International cooperation and cyber crimes: facing modern consequences - Essay Example

?International Cooperation and Cyber Crimes: Facing Modern Consequences Introduction The sudden acceleration of technology during previous years undermined the primary purpose of technology as life-saver through its borderless nature and leaves the people groping in the dark. Because of the anonymity and excessive freedom through the internet, it has become the breeding ground of the new age criminals. This is not just a problem in the countries where technology is highly accessible, but also with nations who practically belong to the third world. The borderless nature of the internet has become both a boon and bane for the modern world. Some nations have independent laws which they exercise but were not effective because of juridical issues. International cooperation is eyed as an efficient solution for cybercrime because of its technology and people-oriented nature, but alongside with these, there are technical, juridical, and ethical challenges which the cooperation has to address. Cybercrimes and its Classifications The fast-paced change of modern technology allows the definition of cybercrime to evolve; yet maintaining the idea of crimes committed using the internet affecting network relationships. In the book called The Internet Encyclopedia, Bidgoli (2004, p.326), defined cyber crime as the "criminal acts committed by the way of computer networks (especially the Internet) that can be accomplished while sitting at a computer keyboard" where the most common would be the "unauthorized access to computer files" (p.326). Rho (2007 cited in Kshetri, 2010, p.3) however, reduced the definition into "an unlawful activity committed by a private individual in cyberspace." Such definition however, still encompassed Bigdoli's point of cyber crimes as crimes committed using the computer network. Cybercriminals are not confined with sexual assault through the internet, but of course with other offenses which a conventional criminal would do; only they have different means of conducting the crime. In cyber crime, proximity is not even a problem for perpetrators to invade the lives of people from the other side of the globe. Internet security is becoming popular nowadays in the emergence of such crimes, but ironically, the so-called security apparently is failing to do its purpose. It has been reported that after cyber crime has penetrated the internet, the problems related to it have been on the rise (Pilkington, 2009). In 2008, an estimated 265 million dollars was wasted because of cyber crimes; a popular scam would be on the order and delivery sites where products fail to reach the customer’s household but did not get any refund from the company (Pilkington, 2009). Luppicini and Adell (2009) coined three umbrella terms in which the different forms of cyber crimes are classified. These classifications are cybercrimes on property, cybercrimes against the person, and cybercrimes against the government. The first classification is a crime concentrated on illegal and unauthorized financial gain. Such classification would include the spam, identity theft (primarily to steal bank accounts), and cyber piracy. These are common types of cyber crimes in which ordinary people may encounter in their daily lives. Spams for example, appear as an ordinary email from charity, sweepstakes office, or even a 'private' message saying that someone has left their inheritance to a particular email user. In a survey conducted last 2007 by the Nucleus Research, "more than 90% of the email reaching corporate servers was spam" (Luppicini & Adell, 2009, p.577). Babu (2004) described this kind of cyber crime as "computer vandalism" where cyber criminals would eventually destroy cyber property and transmits harmful programs like malwares and viruses. On the other hand, cyber identity theft is the "online misappropriation of personal information for use in representing oneself as somebody else...for financial gain" (Luppicini & Adell, 2009, p.577). Identity theft excuses no one; whether the person is famous or not, rich or poor. As long as they have financial income and a credit card, no one is actually safe. The story of Jeremy Bernstein, a Physics professor of Stevens Institute of Technology proves that identity theft is indeed possible amidst security S.O.P's of financial companies. Without knowing, his credit card was used for transactions not related to his activities. The card company bill noted that a certain William Kramer bought a one-way first class plane ticket for New York. The ticket costs $1,145.60. Another transaction was made using Jeremy's credit card account for 2 successive pizza deliveries the next day. Jeremy's credit card was not stolen nor did he remember that it was borrowed by someone else. Clearly, this is a case of cyber identity theft. Another form of cyber crime on property is cyber piracy or the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials. Otherwise known as the infringement of intellectual property, cyber piracy is common nowadays in the advent of popularity of downloading files. Unlike the previously mentioned, cyber crimes on persons catastrophize the person himself which has nothing to do with stealing his finances. Cyber bullying, cyber stalking, and sexual harassment are three sub-types of cyber crimes on persons which are persisting nowadays. These three mentioned are the revolutionized versions of bullying, stalking, sexual harassment that could occur without the help of digital media, and their concept has long been regarded as a negative social behavior. In the presence of the internet, where almost everything can always be done, the cases of bullying, stalking and sexual harassment could be a threat alongside with scams, only that human dignity is at stake rather than money. In 2006, a Missouri youth named Megan Meier committed suicide due to hate letters via MySpace, a networking site. The emails are coming from a certain “Josh Evans” who was later discovered to be a fictitious account made by their neighbor Lori Drew. Drew said that it was supposed to be a joke; however, it turned out otherwise for Megan (Good Morning America, 2007). Although cyber bullying has gained attention from the authorities and anti-cyber crime organizations, it still exists and looking for innocent cyber victims. Just last year, an Irish immigrant named Phoebe Prince committed suicide because of the same reason. Allegedly, she was called an “Irish slut” and a “whore” by students. The bullying did not end in the school hallways or libraries, as offensive statements about her persisted in her Facebook account, Craiglist, Twitter, and Formspring (Kennedy, 2010). The internet could be an ideal place for predators to lurk. Sexual harassment online is not an unusual story to tell, but what is more alarming is that the victims are primarily the children. The business of internet child pornography can be divided into three components: production, distribution, and downloading of sexually exploitative images of children (Wortley & Smallbone, 2006, p.8). The crime is not, however, explicit on children only as it is also prevalent for adult females. Cyber crimes against the government would essentially pertain to cyber terrorism. Cyber terrorism is more likely hacking, but would differ in the degree, quantity of damages, and definite victims which is the government and the public. An example of cyber terrorism would be the event last 2001 in Australia. Vitek Boden hacked into the Maroochy Shire Queensland computerised waste management system and "caused millions of liters of raw sewage to spill out into local parks, rivers and even the grounds of Hyatt Regency Hotel" (Smith, 2001). Boden is said to have been rejected by the area's council from a job application. Because of this, marine life of that area died and "the creek water turned black and stench[ed]" (Smith, 2001). Another is the infamous ILOVEYOU virus which disabled the networks of huge companies such as Yahoo, CNN, and e-Bay, including government agencies particularly the Pentagon, the White House, and the House of Parliament. The damages caused by the virus go up to billions of dollars (Denning, 2000). Methods to Reduce Cyber Crimes Knowing the amount of damages and the life it can possibly end, it is no doubt that cyber crimes should be treated as strictly as traditional crimes, or even more. The internet is available for almost everybody, while companies and the government rely on technology as a primary storage for a massive amount of public or secret information. In protecting the internet users against cyber crimes, Reyes and O’Shea (2007, p.266) proposed ways on how to be protected basing on the classification of cyber crime. For personal protection, they recommend all personal information such as private telephone numbers, real names, and addresses should be kept unpublished to prevent stalking and bullying. Cellular phones should have an activated password which is hard for others to guess. Parental guidance should be strictly observed to prevent possibilities of child pornography, and the idea of it should not be kept as a secret from children so that they can protect themselves if necessary. Personal initiatives in preventing cyber crimes are effective, however, it would be better if there would be assistance and firm legislation opposing and protecting the citizens against cyber crimes. Internet censorship has gained attention internationally with the rise of the number of victims of cyber crimes. The government of the People’s Republic of China, enacted the law on internet censorship called the “Golden Shield Project” wherein all personal and company computers in mainland China including the imported ones should have a Green Dam software. The software is designed in such a way that the user is blocked from a list of secret websites which restricts him from accessing the sites (Lovet, 2009, p.66). This government action is a way to protect personal files and other information not intended to be published. China, with its struggling economy and a number of IT professionals with no jobs or has insufficient income, tend to become cyber criminals themselves. Because of the act, China nowadays has the most sophisticated and efficient filtering system (Cyber Law, 2011). In the United States, the National Cyber Security Division is created to ensure the safety of cyber networks in America. According to their strategic objectives, the division is said to “build and maintain an effective national cyberspace response system and to implement a cyber-risk management program for protection of critical infrastructure” (NCSD, 2010). The U.S. is also active in participating international events to gather other opinions from different countries regarding how they fight cyber crimes. One of which is the Cyber Storm exercise which serves as an assessment of cyber laws of different countries. In internet censorship, privacy could be affected like the law exercised in India. The Indian Government passed legislation that all internet traffic should be reviewed and monitored. Although made the Indian Government a center of controversy, it still managed to reduce cyber crimes particularly pornography, which represents 99 cases out of 429 of cyber crimes (Cyber Law, 2011). Whether it is originating from a personal opinion or from the government, what is important in resisting cyber crimes is cooperation from all sectors concerning it especially within the cyber community and its members, more so with IT professionals. Thinking that the internet is widespread, cooperation from the international scenario would be advantageous, although there might be flaws in conducting international laws against cyber crimes. International cooperation is being eyed as an efficient measure of destroying the network of internet predators, of course, with the help of individual governments around the world. International Cooperation to Combat Cyber Crimes The examples represent only a mere percentage of the actual cyber crime happening. The concept of “global village” therefore, has its own set of disadvantages, although it is undeniable that the internet is already an essential part of commerce, the government, and personal use. According to Sofaer et al. (2000), “cybercrimes [are] transnational, and [it] needs a transnational approach.” Canada, United States, and the United Kingdom are three of the most active participants on the Convention on Cyber Crimes, an international convention of countries where the primary aim is to alleviate and eventually eradicate cyber crimes completely. At the same time, these countries have an internal solution to this problem (Kowalski, 2002, p.8). During the Eleventh United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, it is expressed that there is a need for international cooperation in combating cyber crimes because of its tans-border nature (United Nations, 2005, p.2). Along with the cooperation of different countries directly or indirectly affected by internet crimes and the mutual laws on cyber crimes, the United Nations believe that it can always be addressed. Under section 1 Article 27 of the Convention on Cyber Crime law stated that there should be mutual assistance to all countries participating the convention, and that assistance should primarily concern those who do not yet have mutual assistance treaty (Schulman, 2007, p.110). Since the convention encourages an international approach in dealing the problem, laws should be mutual and implemented as strictly as possible. On the other hand, Golubev (2005) contends that the convention targets the national and international regulations on cyber crimes “and directed at preventing illegal intervention into the work of computer systems.” The convention is a way of encouraging international cooperation and showing international solidarity against cyber crimes. Supporters of the convention believe that through the convention and stipulating concrete laws on cyber offenses would make the cyber criminals “feel impunity;” and thus reduce their chances of initiating cyber crimes. Another argument is that the convention actually gains evidences for a possible terrorist attack through collaboration (Archick, 2002, p.3). While international cooperation has gained favored in the international community concerned about protecting their rights on the cyberspace, the constant evolution of technology made it difficult to address the problem as quickly as possible. In the report of the State of International Cooperation on Cyber Crime, it is admitted that combating cyber crimes is not an easy task for anti-cyber crime organizations because of the nature of technology itself (NetWork Box, n.d.). Another challenge for the effectiveness of international cooperation is the limiting factor of domestic laws. It is expressed earlier that individual cooperation of each countries are very much needed in defining the effectiveness of international cooperation. However, domestic laws would have the final say about what to implement and where (Lovet, 2009, p.69). For example, a cyber criminal destroys all confidential files of the police in a certain country. Unfortunately, this country of which the crime was committed does not have cyber crime laws. So automatically, the cyber criminal who did it will be acquitted. This undermines the value of international cooperation as a movement having mutual laws that should be enacted in each participating countries. Because of this, there is no clear and concrete law that should be followed, while cyber criminals and victims continue to increase. The juridical inconsistencies found in the whole principle of international cooperation against the provisions that they made certainly creates a weak set of laws which can be an insubstantial help for cyber crime victims. Furthermore, not all countries have updated laws against cyber crimes. In a report prepared by McConnel International, there are only 10 countries which are religiously updating the laws out of the 52 countries surveyed (McConnel Int’l, 2000). Amidst the inefficiencies, however, international cooperation is still considered to be the best solution against cyber crimes. Although it has various inadequacies, it can be justified by the borderless nature of the crime, and therefore spares the Convention from being labeled as “failure” (Singh & Singh, 2009, p.65). It may take time in finally arriving in a mutual law agreement among all nations, but as soon as this happens, it could be a potential ultimate solution against cyber crimes. Conclusion The emergence of a new type of crime, alongside with the rapid development of technology serves as a challenge for law enforcers in protecting the internet users and citizens as a whole. Since there is a tendency for technology to change too rapidly for a certain provision to be made regulating its use, it is understandable why new age predators use the internet as a means of harnessing new strategies of inflicting harm. The concept of international cooperation, as showed by certain international conventions such as Convention on Cyber Crimes and Cyber Storm, encourages all countries to adapt the cyber laws. The limitations of international cooperation such as issues concerning jurisdiction, privacy, and technical difficulties made its aim pointless. The flawed nature of the international cooperation made cybercrimes continually increase. It should be understood, however, that cyber crimes are continuously evolving thus making it difficult to take action, added to the minute cooperation of other countries regarding cyber laws. International cooperation may be considered as mirage as of this moment, but as soon as the laws are strengthened and countries are united with mutual laws, these efforts would eventually come into fruition as cyber crimes rate would decrease dramatically. References Archick, K., 2002. Cybercrime: the council of Europe convention. Foreign Press Centers, U.S. Department of State. [Online] 26 Apr. Available at: http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/10088.pdf [Accessed 09 May 2011]. Babu, M., 2004. What is cybercrime? Computer Crime Research Center, [Online] 11 Oct. Available at: http://www.crime-research.org/analytics/702/ [Accessed 10 May 2011]. Bidgoli, H., 2004. The internet encyclopedia. Vol. 3. NJ: John Wiley and Sons. Cyber Law, 2011. Controversial cyber laws around the world. 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