Policing Digital Crime

Uploaded on 2023-02-16 in GOVERNMENT-Law Enforcement, Education & Research

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Cyber crime is a growing issue, still not fully understood by researchers or policing/law enforcement communities. UK Government reports assert that victims of cyber crime were unlikely to report crimes immediately due to the perception that police were ill-equipped to deal with these offences.

The use of digital media, digital devices and social media has exploded in the past two decades. And twenty years ago, few people imagined how pervasive digital technology would become in our lives.

Many of us now take for granted mobile phones that are like pocket computers, electronic devices that can be activated from across the world. And we now live in a digital world where the divisions between physical and virtual are becoming blurred as we are now quite accustomed to making payments via our computer network. With the advent of new technology there have been unexpected consequences of criminal exploitation and theft and as many cyber operations attack countries at a distance it means that local police services can’t easily act against them.

This new electronic criminal engagement has similarities to the past’s technological changes. For example, eight hundred years ago in the 1300s, the metal working techniques used for making genuine currency were rapidly adopted by criminals for making imitation coins for criminal use and financial gain. In the 19th century the invention of typewriters provided increased anonymity for those writing blackmail letters, and by the 1920s the FBI had developed the forensic examination of typewriters and text. When motor cars became available for public use, bank robbers soon began to use them, as later portrayed in Hollywood movies such as Bonnie and Clyde.

Now approximately 30 years old, the field of digital forensics is arguably facing some of its greatest challenges to date.

Whilst currently supporting law enforcement in numerous criminal cases annually, questions are beginning to emerge regarding whether it can sustain this contribution, with digital crime remaining prevalent. Now criminals employ digital technology and fast digital networks and soon it might even be the case that traditional forms of volume crime, such as shoplifting, will soon be overtaken by cyber-crime as the new crime.

When crime rates unexpectedly fell in England and Wales in 2010 one academic commentator said that this is the result of conventional property crime developing into new digital forms that are less likely to be reported, such as the use of eBay to sell stolen goods.

More organised forms of criminality would also appear to be exploiting the opportunities provided by increasing digitalisation.

The conclusion of a report Detica with the John Grieve Centre for Policing and Security, claimed that we are entering a fourth great era of organised crime, called the age of digital crime. Digital crime is also considered a threat to the further deployment of e-government and e-business services and police forces in the UK are unable to keep pace with technology when it comes to digital forensics, and currently there is a backlog of more than 25,000 devices waiting to be examined.

A significant number of nations around the world have enacted cybe rcrime laws for the purpose of controlling the occurrence of cyber crimes and mitigating its ill effects. However, in spite of enacting such cyber crime laws, available data show that the incidence of cyber crime is rapidly increasing.

Cyber crime has experienced an ascending position in national security agendas world-wide. It has become a part of the national security strategies of a growing number of countries, including the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, the USA and many others, becoming a Tier One threat, above organised crime and fraud generally. Cyber crime is now the typical high-volume property crime in the UK, impacting upon more of the public than traditional acquisitive crimes such as burglary and car theft.

Due to perceptions of anonymity and distance from the offline world, Internet users experience a false sense of security, and online offenders are psychologically, socially and physically further removed from their offences and victims, encounter fewer and, or less severe consequences for their behaviours and are likely to repeat these offences, emboldened by their experience.

In response, the international community is taking action to improve national law enforcement capabilities and facilitate international cooperation on cyber crime. Cyber crime cannot be systemically curbed without confronting the source of cyber criminal activity, reducing the payoff and making the risk of prosecution real to offenders.
With government efforts alone proving insufficient, successful approaches require a convergence of transnational public-private efforts and resources.

So far government co-operation with the private-sector, both locally and globally, has been fragmented. And cyber criminals are exploiting these gaps with near impunity.

Careful cyber criminals will go to great lengths to hide their identity and their location. As well as using online pseudonyms known as ‘handles’, they will often do business on the Dark Web, which makes it hard to track them.
Furthermore, they might use VPNs and proxies to hide their true IP address, which makes it extremely difficult to find out where they’re really located.

The company that provides the proxy or VPN will usually have the real IP address in their records, but if it’s not willing to voluntarily share this information, the authorities will need to get a court order to compel it to do so, but if the company is based abroad, currently that could be next to impossible to achieve.

References:

Robin Bryant / Academia: Robin Bryant:

Tees University: HM Justice Inspectorate:

TechMonitor: Ajoy Pb / Research Gate:

Davis Wall & Matthew Williams:

Joanna Curtis & Gavin Oxburgh:

WEF: TMB:

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