Law Enforcement Challenges

Law Enforcement Challenges

Assignment 3

CIS 170

Law Enforcement Challenges

Imagine yourself as a victim of a cybercrime. Your home computer has been hacked in to, and all of your personal information, children’s information and credit card information has been stolen. You are a victim of identity theft. What makes this situation even worse is that finding the perpetrator’s identity is the greatest challenge for law enforcement. Identity and Anonymity is so difficult because there are so many ways to hide a person’s identity online.

Anonymity is defined as “nameless.” The reason why this I the greatest challenge follow enforcement when investigating exploitation, cyber stalking, an obscenity is because it is so hard to trace the criminal through the internet. There are so many different services out there that disguise the IP address of the criminal (Reiniger, 2010). I was once a victim of a cybercrime. My debit card information was stolen online somehow, and the person who committed this crime made a physical duplicate card. He was in a totally different state. After seeing transactions for Walmart and a Chinese restaurant in Pennsylvania I immediately cancel the card and reported it. My case was not very hard to solve because they actually had video footage of the person using the card with the stolen information. The police department was in constant contact with me sending me up to date information and keep me informed on what was going on. I was not his only victim. He was convicted and charged, but this opened my eyes to a whole new light. I never fathomed the idea of someone stealing my card information and making an actual card. I can, also, see how much more difficult it could have been if he was just using the card online and never went into an actual store. With technology today, he could have been hiding behind false IP addresses for a long time. Because of this problem, cybercrime is an issue, and more people will try to engage in these types of crimes because they know how hard it is to be identified.

Along with anonymity comes jurisdiction issue. Jurisdiction issues usually boil down to who has the authority to oversee justice in a certain situation. Sometimes the criminal is not in the same city, state, and surprisingly they are sometime not even in the same country as their victim. The basic challenges of overlapping jurisdictions is that investigators have located the criminals in a particular crime, but arresting them can be a constraint because they are not authorize to make the arrest in that particular area. For example, Police officers appointed in Texas has no authority to arrest someone in Mississippi. Just as the FBI, Jurisdiction is also one of the debatable issues in the cases of cybercrime due to the very universal nature of cyber space (Dashora, 2011). Another issue that arises when dealing with overlapping jurisdictions is the occurrence of double jeopardy. Double jeopardy is defined as subjecting a person to a second trial or punishment for the same offense for which the person has already been tried and punished. There are many solutions to the jurisdiction issue when related to cybercrime.

Cybercrimes are considered to be international, so nations should adopt reliable laws outlawing a variety of cybercrimes. These laws should govern the idea that law enforcement around the world should collaborate fast to preserve evidence (Granville, 2003). If these laws will be put into place then it will cut down on jurisdiction issues and whether or not a criminal cannot be arrested because he/she is out of jurisdiction. Secondly, there needs to be collaboration, mainly with the private sector, to proactively detect features of upcoming communications technologies liable criminal exploitation.

Yes, I do believe that law officers from different states should have the ability to work with others with a case of cybercrime is carried across the state. This not only shows efficient collaboration with different law enforcement agencies, but it also shows criminals that they cannot get away from prosecution because they enter another state. I believe this is a strong source of reliability. Law officers should be able to work with all agencies that are working towards a common goal. That goal is to prosecute a criminal who has broken the law. When faced with challenges of jurisdiction when trying to investigate a possible cybercrime law enforcement officers are faced with so many challenges and jurisdiction should be the least of their worries.

References

Dashora, K. (2011). Cyber Crime in the Society: Problems and Preventions. Journal Of

Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences, 3(1), 240-259.

Granville, J. (2003). Dot.Con: The Dangers of Cyber Crime and a Call for Proactive

Solutions. Australian Journal of Politics & History, 49(1), 102-109.

Reiniger, T., & Francoeur, J. R. (2010). JUSTICE AND SHERIFF: PRACTICAL AND

AUTHORITATIVE METHODS FOR THE ELECTRONIC ISSUANCE OF

OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED DOCUMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES. Digital

Evidence & Electronic Signature Law Review, 742-52.