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

Re:As soon as they ...

[spleen_blender]

Let's just do away with different degrees of murder and manslaughter too then. Since motive doesn't matter apparently. Accidentally kill a guy in a car accident? Just as bad as plotting and executing your ex wife since the result of their actual actions are the same. DERP.

Ah, but there *is* "gun crime."

[timothy]

Billboards talk sternly about special penalties for "gun crime," and in the UK the phrase "knife crime" is common, too. (I've heard that one a few times in the U.S., but not often. But over there, there's http://www.knifecrimes.org/uk-knife-crime-victims.html)

A distinction to be drawn, I think: there are pure category crime descriptions that people *don't* object to (I'm thinking of "white collar crime" / "violent crime"), but these seem different than "gun crime" or "knife crime" (no one talks about "car crime," despite the huge number of vehicular homicides, etc.), because these describe a crime according to its impact / immediate level of fear or risk, rather than on the instrumentalities used to perpetrate it. And I've never seen "gun crime" to mean "theft of lawfully owned guns," only "crimes committed with guns as instrumentality."

("White collar crime" is a nice sweeping term that includes embezzlement, some acts of bribery, strategic data destruction, etc - no one needs to call it "adding machine crime," or "degausser crime"; "violent crime" takes in rape, murder, etc, so no need for screwdriver crime, genitals crime, etc.)

On this basis, "cyber crime" actually has *some* justification, even though it's an annoying term; it seems a fair distinction based the context it which it takes place.

timothy