The Future of Digital Crime and Digital Terrorism
Introduction
You will learn that law enforcement personnel that is just coming into this field needs to be trained with the upcoming technology. There is no need to train them on the old stuff and wait to train them on the new. They need to be able to be one step ahead of digital crime and digital terrorism. Right now, law enforcement is falling behind.
Digital Crime
Forecast
The future of digital crime and digital terrorism is going to get worse than what it is right now. The laws and the law enforcement agencies cannot keep up with the ever changing technology. By the time they learn something to keep up with it now, something new is already out which puts law enforcement behind the power curve. Starting out as new personnel in the different law enforcement agencies you will have to get training on the technology that is already out and the one that is coming out.
Technology is changing every day and is not going to stop. Learning from the past can help law enforcement forecast future trends in crime to facilitate creation of best practices for investigation and prosecution of computer crime along with researching all past, present, and future aspects of emerging methodologies in digital crime. There are eight forecasts that have been developed from the analysis and collection of data, in order to know the future of digital crime and digital terrorism. They are:
Forecast 1: The number of offenses reported to the police involving computers and electronic storage media will continue to increase substantially, requiring changing priorities for resource allocation, new training for line officers and investigators, new police specialties, and new knowledge for prosecuting attorneys and judges.
Forecast 2: The largest computer crime problem affecting local law enforcement representing the largest number of victims and the largest monetary loss will be Internet fraud, including fraud via identify theft.
Forecast 3: Virtual crimes against persons will increase at a faster rate compared with past years as a result of the significant expansion in networking, personal computing, and social networking sites. These hybrid crimes, which have coercive characteristics similar to those found in psychological warfare, will require new laws expressly to address the problem and new methodologies for investigation, prevention, and education.
Forecast 4: Computer hacker groups will emerge in developing countries around the world, increasing the threat of malicious attacks motivated by religion, politics, and money.
Forecast 5: Current organized crime groups, particularly those that are entrepreneurial, will increasingly adopt computerization as a criminal instrument. These are the examples that were used as organized crime group: Record keeping – criminals has been keeping computer records just like businesses. They use spreadsheets and databases so it will not be noticed they are committing a criminal act. Counterfeit currency and documents – criminals can easily obtain and make fake passports and money through the technology of scanners, printers, fax machine, and copiers. Illegal immigration – this is mainly through organized crime.
They have found a way to smuggle immigrants into the country without being traced; Counterfeit products – this is the selling of man-made dvds, pocket books, audio tapes, video tapes, and software for the computer. People steal copyrighted information and sell it to the public for less. Black market – is where people do not go through the right channels to obtain licensing or pay taxes. They just go the illegal way to make their money. Theft and fraud – this is how people obtain personal information of someone and uses it to their benefits. These days welfare fraud is on the rise because of the economy.
Everyone wants a piece of the pie and will use anybody information to obtain money and help from social services. Telecommunication fraud – is obtaining information through telephone, hacking into to the telephone systems, accessing information through corporate companies. Sexually Related Commerce – is the arranging of prostitution through the internet. You have website where you can buy a date or sugar daddy. It used to be you can go on the street and pick one up, but since you get busted for picking up prostitutes you can now go online and buy you one without leaving your home. Gambling online has become easy for people that do not want to leave their home and go to the casino. Now you can easily lose your money or get your identity stolen right through the internet. Gambling was going to the casino and having fun with friends or family but, if you have problems with gambling people has taken it to the computer.
Forecast 6: Terrorist groups will increasingly use global networking as a tool to accomplish their goals. This includes use of the Internet for recruitment, surreptitious communications, and coordination purposes as well as attempting to use network access to critical infrastructure systems to strike for their cause via the creation chaos, disinformation, and file destruction-cyber terrorism.
Forecast 7: The character of espionage will continue to broaden into the arenas of information warfare, economic espionage, and theft of intellectual property.
Forecast 8: Criminals terrorist, nation-states, patriots, and anarchists will increasingly use technology-based instruments and methodologies, which can surreptitiously capture data/information or destroy technological communications, information processing, and/or storage appliances. These are examples of the use of technology based instruments: Electromagnetic impulse and High Energy Radio Frequency – is the type of instrument that China uses as a weapon. Criminals use these as a way to jam signals in order to disrupt communications for their benefits. Compromising Electronic Emanations and Tempest/Emissions Security (EMSEC) – is used for espionage and surveillance. This is how criminals tract where police are located and what they are saying over their radios.
Malicious Software – is viruses, Trojan horses, worms, and other unwanted software that can be emailed to your computer. These are programs that are actively being prepared every day. You do not need computer knowledge in order to access malicious software. Terrorist groups use these types of software in order to obtain information. This is how they become more knowledgeable about the things that go on in the United States. (Taylor, Fritsch, Liederbach, & Holt, 2011).
The number and sophistication of cyber-attacks has increased dramatically over the past five years and is expected to grow more and more. The threat has reached the point that it will give enough time, motivation and funding to the criminal. The criminal will be able to access any system directly from the internet. Even though, law enforcement agencies has identified the main cyber-attacks it’s still hard for them to keep up with them. Technology is changing drastically, until it’s hard to keep up with the problems that seem to persist on an everyday basis.
Digital crime will keep evolving because of technology. The more technology comes out the worse digital crime will get. It’s to the point now you can use your cellphone to complete illegal transactions. They are even making technology better in scanners, copiers, fax machines, and printers. Everything is becoming more and more efficient for criminal behavior. These types of things criminals use to access whatever information or to complete a task that is illegal. People say online shopping is better than going to the store but, my opinion is neither one of them are good.
If you go to the store people are liable to scan your credit information without you even knowing it. They have ways of scanning it while you trying to pay for merchandise. Shopping online is even worse because if the websites are not secure when it comes to making purchases, then your information can get stolen. Terrorism has gone to the internet because it’s a way of hiding the financial support or recruitment of individuals. They make it seem like you are reading up on information about a certain terrorist group, then once you are on the site it’s like they have accessed your information and you start getting recruited.
Terrorist groups have ways of making themselves unknown and unseen. That is the most dangerous thing to have going on in any country. But as technology evolves terrorists evolve with the technology. They know the ends and outs of technology before it even hit the market. Personnel that are new to law enforcement need to be trained in that manner. They need to be versatile when it comes to technology. You cannot just know the basics of technology. As a law enforcement official you need to know everything from computer fraud to malicious software.
You need to be able to track down the different databases and networks that are being used to commit cybercrimes. Training is the only way that we are going to keep up with this growing technology. This includes knowledge of security issues, processes, and practices; investigative techniques; and the capacity to perform forensic analysis of electronic devices. (Taylor et al., 2011). The most important is man power. If you do not have the bodies to attempt these tasks, then we will never be able to keep up with digital crime or digital terrorism.
In order to reduce digital crime and digital terrorism there should be a data collection of computer criminality so that we can have an idea of how much computer crime is going on in each state. If data was collected, they would know who to target and where the target is trying to collect information from. We do not have that type of plan in place. There needs to be some kind of examination going on with computer crimes. Law enforcement needs to know how it happened and when.
To prevent digital crimes they need to be one step ahead of the criminals. They do not need to just focus on the crime at hand; it needs to go deeper into the crime. Basically they need to think like a criminal and not just analyze what the criminal has done. There are a lot of things that needs to be done in order to reduce this crime because eliminating it is not an option. It will never go away; it will just get more advanced.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this paper has discussed the different forecasts that is becoming of digital crime and digital terrorism. Public and private places must be alert of the threat that technology has been bringing to society. The most challenge is trying to keep law enforcement agencies up to speed with the new technology that is occurring. The most important thing is that the laws have to be change along with technology. If laws do not change, criminals will continue with digital crime, especially people that are into digital terrorism.
This is how they recruit people to complete terrorist acts. The laws have to cover global and transnational criminal activities. They cannot just be based on things that are happening in the states. It has to branch out to other countries, because these organized crimes are becoming more dominant now that technology is improving.