High Tech Crimes and Crime-Fighting Technologies - Research Paper Example

High Tech Crimes and Crime-Fighting Technologies Introduction Individuals who perpetrate criminal acts in the United States exploit technology for major technology-driven motives: expansion of their operations, protection, transportation, record keeping, planning, domination, coercion, suppression, communication and harm. Whenever revolutionary and socially excessive exploitation of technology takes place for any of these major motives, new criminal activities arise (Moore, 2010). Hence, the 21st century has been portrayed as embodying the essence of the postmodern information era. One of the most widespread high tech crimes in the United States are those aiming for illegal access to computerized data. Although the damage or stealing of data embodies one type of illegal criminal operations, the exploitation of technology in immediate expansion of criminal activities comprises another (Holt & Schell, 2010). Unlawful operations rooted in sophisticated technologies are as diverse as are the technologies they use. Nuclear blackmail could stand for the utmost technologically founded criminal activity, whereas phone ‘phreaking’ (Holt & Schell, 2010), or the act of using prohibited technical data to circumvent long-distance fees, and telephone deception are cases in point of low-end criminal activities that rely on sophisticated technology for their performance. Some Recent Crime-Fighting Technologies The Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX) system is one of the state-of-the-art technologies used by Florida and other states to fight crimes, including high-tech ones (Baldauf & Stair, 2010, 641). This is an experimental venture instigated to enhance the communication of criminal data among federal, state, and local police force. As indicated by the name, the system was created to endow the police force with the instruments necessary to combat terrorism. This system can also be employed to fight crimes. Furthermore, law enforcement departments are transforming their investigative methods and their protocol. Technologies that are used by law enforcers and the court system nowadays are biometrics, DNA catalogs, CCTV, and others (Baldauf & Stair, 2010). Fundamentally, technology contributes to the enhancement of public safety and welfare in a number of ways. For instance, upgraded criminal identification and documentation processes prevent individuals or groups from acquiring weapons or power and influence. Less-fatal devices and bulletproof vests alleviate threat and danger to police officers (Baldauf & Stair, 3010). CCTV permits juvenile crime witnesses and victims to give evidence in a less-threatening environment. Crime mapping enables police officers to track crime-prone locations. DNA technology promotes just prosecution (Moore, 2010). These are just some of the most common state-of-the-art technologies used by law enforcement and the court system nowadays. The Gap between High Tech Crime and Crime-Fighting Technologies Fighting high tech crimes is not a main precedence for a number of reasons. For instance, it is extremely hard to regulate the Internet due to inadequacy in needed resources to deal with this high tech crime. A public protest against high tech crimes is absent because people are more concerned with violent criminal acts (Moore, 2010). Ultimately, large numbers of police officers believe that their duty is not to keep watch over high tech crime, but instead to arrest offenders and maintain peace and order (Moore, 2010). In spite of these dilemmas, training initiatives on fighting high tech crime are being developed and employed in several law enforcement agencies. Technologically sophisticated crimes raise a complicated dilemma to police officers for a number of reasons. Primarily, high tech crimes are very difficult to identify and monitor because criminals can silently perpetrate them from hidden computer units. Also, although a number of organizations have prepared to prevent and eliminate high tech crime, numerous police officers are ill-prepared to solve the problem (Holt & Schell, 2010). Technology advances at a remarkable speed while the strategies and training of law enforces, which customarily are backward-looking, do not (Moore, 2010). It is apparent that law enforcement agencies of the coming decades have to deal with this dilemma by focusing on identification and monitoring, and by equipping themselves with the needed technological equipment and skills to solve it. Conclusions Ideas of high tech crime, law enforcement and safety, alongside continuously intricate features of these ideas, and spates of high tech crimes have been illustrated as a means of recognizing how high tech, inventive criminal operations and social misuse arise, affect the larger society and afterwards spread. High tech crimes and social mistreatment are often unavoidable detrimental by-products of technology research and development, and at the onset new criminal acts is comparatively more complicated and less controllable due to the fact that undercover and other specialists have a tendency not to be capable of finding out what is taking place across space and time. The outcome is a wave of innovative and commonplace criminal operations rooted in technological abilities of offenders against those of law enforcement agencies. Broad assumptions regarding a formal paradigm of high tech crimes, law enforcement and safety were formulated that integrate the notions of high tech crime waves and technological intricacy. These notions are designed to reinforce, but not replace, current paradigms of technology advancement and dissemination and crime causality (Holt & Schell, 2010). Certainly, several of the ideas discussed in this essay are known previously and adopt traditional perspectives and time-honored principles of experienced and knowledgeable professionals as well as varied empirical discoveries concerning technology, security, crime, and law enforcement within numerous segments of society. Therefore, this essay did not put emphasis on the reasons crime takes place, but instead the way it takes place with regard to adaptive and inventive exploitation of technology. These concerns are important for evaluating the technological character, level, and possible risks created by terrorism and criminal behavior, and possibly for allotting resources for preventing, prohibiting, replacing, or if not regulating these dangerous acts. Additional issues to be taken into account are whether the fairly unstructured ideas discussed in this essay can be more systematically and theoretically grounded in order to compellingly and rationally strengthen the argument for the existence and nature of high tech crimes thus advocating a broader understanding of high tech crime, law enforcement and safety; and the capability to gather or produce adequate information on intricacy, level, and dissemination variables for verifying assumptions connected to innovative, commonplace criminal behavior. References Baldauf, K. & Stair, R. (2010). Succeeding with Technology. Boston, MA: Course Technology. Holt, T. & Schell, B. (2010). Corporate Hacking and Technology-Driven Crime: Social Dynamics and Implications. New York: IGI Global snippet. Moore, R. (2010). Investigating High-Technology Computer Crime. New York: Anderson Publishing Company. Read More