Law Enforcement Challenges

Law Enforcement Challenges

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

Law Enforcement Challenges

Question Number 1

The biggest challenge faced by law enforcement agencies in investigating exploitation, cyberstalking and obscenity is the anonymity or secretive power of the criminals (Ranakoti et al., 2017). The power of a criminal is in the fact of anonymity, which gives the perpetrator an advantage over the victim. For instance, the perpetrator could be around the victim every time, and it is unknown to the person being victimized that who exactly that person is and where he lives, etc. This issue can aggravate quickly to the most lethal crimes real-life crimes like homicides. The perpetrators have various ways to communicate with the victim and harassing them on the internet by remaining anonymous, such that sending threatening message and emails over the internet. They can also threaten the victim by spreading malicious rumors online through group chats or posting on wicked sites.

The harassment commonly occurs in the form of mail bombs, such that sending the victim a virus which infuses the system of the victim and also by spamming the electronic junk mail of the target. This is all possible by masking the real identity of the perpetrator which is possible through using different online technological hacks, by which a perpetrator puts himself in secrecy, and the victim does not know who is precisely the doer of such criminal acts. There are significant advantages of this anonymity like the privacy of the users. However, this anonymity is negatively used by illegal minded people available on the internet from the accountability of their malicious acts. In any case, the perpetrator is identified, then he/she is pinpointed to the law or jurisdiction and subjected to penalties and punishments.

Question Number 2

The next challenges are faced by the jurisdiction while fighting against the cyber-crime. The jurisdiction is pertinent to the type of agency or court which has authority for administering justice in a specific way according to the scope of these authorities. Since the cybercrime and felonies on the internet have no limits or boundaries, so they could be crossing over the jurisdiction within nanoseconds, without recognizing that they are in the foreign jurisdiction. The agencies of law-enforcement should determine the geographic location of such criminal acts even before the initiation of the investigation.

The presence of perpetrator in another country, state or location than where the victim is present makes it complicated for the jurisdiction to catch them. The laws are different in every state or country, which makes it hard for these law-enforcing agencies to explore or investigate the criminal or crime. Even if they pursue the case across the border of a state, the support or assistance of the other state's agencies is not comfortable as when there occurred no actual violence other than just the harassment over the internet. Moreover, the federal law has the authority of restricting the ability of these agencies from tracking down the perpetrator or stalker and also other criminals related to cyberspace. Notably, according to the CCPA or Cable Communication Policy Act (1984) the disclosure to the law enforcement agencies of any information regarding the subscriber of such records is prohibited, in case it is a court's order or advance notice is issued to the subscriber (Yar & Steinmetz, 2019). As there is a progression in acquiring internet services from the cable companies, the CCPA has created hindrances for the investigation of cyber crimes or online harassments.

Question number 3

The issue of cybercrime is not just related to one country, state or city; in fact, it is the issue faced worldwide by almost every person utilizing the internet in this modernized era. However, the difference of rules and regulations for such problems has created challenges for law enforcement agencies for investigating and controlling the cybercrimes (Bryant, 2016). The leading solution for this issue is that the rules and laws related to cybercrime must be the same across the whole world, regardless of states, countries. It is possible through the negotiations among the agencies of different countries to ensure the success they will have to work together in harmony for fighting against terrorism of any kind or type.

The local and state agencies are discouraged when the limitations of jurisdiction for cybercrimes are dictated to them. The fact that maybe in some cases the perpetrator is located in different countries than the victim’s, making it complex and difficult for the agencies to investigate the crime with local authority’s support. Many cybercrimes are referred towards the agencies like FBI and United States Office of Attorney due to the reason that victim and perpetrators were located in different countries from one another and local agency couldn’t pursue the investigation due to this issue.

Thus, for combating terrorism, regardless of its intensity or type, it is essential for the local and foreign states to fight in collaboration with each other. Cybercrime is just like any other crime or terrorism which is otpposed against the criminals by state and local agencies in unity with each other. In this recent era, cybercrime is more potent than common crimes like theft, murder, etc. It is spreading from one state to separate, and the location of criminal is different to the victims due to the online form of crime, where the access is easy even form miles and miles away. So law officers from all the states should combat this crime with the help and support of each other so that such atrocities could be successfully eliminated.

References

Bryant, R. (2016). Digital Crime. In Policing Digital Crime (pp. 19-60). Routledge.

Ranakoti, P., Yadav, S., Apurva, A., Tomer, S., & Roy, N. R. (2017, October). Deep web & online anonymity. In 2017 International Conference on Computing and Communication Technologies for Smart Nation (IC3TSN) (pp. 215-219). IEEE.

Yar, M., & Steinmetz, K. F. (2019). Cybercrime and society. SAGE Publications Limited.