. Prentice Hall.
