Technology in Policing - Essay Example

First, crime on the net is on the rise, identity theft is another issue of high importance, which is the key tool in fighting terrorism and financial crimes. Thus crime prevention can occur at two levels: one to prevent crimes that are repeating in nature and the other is by analyzing possible future seat of crime. Thus, through analysis and research of recorded crimes and criminal investigations it is possible to get some statistics into the kind of future prospect of how this kind of crime will be dealt in the future by the judicial system or by the police.

In case of Internet crimes; therefore, repeated crimes may not always occur as there are always some ingenious method by which the criminal escapes the law - this gap is to be identified as art of the risk management study, which should be more extensive and which should focus more on how the malpractice defenses may be made stronger. In March 2008, a former employee of Compass Bank stole a hard drive and the database containing customer information and all their financial status was breached.

This employee used a credit card encoder and several blank cards to create several new cards and withdraw money from several customer accounts1. What are the monitoring approaches that can be fathomed by the state and the court or by the security organization In 2007, the US Federal Trade Commission reported that 8.3 million Americans had been victims of identity theft over a 12-month period2. In cyberspace, such identity theft may make way for further offences. Like Newburn says that in cyberspace three acts of trespassing occur, that involve viruses that immediately attack or attack at a later date citing the example of the shut-down of websites of yahoo, Amazon, ebay, and CNN which incurred a loss of 1.2 billion. He also cites the example of the Timothy Llyod, the sacked employee of Omega Engineering who planted a software time bomb that detonated 20 days after he left which incurred a loss of 10 million and 80 job losses.

In 2007 transatlantic fashion retailer TK Maxx was hit by hackers, who stole 45.7 million customer credit card details (Newburn 2008). By this hacking rule, even the military system is under threat and policing or the crime fighting should extend in this front effectively. However, the main problem with policing cyber crime is the amount and volume of information that is available and that cannot be restricted effectively all the time and across the boundaries of a specific place, where cyber crime laws may not even exist.

In such a case probable cyber crime laws need to be implemented by predicting probable loss of information security or theft of anything that can range from information to intellectual property rights to manhandling of organizational data or system by a third party. The whole gray space that exists between identifying cyber crime that vary between countries and the definitions of it are so varied across geographical spaces that it is impossible to always thwart such mischief from happening or being conducted from across the boundary of the US.

Newburn also cites the example of Russia, which has become a major source of child pornography, as it has no laws against it and therefore becoming the host for broadcasting such films by other illegal traders. Ironically, such content is not being produced there