World Business

I used to think with my students in Introduction to Law classes on major incidents that would have internet connectivity, especially in human society. Analyzed, for example, the creation of new social groups (not comparable to the notion of “social classes”, such as cyber punk, Goths, transsexuals, etc.) or digital integration of new and old religious sects or political and consequences of all these new realities in the development and law. Recurrent theme of these discussions was the crime on the network and what has been called cyber crime. But as time goes on I have been discovering that none of the imagined, even in the recent past, about the forms, methods, modalities and impact of crime in cyberspace, even remotely comes close to actual developments of this therefore never in the history of technological advances had created so many conditions to commit crimes.

Indeed, the web has been a breeding ground for crimes including drug trafficking, trafficking in women and children, money laundering, violation of copyright, fraud, theft, financial panic , libel and slander, violation of mail, falsehood, the year the good of others, kidnapping, embezzlement, extortion, murder and terrorism. Only theft by hackers tracking procedure keys credit cards annually worth about $ 500 million. The economic damage caused by computer criminal actions already reached 10,000 million dollars unaccounted for statistics on economic evaluations of damage caused by crimes against public administration, public safety, public faith, individual freedom, sexual freedom and human dignity, moral integrity, life and personal integrity.

Meanwhile, we are raw in the attack. Human society seems to go at the speed of the locomotive in its fight against cyber crime, while sophisticated digital crime brains go to the speed of light. The situation is quite critical. The world does not yet have effective mechanisms to combat cyber crime, although it has begun to realize the urgent need for international cooperation, research and monitoring of cyber antisocial behavior, the creation of Multi Courts, or Trans International, the unification of the criminal laws and the creation of new technological and scientific evidence. Signs of the beginning of awareness are the recent Congress on Crime prevention and treatment of criminals, held in Vienna last month, whose main concern was, well, computer crime and created large research departments and prosecution of cyber crime, attached to the classical world agencies such as Interpol, the CIA or KGB.

But, unfortunately, to defeat the bad guys of cyberspace requires much more than cibercarreta.