Developments in the Global Law Enforcement of Cyber-Crime, Research Paper Example

Digital crimes and digital terrorism are enemies to the economy as well as social matters. To successfully fight digital crimes and digital terrorism, it requires knowledge of information technology. Digital crimes such as intellectual property theft including digital piracy, theft of trade secrets and trafficking of counterfeit goods represent serious cyber criminal threats, which lead to billions of dollar losses in profits yearly (Broadhurst, 2006). The use of computer technology can enable experts handling cyber crimes and digital terrorism to avert disastrous events, thus saving lives and avoiding losses to business organizations. For example, SCADA is an acronym for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, which are systems used to manage power plants, oil rigs, water facilities and some other industrial plants (Ibid). Digital attacks on oil rigs, power plants and other industrial plants can lead to disastrous impacts. However, the fight of digital crimes as well as digital terrorism using information technology comes with some negatives. For instance, new technologies such as data mining may lead to invasion of individuals’ or organizations’ piracy. Furthermore, there are solutions such as permissioning systems that build authorization standards and privacy rules into search engines and databases, and anonymization techniques, which allow data-sharing without disclosing identity. These accounts show how great information technology is if fighting digital crimes and digital terrorism.

Computer crimes and terrorism present new dimensions of criminal behavior and terrorism attacks in the United States. The independent nature of the law enforcement agencies in the US presents various challenges as regards addressing crimes and terrorist attacks related to computers. One challenge is that, the police cannot learn on the utilization of available computer resources to track criminals as noted by Carter (2004). The systems used by the police are poorly developed to counteract cyber terrorism such as hacking. It would be prudent for the law enforcement to collaborate with other security agencies in the U.S. The independent law enforcement nature also requires secrecy of intelligence apparatus. The police thus are not free to share information about crimes with other agencies that have smart or excellent experts in digital crimes.

Many law enforcement agencies lack hardware and manpower to address computer crimes (Carter, 2004). The law enforcing agencies as well as other legal agencies has been overtaken by the computer era. For the law enforcement agencies and the legal agencies to address computerized crimes, they need similar tools and super-skills than those of the criminal. Therefore, this has become a challenge for law enforcement agencies.

The United States can establish shared technological information among various agencies enabling the law enforcement agencies to share information on how to address computerized crimes and terrorism (Carter, 2004). The strategy should facilitate regular convergence of security and law enforcement agencies to encourage innovation and training for advanced skills to handle the ever increasing and changing digital crimes and terrorism.

The U.S. should align the efforts of the federal agencies in such a manner that the agencies constantly share information from a common database covering all relevant data to ensure security of the citizens and businesses, as well as industrial developments. Digital crimes have targeted people, businesses and even industrial developments such as pipelines and oil rigs (Obama, 2010). The U.S. Government should provide the law enforcement agencies with necessary training, skills and tools to help in fighting digital crimes. Both the local enforcement agencies in the states should have linkage to the federal agencies as regards investigations of digital crimes and terrorism (Carter, 2004). Failure to link these law enforcement agencies will lead to a gap in exchange of information and ideas, thus sabotaging the fight against digital crimes and terrorism.

The future will see an increase in digital crimes and terrorism. The number of crimes related to electronic storage media and computers will continue increasing substantially. The phenomenon will demand changing resource allocation priorities and new training for investigators and line officers, new knowledge for prosecuting judges and attorneys and new police specialties (Rollins, 2009). The digital crimes and digital terrorism attacks are dynamic, thus demanding constant learning and innovation of technologies to combat these criminal acts. Digital crimes and terrorism will also show an increase in the use of phones to facilitate crimes. Criminals have gone to an extent of using their phones to access victims’ bank accounts, stealing people’s money. Law enforcement agencies should work with communication companies to learn how to handle these types of crimes.

The overall strategy that the United States could use to fight digital crime and terrorism involves a strategy focusing on three areas. One of the areas is to secure Government systems. In this case, the citizens trust the government with their personal and corporate data, and look upon the government to serve them (Schneier, 2011). The second area to focus is to partner so as to secure crucial cyber systems, which are outside the federal government. Local governments such as municipal authorities and states are integral in the fight of digital crimes and terrorism. The third area to focus is to help the U.S. citizens to be secure while online or using the internet (Ibid). The government ought to ensure availability of information for the citizens to keep themselves protected using the internet.

References

Broadhurst, R. (2006). Developments in the global law enforcement of cyber-crime. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 29(3), 408-433.

Carter, D. L. (2004). Law enforcement intelligence: A guide for state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies (pp. 136-37). Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.

Obama, B. (2010). National Security Strategy of the United States (2010). DIANE Publishing.

Rollins, J. (2009). Comprehensive national cybersecurity initiative: Legal authorities and policy considerations. DIANE Publishing.

Schneier, B. (2011). Secrets and lies: digital security in a networked world. John Wiley & Sons.