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Cyber Crime
Cyber Crime is crime committed by the use of the internet or some other form of computer
network. With todays new advancement in technology cybercrime is becoming just as much an
issue as any other crime out there. What makes this type of crime so serious is that nearly
everybody in the world is connected with computers. Cyber crime is also a tricky area to catch
criminals but it is also getting better with today's advancements in technology and finding and
prosecuting these criminals is becoming easier and easier with each new advancement but with
each new advancement in the ability to catch these criminals the better technology they are also
able to acquire in hiding themselves. One of the most popular reasons for cyber crime is to steal
money by the use of hacking. Another notorious form of cyber crime is cyberbullying.
Cyberbullying is considered its own crime. Many people commit this crime and arent even
aware of it. All it takes is a little harassment of somebody online, a few name callings, and
anything use to degrade somebody by the use of the internet.
What makes it so hard to prosecute those who commit cybercrime? Police officers cannot
treat cybercrime like they do ordinary crime. There is no way to secure the crime scene. The
evidence that the crime is being committed can be literally erased as the crime is being
committed making it nearly impossible to catch a good hacker. The technology that is used to try
and catch these bad guys is a sort of tracking technology but the ability for this technology to
work is hindered by hackers erasing their tracks. A new branch of science has been formed in the
past two decades called cyber forensics which main goal is to gain digital evidence, or
information which is of value to a criminal investigation. This software works by creating a
digital duplicate of the suspects hard drive which in turn enables people nicknamed cyber
sleuths to break access codes.(Gaines/Miller, Criminal Justice 1010 7th ed.) But the hardships
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dont stop there. Now once somebody is caught where do they get in trouble? Is it from the state
that they are located in or the state that the crime is committed? Since the internet is everywhere
where is the federal government takes the decision into their own hands. Here is an example
from the Gaines/Miller CJ book. In January 2011, for example, FBI agents arrested Anthony
Steven Rodriguez in Georgia for sexually exploiting a 10 year old boy in Helena, Montana via
the internet. Although Rodriguez never set foot in Montana while allegedly committing this
crime, he will face trial in federal court because the victim (and his computer) was located in that
state.
Some nasty examples of some cyber crimes I have chosen to put into perspective the
amount of havoc that one or a few can cause with a computer. Another innovation from the
former Soviet empire were the so-called money mule scams that emerged in 2009. Using
specialized Trojan horses like Zeus and URLZone, the perps target small businesses that use
online banking, stealing the victims credentials and initiating wire transfers from their accounts,
usually totaling tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In some cases, the Trojan horse even covers up the crime by rewriting the victims online bank
statement on the fly; other times, the hacker just wipes the hard drive to keep the target off the
internet for a while. The stolen money goes to mules who've been recruited through bogus work-
at-home offers, and whose job it is to withdraw the cash and send the bulk of it to the scammers
via Moneygram. Its the perfect crime, one the FBI says has racked up $100 million in thefts, and
counting.(http://www.wired.com/2009/12/ye_cybercrimes/) So some people are out there
making millions of dollars by stealing other peopls hard earned money. And the worst part about
it is that they are getting away with it. Some people are able to do the most incredible and scary
things that I never thought possible by hackers here is an example. When Los Angeles traffic
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engineers went on strike in August 2006, the city decided not to take any chances: They
temporarily blocked most access to the computer that controls 3,200 traffic signals throughout
the City of Angels. Two of the striking engineers hacked in anyway. From a laptop, Kartik Patel
and Gabriel Murillo picked four key intersections and changed the timing on the traffic signals
so the most congested approach would hit long red lights.
The timing tweaks wreaked havoc in a city already flirting with gridlock, according to the Los
Angeles Times, snarling traffic at the Los Angeles International Airport, backing up the Glendale
Freeway and paralyzing Little Tokyo and the streets of the downtown Civic Center. It evidently
took several days for managers to figure out what was going on.
In December 2009, the engineers were sentenced to
probation.(http://www.wired.com/2009/12/ye_cybercrimes/)
Millions of Americans love to online gamble. Unfortunately this is illegal in most states
making it a cybercrime. Online gambling is extremely popular because it allows people to
gamble from the location that they reside which prohibits gambling to gamble in a virtual area
where it is perfectly legally. Most people gamble on servers that are of the country. In 2006 an
act was passed name The Unlawful Gambling Enforcement Act which makes it so that no
money can be used on gambling websites. Just because this law is created doesnt mean that its
going to stop people from gambling. What always happens with prohibitions similar to the
alcohol prohibition, people are just going to start going underground to do their work. Despite
all the efforts of lawmakers and law enforcement, the United States is the largest online betting
market in the world, with some 6$ billion wagered illegally each year.(Steven Chapman, More
Freedom Us a Sound Bet, Chicago Tribune (August 1, 2010), 21.)
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Billions and billions of SPAM emails are sent out everyday. SPAM e-mails consist of
97% of all e-mails sent. Amazingly people have created bots short for robots, which send out
the vast majority of these e-mails around 90%. To rectify the situation, in 2003 Congress passed
the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and marketing act (CAN-SPAM),
which requires all unsolicited emails to be labeled and to include opt-out provision and
descenders physical address.(15 U.S.C Sections 7701-7713 (2003). Its strange to think that
people actually take the time out of their life to set up computers to hack people or install viruses
into peoples computers. It seems like a really sad life if it comes to that. Especially for a 23 year
old Russian man in Wisconsin named Oleg Y. Nikolaenko who was caught violating the CAN-
SPAM act and was found to be the source of every 1 in 3 unwanted e-mails in the world!(Ibid.,
30) Fortunately ever since 2010 spam e-mails have seen a decline and that can be for a number
of reasons, one being that more people are on mobile devices and another being that more
spammers are being cracked down on.
The internet is a scary place, especially with all of the new social media sites with loads
and loads of personal information on them. Its now easier than ever to find something out about
a person. And also easier than ever to stalk people considering it can be done by the confines of
a computer instead of physically following people. This new form of stalking is called
cyberstalking. Some people are cyberstalked so bad that they actually fear for their lives and
their families. Cyberstalking affects around 3.4 million Americans each year. (Bureau of Justice
Statistics, Stalking Victimization in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Department of Justice,
January 2009) In 2010, for example, Travin Allen Davis of New Castle, Indiana, created a
Facebook profile with a name of an ex-girlfriend. Using this falsified account, Davis, pretending
to be his ex-girlfriend, contacted another of his ex girlfriends and threatened to post images of
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the second girlfriend having sex with Davis online if she did not resume her relationship with
Davis. Davis was charged with stalking, among other crimes. (Gaines/Miller CJ 1010) That guy
was really trying! Identity theft is also a lot more simpler to accomplish. All it takes is to mimic
somebodys Facebook account and then then you can consider yourself an identity theft.
Of all of the cybercrimes that can be committed I think the worst is cyberbullying.
Cyberbullying literally kills people. You can fix a bank account or an identity theft but you can
never fix the emotional scars of bullying. What makes cyberbullying so bad? Its the publicity
that makes it bad. Nothing is private on the internet and once something is posted anybody can
see it. So if for say Johnny is being harassed on his Facebook account then everybody can look
on his account and see. Not only does Johnny have to go through the pain of being called names
and such but he also has to go through the embarrassment of everybody being able to see it. Now
a strange thing happens when people are in front of a computer. They seem to forget that they are
talking to another human being and this makes it easier for them to say hurtful things to
somebody when in reality they would never do it. There is no escaping the internet. People are
always going to get on it and the sad part is that everybody can view something embarrassing.
Once these people see this embarrassing thing that is what the person being bullied is going to be
stigmatized as and it can ruin their whole life and thats why victims of cyberbullying try and
escape this torture with suicide. Once the bullying has started it will never stop.
Cyberbullying is one of the crimes that is being strictly pressured to get stopped. Schools
are having assemblies and spreading the awareness around to try and stop bullying because its
such a heinous crime and causes insurmountable pain to families. Cyberbullying is one of the
crimes that will probably never come to s stop because some humans are ignorant or are just
truly evil and the reasoning for why they do the things they do im sure they dont fully
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understand. In October 2012, ABC News reported that the video Amanda Todd had posted to
YouTube had been viewed more than 17 million times. In the video entitled My story:
Struggling, bullying, suicide, self harm, the British Columbia teenager uses flash cards to tell
about her experiences of being blackmailed and bullied. A little over a month after posting the
video on September 7, 2012, Amanda hanged herself in her home on October 10, 2012.
Amanda began using video chat in the seventh grade to meet new people online, and one
stranger convinced the teenager to bare her breasts on camera. However, the stranger attempted
to use the photo to blackmail Amanda, and the picture began circulating on the internet,
including a Facebook profile that used the topless photograph as the profile image. The Internet
stalker she flashed kept stalking her, Amandas mother, Carol Todd, told the Vancouver Sun.
Every time she moved schools he would go undercover and become a Facebook friend.
(http://nobullying.com/six-unforgettable-cyber-bullying-cases/) This is an exapmle of the
devestating affect of cyberbullying. So what is being done? Shouldnt something be done about
these people who make people feel so ashamed that they commit suicide? Well some laws are in
effect that do just that. Some forms of cyberbullying can fall under the category of harassment,
hazing, and electronic communication harassment. In some rare cases such as this people get
away with it by only going to jail for 30 days! It was during the summer after his high school
graduation that 18-year-old Tyler Clementi began sharing that he was gay. Clementi's roommate
during his freshman year at Rutgers University, Dharun Ravi, used a webcam in September 2010
to stream footage of Clementi kissing another man. According to the Tyler Clementi Foundation,
the teenager learned through his room mates Twitter feed that he had become a topic of
ridicule in his new social environment. On September 22, 2010, Clementi committed suicide by
jumping off the George Washington Bridge.
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Aftermath: Less than a week after Clementis death, Ravi and Molly Wei, the hallmate whose
computer Ravi used to spy on Clementi, were charged with invasion of privacy. In May 2011,
Reuters reported that Wei entered a plea deal requiring that she testify against Ravi. A jury
convicted Ravi on 15 criminal charges, and he earned early release 20 days after beginning a 30-
day jail sentence.
The Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act would require colleges and
universities to have anti-harassment policies and expanded bullying prevention programs. In
February 2013, the Star-Ledger reported that the bill was reintroduced in both the U.S. Senate
and the U.S. House of Representatives. (http://nobullying.com/six-unforgettable-cyber-
bullying-cases/)
And here comes the real bad news. We are losing the war on cybercrime. Hackers are
getting better and we just arent inventing adequate technology fast enough to prevent hackers.
And its getting harder and harder to track down these criminals and prosecute them. We are
however nullifying cyber bully's process with the new laws that are in place. As well as cyber
bullying campaigns, people are becoming more aware that what they are doing is wrong and
could be devastating. Its hard to say if we will ever successfully develop technology to track
cyber villains or even to prevent them from committing the crime in the first place. So far the
best defense we have against cyber crimes is to educate people about these crimes that they may
unknowingly be committing. Millions of people download things illegally because they think
that its alright and when they do it they get away with it. As well as seeing others around them
doing it creates a sense that what they're doing is causing no harm. So far the easiest place to
commit crime and get away with it is the internet. Is there any stopping it?

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Works Cited

"The Decades 10 Most Dastardly Cybercrimes | Threat Level | WIRED."Wired.com. Conde
Nast Digital, 31 Dec. 2009. Web. 25 July 2014.
Miller. "Cyber Crime." CJ 1010 Criminal Justice. By Gaines. 7th ed. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag.
Print.
"Six Unforgettable Cyberbullying Cases." Http://nobullying.com/. N.p., n.d. Web.
"Utah State Legislature." Utah State Legislature. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 July 2014.
Bureau of Justice Statistics, Stalking Victimization in the United States (Washington, D.C.:
Department of Justice, January 2009
Steven Chapman, More Freedom Us a Sound Bet, Chicago Tribune (August 1, 2010), 21.)
15 U.S.C Sections 7701-7713 (2003)
Ibid., 30