Free Essay: Impact of Utilizing Information Technologies in Combating Digital Crime and Digital Terrorism

Digital crime and digital terrorism have compelled many organizations and governments to devise more ingenious ways of combating them. For the effective fight against digital crime and digital terrorism, it becomes imperative for organizations and government to invest in the development of superior technologies to fight off those of criminals and terrorists. As a consequence, vast amounts of resources have been channeled towards the fight against digital crime and digital terrorism at the expense of social welfare programs (Mueller & Stewart, 2014). Mueller and Stewart (2014) note that the United States, for instance, has increased its budgetary allocations significantly towards the fight against terrorism in the wake of the emergence of digital terrorism and digital crime across the nation.

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As digital technologies advance, digital crime and digital terrorism become more sophisticated. As such, the law enforcement agencies such as the police have to be equipped with new tools for fighting digital crime and digital terrorism. One way of equipping them is through continuous training. According to Murashbekov (2015), each year the digital activities of criminals and terrorists become more complicated, placing new demands on the qualifications of law enforcers. Given this, the skills of the police officer have to be updated on a regular basis to enable the officers to stay ahead of criminals and terrorists. This is not only costly to the economy but also exhausting to the law enforcement departments.

Challenges Related to Independent Nature of Law enforcement Agencies

A major challenge with the independence of law enforcement agencies is the overlap of roles. There are 65 federal law enforcement agencies and at least 17,000 state and local law enforcement agencies. Each agency performs duties unique to the security needs of their area of jurisdiction. The roles of federal officers include criminal investigation, inspections, security of citizens and protection of property, and court operations. On the other hand, state and local agencies provide security to local citizens and also offer protection of property such as schools, government buildings, hospitals and parks, among other security roles (Discoverpolicing, 2018). The roles of federal agencies often overlap with those of state and local counterparts. Due to the independent nature of these agencies, coordination problems arise because of conflicting interests resulting from different security missions. As a result, security lapses are bound to occur (Foley, 2016). For instance, evidence suggests that inadequate communication between the FBI and state police made it difficult for law enforcement agencies to foil the San Bernardino attack that left 14 people in 2014 (US Senate, 2016; Foley, 2016).

Enhanced coordination between the various state and local agencies with the federal agencies can reduce the effect of overlap of roles and also foster multi-agency communication. By availing information on cases under investigation to state and local security agencies, FBI can increase its coordination in fighting digital crime and digital terrorism. For instance, the Florida state police reported that the FBI did not inform the local security agencies about the Omar Marten's activities until the Orlando Nightclub shooting occurred (Foley, 2016). Coordination would have enabled the police to put surveillance on Marten and perhaps foil the attack.

Aligning Federal Agencies to Better Protect the Nation against Digital Crime and Digital Terrorism

Deployment of Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can equip the federal agencies with high-tech techniques capable of delivering far much better results in the fifth against digital crime and digital terrorism. Through the deployment of AT, agencies can search for patterns in the activity and language of terrorists and their supporters on the internet. Big Data tools can be used to spot trends of the activities of terrorists, especially in the build-up to a terrorist attack. Deployment of unique algorithms to sieve the activities of terrorists can also be useful in making automatic identification of planned future acts of violence (McGann & Weiss, 2018).

Digital robots can also help security agencies to carry out IT-related projects such as managing access to systems and reviewing of trails of data. As of today, security agencies systems are managed in such way that humans sample audit logs of transactions and identify potential threats before they are destroyed With AI, robotic tools can examine all transactions and identify all threats before neutralizing them on a real-time basis (McGann & Weiss, 2018). Safeguarding the systems based AI has the potential to make cyber attacks on security agencies' information systems foolproof.

Federal security agencies further need to be aligned with the corporate sector. This can be a viable approach in the sense that the private sector provides a platform upon which terrorists and other criminals plan, coordinate and execute their nefarious activities. Such alignment can ensure real-time exchange of information between high-tech firms and federal security agencies as opposed to the current set up where security agencies rely on the goodwill of private corporations to volunteer information about criminal and terrorist activities.

Key Future Trends in Digital Crime and Digital Terrorism

Development of new digital technologies in the future is likely to present more challenges to authorities in their fight against digital crime and digital terrorism. The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), in particular, is likely to make devices and people more connected than before. The enhanced connectivity would increase our exposure to cyber attacks. Already the concept of IoT is being implemented in the medical practice. Today, implants are made on patients with conditions such as diabetes and blood pressure to facilitate medical management. Although the implants enable medical professionals to manage patient conditions with incredible convenience and at much lower costs, they exposure patient data and that of the hospitals to the prying eyes of criminals and terrorists. In other words, digital criminals and digital terrorists would view the phenomenal computing power of IoT as a new source of new evasive tools and techniques that could help them carry out their illicit and malicious activities on the Internet. Since authorities often play catch up, it could be more challenging to fight digital criminals and digital terrorists due to new technological tools available in protecting their anonymity on the Internet.

Strategy of Combating Digital Crime and Digital Terrorism

Digital crime and digital terrorism are committed using digital technologies. The solution for these criminal activities for high-tech companies to design ways of configuring their digital tools in such way that it will become difficult for terrorists to exploit. Such measures may involve utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to identify terrorist propaganda materials on the Internet and pull them down on a real-time basis. The high-tech companies can also reduce cybercrime and digital terrorism by introducing special algorithms that intercept inciting material on the Internet, especially when such material is sent through encrypted messaging apps (Sengupta, 2017). For the high-tech companies to efficiently counter criminal correspondences and terrorist material, governments need to help in enacting necessary legislation that set clear boundaries between free expressions and incitement to violence in the digital space. This collaboration would give high-tech companies the legal insulation to track criminal and terrorist content and share it with authorities without the risk of prosecution for apparent encroachment of individual freedoms.

References

Discoverpolicing. (2018). Types of police / law enforcement agencies - Discover Policing. Retrieved from http://www.discoverpolicing.org/whats_like/?fa=types_jobs

Foley, F. (2016, July 19). U.S. counterterrorism is mired in turf wars. We could learn a lot from the U.K. The Washington Post [Washington].

McGann, J., & Weiss, M. (2018). How intelligent automation can help federal agencies strengthen cybersecurity. Retrieved from https://info.kpmg.us/news-perspectives/technology-innovation/intelligent-automation-can-help-federal-agencies-strengthen-cybersecurity.html

Mueller, J., & Stewart, M. G. (2014). Evaluating counterterrorism spending. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28(3), 237-248. doi:10.1257/jep.28.3.237

Murashbekov, O. B. (2015). Methods for cybercrime fighting improvement in developed countries. The Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, 20(1), 1-10. doi:10.4172/1204-5357.s1-003

Sengupta, S. (2017, October 21). World Leaders Urge Big Tech to Police Terrorist Content. The New York Times [New York].

US Senate. (2016, June 3). Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee. Retrieved from https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/majority-media/johnson-grassley-comment-on-dhs-inspector-general-report-revealing-lack-of-cooperation-between-dhs-entities-in-aftermath-of-san-bernardino-terror-attack