Why 'Cyber Crime' Should Just Be Called 'Crime'

netzar writes "CAUSE executive director Neil Schwartzman, in a post on CircleID, urges governments and law enforcement to treat cyber crime as what it really is: 'crime': 'When someone is mugged, harassed, kidnapped or raped on a sidewalk, we don't call it "sidewalk crime" and call for new laws to regulate sidewalks. It is crime, and those who commit crimes are subject to the full force of the law. For too long, people have referred to spam in dismissive terms: just hit delete, some say, or let the filters take care of it. Others — most of us, in fact — refer to phishing, which is the first step in theft of real money from real people and institutions, as "cyber crime." It's time for that to stop... This isn't just email. This isn't a war. This isn't "cyber." This is crime.'"

Comments

Also Naive

[betterunixthanunix]

Many modern criminal investigations require specialists. Rape, murder, arson, and so forth -- commonly investigated by specialists. Why should a crime that involves computers suddenly have a special category, when other forms of crime do not?

Re:As soon as they ...

[AuMatar]

The idea behind hate crime is that its twofold.

1)Kill your wife/parents/lover and there's a personal reason for killing that specific person. Kill for reason of skin color or religion and it's random-- anyone in that group is a possible next target. Due to this, the killer is more dangerous to the general population than a normal killer.

2)There was a time when white men who killed black men in the south were almost always let off, due to the prejudice of the juries. This allowed the whites to be held accountable in federal court for federal crimes, and circumvented a corrupt localized system of justice. Obviously not a good long term solution for this, but it was a necessary short term one.