Difficulties in Maintaining Order and Law in Cyber-Space - Essay Example

Difficulties in maintaining order and law in cyber-space Introduction In the contemporary world, cybercrimehas been one of the swiftest growing areas in crime. The numbers of criminals committing crimes are increasingly high, and try to exploit the convenience, speed and the anonymity of the available technologies to commit the crimes. The global nature provided in the internet has developed a platform for criminals all over the world to commit any crime irrespective of the location (Cain, 2001). It is for this reason that most have opted to employ and adapt domestic offline controls to shield themselves from such cyberspace crimes. The role played by the internet to revolutionize the computer world has never been evident there before. The internet in definition may refer to a worldwide broadcasting capacity, information dissemination mechanism, and the medium for interaction and collaboration between individuals and own computers irrespective of geographic locality. The internet idea and research about the same came into place in the 1960s during a research on packet switching on networks such as ARPANET. Since then, more research took place and in the 1980s, the access to ARPANET system expanded during when National Science Foundation made development to the Computer Science Network (Moore & Seymour, 2005). Later on, in 1982 there were standardisation of the Internet protocol Suite and the worldwide network consisting of fully interconnected networks (internet) become operational. There has been numerous advancements in the field that has enabled people to make the world a global village. Cybercrime entails any form of a criminal act that deals with computer and hacking (Jewkes, &Yar, 2013). It also includes crimes committed through the internet such as hate crimes, internet fraud, telemarketing, identity theft, online money account thefts and spread of incitement or terror messages. In the modern world, terrorists are using the internet for recruitment and radicalization posing a great threat to both national and global security. The study considers the impacts of the internet on these crimes and the effect on criminal justice system. Globalization The use of internet has reduced the world to a global village (Cain, 2001). People can easy connect with each, at different parts of the world without travelling and interact effectively. Thus, globalization refers to the increased interconnectedness of people, societies, and countries across the world such that events at one locality can influence different localities in the world in a very short period. The propelling factor of globalization has been the increased use of internet in people’s day-to-day lives. However, the use of internet has led to increased cyber-crimes thus challenging its effectiveness on connecting the world. Globalization through the internet has led to a series of cyber-crimes ranging from spread of hate, spread of computer malwares, hackings of accounts, drugs sale, and even spread of terrorism activities (Jewkes &Yar, 2013). Most of the capitalist class according to Marxist commits these crimes, as they are able to shape the law such that their exploitative crimes find no way in the criminal justice system. They also use their powerful nature to ensure that even if there will be law enforcement, it will be weak. The danger posed by globalization on human security is beyond the perception of an interconnected world (Alshalan, 2006). Through the changing trends in information technology, there is more advancement in security systems but also criminals have also upped their game. The technological determinism theory indicates the changes in technology have changed the human behaviours and criminals are committing endless crimes through the technology. The acts of terrorists are currently effective due to the available connectivity thus the ability to strategies on where to target, who and how, in an easy way (Cain, 2001). The changes in technology have made available to terrorists an easy of communication thus; they are able to recruit members through sharing information on the internet and organization of their gangs. According to Gottschalk, (2010), criminals prefer an operation on the internet as less governance exists. The displacement theory indicates that these criminals been unable to commit crimes in other means thereby opting to use the internet to commit different crimes to earn money. For example, drug traffickers may use the internet to market their products when all the other means outside the net are not available. Another implication of globalization is the rise counterfeits drugs and software distributions, and identity theft. There are also numerous cases of credit card fraud and illegal transactions infiltrating legitimate business thus posing a major economic challenge. Marketing of illegal drugs has also become easy using the internet where they may use coded messages to market their products and with little fear of tracking (Gupta, 2013). Impacts of cybercrime With the knowledge, that little surveillance is possible on the internet, criminals have taken the advantage to commit numerous white-collar crimes with little or no subjection to the justice system. Criminals are able to perform identity theft, website defacement, and in organizational level, criminals may hack customer databases and may result to theft of intellectual property (Jewkes &Yar, 2013). It may also result to loss of confidential business information resulting to the closure of such businesses. Through hacking of systems, criminals may engage in embezzlement of funds, account fraud, manipulation of organization systems to distort financial positions, and insider trading (Saini et al., 2012). The Selection Crime Prevention theory that the managements should concentrate on the analysis of circumstances that may lead to the occurrence of such crimes and manipulate the settings of their occurrence and put measures or sanction to curb the committers (Kirwan & Power, 2011). Criminal may mask themselves as legitimate service providers and even trick the targets of being well-wishers only to finally con innocent people (Alshalan, 2006). These crimes cost the world hundred millions of dollars annually. The crimes have resulted to increased costs of securing business networks, insurance and those of recovering from cyber-attacks. The internet has also resulted in increased victimization of people online through hate speech, threats, cyber stalking, and pedophilia. Criminals are able to locate and manipulate certain people on which they may later commit rape or robbery (Saini et al., 2012). These usually happen after arrangements on how to meet after interaction in the social media. Innocent people who are unaware of such possibilities mostly fall into these criminals’ traps. The routine activity theory explains the presence of such innocent people in sites may motivate offenders who may detect an attractive target and in considering that on the internet low guardianship is available, they may commit a cyber-crime (Kirwan & Power, 2011). Nations should net wide the judicial systems to incorporate these crimes in punishable crimes globally. Difficulties in policing the cybercrimes The increased level of cyber-crimes is alarming. It is necessary to design a framework that will protect innocent people and organizations from these humiliating crimes. Policing the internet may be a hard task but with appropriate measures in place, these cases may be minimal (Gupta, 2013). There are many challenges such as regulatory differences across the world, difficulty in monitoring web content, and the number of web activities may be many to go through them. Law enforcers may be able to monitor and investigate these cyber-crimes, but this can only happen when information on crime or possible crime is available to them (Gottschalk, 2010). With such information, they may be in position mine crucial information about the crimes and the offenders. The anonymity and the speed at which these crimes happen pose a major change in curbing them (Jewkes &Yar, 2013). Other difficulties involved in policing the internet include the high cost of investigation due the complexity in bridging the multijurisdictional boundaries, difficulties in decoding cyber encryptions, the costs, and priorities of investigation and inability to detect earlier cases of crimes. To control some of the cyber-crimes, there should be architectural compliance measures and regulations to ensure site developers have a way to tame crimes such as hacking (McQuade, 2006). In addition, employers should be in a position to have a system that protects all the information of their employees from cyber-crime. There should also be global cooperation among nations to seek appropriate means of curbing these crimes (Cain, 2001). Application of technology in curbing crimes Technology has created a wide range of crime problems, but has also facilitated prevention, investigation, detection, and punishment of crime. There has also been infringement of human rights in the way the law has been responding to computer crimes. The use of CCTVs has greatly influenced the way of policing certain crimes. The Panopticon inspired design indicates that such use of technology can prevent crimes in that people are never entirely sure of any monitoring (Kirwan & Power, 2011). The use of highly coded databases in institutions has also enabled data prevention from probable criminals. Through site monitoring, it is now possible to detect the spread of hate in social media thereby subjection of the law. Currently, wide range of technologies exists in support of justice systems to increase the efficiency in justice administration (Moore & Seymour, 2005). Judicial database systems have made it possible to extract and to store information with minimal time usage thereby increasing the rate of justice administration. The use of DNA technology has also influenced the judicial systems effectively though data mining in establishment of the crime committers (Mamalian et al., 1999). Conclusion Globalisation has made life of accessing information easy, but has also increased the rate of crimes in the world. If proper precautions and more tough rules on cyber-crimes are not in place, the world may end up nursing many injuries caused by cyber criminals. It is necessary for nations to join and come up with suitable rules through net widening of judicial systems to control these crimes. People and organizations using computers and internet in their activities should be aware of damages due to cyber criminals. References Alshalan, A 2006, Cyber-crime fear and victimization: An analysis of a national survey (Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State University). Cain, M 2001, International Crime and Globalization, Criminal Justice Matters, Vol.46, No.1,pp. 34-35. Gupta, M. (2013). Cyber-crimes. New Delhi: Centrum Press. Jewkes, Y., & Yar, M. 2013, Handbook of Internet crime. Routledge, London Kirwan, G., & Power, A 2011, The psychology of cyber-crime concepts and principles. Hershey, IGI Global Chocolate Avenue, Hershey, Pennsylvania,USA. McQuade, S. C 2006, Understanding and managing cybercrime, Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, London Gottschalk, P 2010, Policing Cyber Crime. Bookboon, London Moore, S., & Seymour, M. 2005, Global technology and corporate crisis: Strategies, planning and communication in the information age. Taylor & Francis, London Mamalian, C. A., & La Vigne, N. G 1999, The use of computerized crime mapping by law enforcement: Survey results. US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice. Accessed from http://faculty.uml.edu/jbyrne/44.203/Use%20of%20Computerized%20Crime%20Mapping%20by%20Law%20Enforcement.pdf Saini, H., Rao, Y. S., & Panda, T. C. 2012 “Cyber-crimes and their impacts: A review,” International Journal of Engineering Research & Applications (IJERA),Vol. 2, No.2, pp.202-209. Read More