CCJ 239 Criminal Justice : About Digital Crime and Digital Terrorism

1.Describe the overall impact (e.g., economic, social, etc.) of utilizing information technologies in combatting digital crime and digital terrorism.

2.Explain the existing challenges that result from the independent nature of the law enforcement agencies within the U.S. with regards to computer crimes and terrorism. Next, propose one (1) strategy that the U.S. could use in order to mitigate the challenges in question.

3.Explain the fundamental manner in which the U.S. could align the efforts of federal agencies in order to better protect the nation against digital crimes and terrorism.

4.Give your opinion of the key future trends in digital crime and digital terrorism. Next, provide one (1) overall strategy that the U.S. could use in order to combat digital crime and digital terrorism.

Introduction:

The report presents a brief overview of the digital crime and digital terrorism. It also explains the impact of cyber crime and terrorism.The report describes the key challenges of law enforcement agencies in U.S. It also explains the future trends of digital crime and terrorism.

1: Digital crime: 

This crime is also known by the name of computer crime. The digital crimes are done by the internet but now day’s criminal activities are increasing through a digital device like a cell phone.

Digital terrorism: It is also known as Cyber terrorism. It is a criminal offense for the people and it is done by the internet network to conduct violent activities. In this crime, criminals threat to people and harm their body and life to achieve political gains through pressure and coercion. The digital crime and digital terrorism are two different crimes and defined separately (Czosseck, Ottis & Talihärm, 2013).

Impact of utilizing information technologies in digital crime and digital terrorism 

There are the various impact of utilizing information technology in combating digital crime and digital terrorism. They are discussed below.

• It affects the economy of the countries and sustainability of the companies. It is reducing the financial liquidity of the company. Through digital crime, criminals attack the small businesses, therefore, the companies bear the huge loss in the market. It also affects the intellectual property of the company.
• The monetary losses are increasing with utilizing of information technology in digital crime and digital terrorism (Nacos, 2016).
• The criminals take full advantages of secrecy; anonymity and interconnectedness are provided by the internet and computer.
• Drug trafficking, harassment, and threats are increasing due to utilizing of information technology in digital crime and digital terrorism. Due to cyber crime and cyber terrorism cyber bullying, child pornography, blackmailing, hacking and stalking are increasing day by day. Therefore, affect the business as well as the economy of the country.
• Criminals steal the personal and confidential information of people, therefore they face many difficulties (Dunn Cavelty, 2013).

2: Key challenges of the law enforcement agencies 

There are many challenges faced the various law enforcement agencies. The major challenges include the intelligence, surveillance, reorganization, redefining and restructuring. The level of incorruption and unsecured public Wi-Fi system are other key challenges which are faced by the various law enforcement agencies. The agencies should take accurate and correct action to reduce these challenges. The agencies should identify and evaluate the local computer resources, skills, and abilities of the computer. The agencies must also identify and analyze the professional resources which are available to assist their agencies to conduct local inquiry and investigation. Training programs should be conducted for the digital and computer crime. The computer crimes become more common and prevalent so further resource will have to be allocated and assigned for the investigation. The members of the agencies should be trained to handle the digital crime investigation. The two effective strategies which are used by the United States in order to mitigate some of the challenges and issues are such as policing model and military model for combating terrorism. The military model works excellently against an enemy who can be killed in battle and conflict. On the other hand, police model works excellent when the enemies and rivalries are treated as suspects. These models mitigate and reduce the key challenges of law enforcement agencies (Saini, Rao & Panda, 2012).

3: Fundamental manner to prevent the digital crime and terrorism 

The cyber and digital infrastructure forms and shapes the support of the nation’s budget. The cyber environment offers and suggests the potentials for the economic growth and fast technological advancement. The law enforcement agencies should ensure the resilience and security of software which controls and enables the networks and systems. The United States will make aware the nation in order to control the threats which are posed by technology related abuses, mistreatments and their forces on national security and digital crime. The policies will include the proper development of both tactical and strategic intelligence which is related to the national security threats and criminals posed through the digital crime and computer crime. Through FBI cyber programs, FBI leadership, collaborations, and U.S can protect the nation against digital terrorism and digital crime.

The Federal agencies maintain coordination and cooperation with other agencies to reduce the digital crime and digital terrorism. The federal agencies should install and update anti-spyware technology and antivirus software to protect the nation against digital crime and digital terrorism. The agencies should keep the firewall software to protect the computer from hackers. The FBI conducts safe online surfing programs to prevent digital crime and digital terrorism. The federal agencies should launch some awareness programs to aware the people towards various cyber crimes and terrorism. The law enforcement agencies should provide training to employees for handling the digital crime activities. In this way, federal agencies can control on these crimes and protect the nation against various digital crime and terrorism (Anderson, Barton, Böhme, Clayton, Van Eeten, Levi & Savage, 2013).

4: Key future trends in digital crime and terrorism 

Digital crime and digital terrorism will be the biggest foremost challenge for the law enforcement agencies, therefore; people have to bear the monetary loss. The internet is used for blackmailing. Thus, attention should be required while using the internet. On the other hand, digital crime will also increase in future. It is the fraudulent and deceptive use of stolen online information and data. Hence, difficulties are faced by the people due to digital crime and terrorism. The Internet is increasing the various criminal activities like human trafficking, child pornography, violation of intellectual property rights and selling of stolen goods. Cyber crimes and criminal activities will increase in future (Conteh & Schmick, 2016). There will be increase and enhance the use of use of computerization as a cyber and criminal device by the current organized and pre arranged criminal gangs. There will be an increase in the use of information technology based device and methodologies which will capable of capturing and acquiring the confidential information and destroying communication technology. Malware would be inserted on the chips to gain access to information from internet and computers. As a result, it will steal the personally identifiable information of people that would be used in future digital crime and terrorism. Now it is assumed that the scope of cyber crime and terrorism will increase with using of information technology in these crimes. The government and law enforcement agencies should make strict rules and policies to reduce and prevent these crimes (Cheddad, Condell, Curran, & Mc Kevitt, 2010).

U.S uses various strategies in order to combat digital crime and digital terrorism. The homeland security department is doing work with federal agencies to prevent and control the cyber crime and terrorism. They are providing training and develop standardized methods to technical experts. On the other side, law enforcement agencies are also creating an accurate assessment which will assist them to prevent and reduce these crimes and terrorism (Douglas, Burgess, Burgess & Ressler, 2013).

Conclusion 

Now it is concluded that digital crime and digital terrorism are the big challenges for the nation. So it should be controlled by the government. The government should make effective strategy and policies to prevent these crimes and terrorism.

References 

Anderson, Barton, Böhme, Clayton, Van Eeten, Levi & Savage, 2013). Measuring the cost of cybercrime. In The economics of information security and privacy (pp. 265-300). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Cheddad, A., Condell, J., Curran, K., & Mc Kevitt, P. (2010). Digital image steganography: Survey and analysis of current methods. Signal processing, 90(3), 727-752.

Conteh, N. Y., & Schmick, P. J. (2016). Cybersecurity: risks, vulnerabilities and countermeasures to prevent social engineering attacks. International Journal of Advanced Computer Research, 6(23), 31.

Czosseck, C., Ottis, R., & Talihärm, A. M. (2013). Estonia after the 2007 cyber attacks: Legal, strategic and organisational changes in cyber security. Case Studies in Information Warfare and Security: For Researchers, Teachers and Students, 72.

Douglas, J., Burgess, A. W., Burgess, A. G., & Ressler, R. K. (2013). Crime classification manual: A standard system for investigating and classifying violent crime. John Wiley & Sons.

Dunn Cavelty, M. (2013). From cyber-bombs to political fallout: Threat representations with an impact in the cyber-security discourse. International Studies Review, 15(1), 105-122.

Nacos, B. (2016). Mass-mediated terrorism: Mainstream and digital media in terrorism and counterterrorism. Rowman & Littlefield.

Saini, H., Rao, Y. S., & Panda, T. C. (2012). Cyber-crimes and their impacts: A review. International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications, 2(2), 202-9.