Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Great idea. It will happen about the same time that "white collar crimes" are treated the same as mugging or burglary.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Because we're all fed up with the cyber-whatever headlines.
We call it cyber-crime because of the special skills and knowledge required to appropriately investigate and prosecute it. I really don't want a beat cop who makes arrests for street muggings responsible for investigating high-tech crime. Specially trained members of law enforcement will probably be required to enforce especially complex types of crime.
What are our elected representatives going to do to convince us they deserve to keep being paid by our tax dollars if they can't make themselves look busy by making things illegaler?!?!
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Local cops generally don't care about contractual fraud unless you deliver a complete evidence package all tied up with a nice blue ribbon. They'll call it "civil" and blow you off.
Only big cases get any attention.
There is enough violence to keep the cops busy.
So, it's like saying that we shouldn't call people being shot from a car a "drive-by shooting" or someone being run over by a car a "hit-and-run"?
Ack, this isn't working. BadAnalogyGuy, help me out here.
Cyber sex is sex! You can really get pregnant, not just cyber pregnant.
Be sure to use a condom!
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
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?
Palm trees and 8
But 'cyber crime' pays off in the form of increased profits, boosted ratings, legislation...
Boogiemen are big business, as /. knows too well...
When you are truly in an IT job, you are all of them. After you're done fixing the plumbing that is.
Should we also stop calling crime that affects property "property crime", and crime that involves violent acts "violent crime", and crime that involves criminal organizations "organized crime".
Because, you know, all that is crime, too. In fact, as with "cyber-crime", the fact that it is crime is why it has "crime" in its name. Adding a more specific adjective to a noun doesn't negate the basic meaning of a noun.
What are you guys on about?
Street crime is a loose term for criminal offences taking place in public places. It has commonly been used for the term mugging around here.
There is a great distinction in Cyber Crime - like they mention phishing. If I had gone door to door pretending to be with your bank and requested any of your credit cards, you'd either be considered an idiot and/or I could be charged with some form of fraud. Fraud is it's own kind of Crime - it has it's own laws regarding it, why can't Cyber stuff be the same?
I get what you're trying to say, people don't seem to take "Cyber Crime" as serious as regular crime, but they are very different, in many ways, and segregation already exists in other forms of Law.
There is enough violence to keep the cops busy.
Don't forget all those damn kids and their "wacky baccy"!!!
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
There is absolutely nothing illegal about me turning to the person next to me and asking them for their banking credentials. The only difference is that if I do it in real life, they will laugh at me. If I do it on the internet, I am more likely to succeed.
On another tangent here, the author misses the point. The real crime is that the banks make it too easy for someone other than the account holder to access the account. They make it too easy to get credit based on stolen credentials. The banks should demand token based authentication for online transactions. There are solutions that will send a one time PIN to a smart phone so a separate dongle isn't even necessary. The mechanisms for nearly bullet proof online commerce are available. The system is simply setup in a way that it is more affordable to write off fraud than it is to actively combat it.
In the 1970s a court case in California during an evidence hearing had an interesting discussion. The evidence of an intellectual property case was bounced as the evidence was all digital in nature. How can you have a theft when you still possess the original? Several avenues were considered and the result were the first computer laws detailing crimes that happened on computers versus normal property thefts. Much abridged version, but this is basically a United States issue that isn't necessarily found in other countries as their property rights are considered differently. Though, the United States has managed to export many of the concerns along with the Internet. Much of this is detailed by Thomas Whiteside in a book called "Computer Capers" circa 1978,
--- Location Unknown
All distinctions involving crime, including (perhaps most especially!) the distinction between "crime" and "not-crime", are political in nature.
It is less easy to see a difference between murdering someone say to steal their money and murdering someone because they are homosexual.
Is there? Both cases the person is dead...Does someone who just killed a person for $5 in pocket change deserve to get less punishment, just because his motivations were different?
In any event, the whole manslaughter/murder 1st/2nd/3rd provides more than enough granularity for sentencing purposes.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
In other places it may be grand theft auto, plus circumvention of an access control device (DMCA) with keys that have software chips in them.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.