An 'Iceberg' of Unseen Crimes

              Reading in the New York Times, I came across an article called An 'Iceberg' of Unseen Crimes: Many Cyber Offenses Go Unreported, by Al Baker. In this article it talks about all of the unseen crimes like finding out that there was a lack of data on internet sales of fentanyl, when IPhones were getting stolen the detectives treated it as an unrelated street crime rather than a vast scheme with connected channels used by thieves to sell stolen phones, and lastly investigators had no meaningful statistics on a nasty new swindle called the "cheating husband" email scheme, which threatened to unmask a large number of men's infidelities. Each of these cases demonstrates how the tools are used to fight crime and measure crime trends in the United State are outdated. Certain crimes are decreasing but plenty more are increasing.

            With these types of crimes happening the only way detectives found out about the "cheating husband" scheme from faithful spouses who were not victims. The type of crime did not fit into any existing category, so the police had made no arrests, and had no statistics to feed to a national crime database in Washington that could prepare other jurisdictions for the scheme. Technology has created an extraordinary moment for criminals by increasing profits without the risk of street violence. These criminals could easy use stuff like the dark web etc. to get plenty of information or to be able to sell stuff on there with out getting caught from it.

             In 2000, an Internet Crime Complaint established by the FBI to capture internet crime received more than 298,728 complaints in 2016, reflecting 1.3 billion in combined losses, according to a new report by Mr. Wexler's group. Mr. Wexler's group said its findings represented wake-up call for the nations 18,000 policing agencies facing an increase in technology-based crimes, that sprawl across jurisdictions, and recommended they fight back with similar tools by: developing their own digital expertise; hiring civilian analysts, etc. Above all, policing needs better systems for gathering data. Once you get out of cyberspace, data about anything is very limited that its really hard to figure out rvrn east might be happening locally that impacts that crime.