The Global Dimension of Cybercrime

Cyberspace and thus cybercrime know no boundaries. This chapter reviews some of the basic forms of cybercrime, draws specific attention to the issues that arise when offences occur across borders and in relation to organised criminal groupings, and provides illustrations based on some of the more celebrated cases of the past few years. The borderless nature of cyberspace and the exponential take-up of digital technology throughout the world guarantee that transnational cybercrime will remain a challenge. Fortunately, many nations are rising to this challenge, individually and collectively, but the web of international cooperation does have its holes and those nations that lag behind the leaders risk becoming havens for cybercriminals of the future.     

网络犯罪计量对象海量化的刑事规制

我国司法解释性文件根据具体网络犯罪的性质不同,将犯罪对象、危害行为、损害后果、参与人员等计量对象的数量纳入定罪量刑的考量因素。司法实践中这种计量对象的海量化出现使网络犯罪的事实认定与刑事处理饱受困扰,海量化对象使得传统刑事印证证明模式面临挑战,计量异议的反驳困难导致控辩举证不能,定罪量刑标准极易突破而造成刑事处罚扩大化和重刑化,计量事实认定如何确立合理规则存在难题。基于网络犯罪计量对象海量化给司法实践造成的现实困境,应立于秩序维护和人权保障的双重角度,结合刑事法律规定和既有实践经验,在证明方法、证明标准、刑罚适用、入罪条件等方面构建对其处理的适用规则,具体包括,以证明方式的概括印证取代计量对象的具体印证,将计量事实的绝对优势证明独立于普遍性最高证明,以量刑上的从轻处罚弥补事实上的不利认定,从法定刑升格的单一数量标准转向数量与情节的并合标准。     

Challenges before crime in a digital era: Outsmarting cybercrime offenders – Workshop on Cybercrime, Computer Crime Prevention and the Surveillance Society

On 5 November 2010 within the framework of the Fifth International Conference on Legal, Security and Privacy Issues in IT Law (LSPI) and associated conference series a Closing Workshop was held at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC) to review and address the main challenges of Cybercrime. The event complemented the CLSR 150th Anniversary Seminar on Digital Identity held the previous evening at the Barcelona office of law firm Roca Juyent. The Workshop was supported by the Computer Forensics Laboratories CFLabs and by CLSR. Copies of the journal were distributed via a booth at the event to enable relevant papers published in the journal to be accessed during the workshop event. The Cybercrime Workshop provided an opportunity for academics, practitioners and consultants from different backgrounds and nationalities to come together and exchange ideas to discuss significant developments in Cybercrime and emerging issues on IT security.     

The stages of cybercrime investigations: Bridging the gap between technology examination and law enforcement investigation

Cybercrime investigation can be argued as still in its infancy. The technical investigation practices and procedures of global law enforcement are also still evolving in response to the growing threat of the cybercriminal. This has led to considerable debate surrounding the adequacy of current technical investigation models, examination tools and the subsequent capability of law enforcement to tackle cybercrime. To bridge the gap between low-level technology recovery and digital forensic examination, and to overcome the many technical challenges now faced by law enforcement; this paper presents an extended cybercrime investigation model capable of guiding the investigative practices of the broader law enforcement community. The Stages of Cybercrime Investigations discussed throughout this paper, demonstrate the logical steps and primary considerations vital to investigating cyber related crime and criminality. The model is intended to provide both technical and non-technical investigative resources, covering mainstream law enforcement, partner agencies and specialist technical services, with a formal and common structure when investigating the complex technical nature of cybercrime. Finally, the model is further aimed at providing cybercrime investigators with a means to consolidate understanding, share knowledge and communicate the resulting outcomes as an investigation moves through each relevant stage.     

Crime control in the sphere of information technologies in the Republic of Turkey

Cybercrime is considered an issue of both local and global concern. Therefore, this study focuses on the local experience in cybercrime control of different countries, including the Republic of Turkey. The article discusses issues in cybersecurity policy and analyzes the legislative framework of the Republic of Turkey on cybercrime issues. The findings underlie the continuing education policy for cybersecurity employees. The study concludes that Turkey handles the current cybercrime situation with efficiency.     

Challenges in digital forensics

Abstract

Various terms have been used to describe the intersection between computing technology and violations of the law-including computer crime, electronic crime, and cybercrime. While there remains little agreement on terminology, most experts agree that the use of electronic devices to commit crime has increased dramatically and is now commonplace. It is the role of the digital investigator to bring cybercriminals to justice. Cybercrime however differs from traditional crime and presents a variety of unique challenges including the variety of electronic devices available, amount of data produced by these devices, the absence of standard practices and guidelines for analyzing that data, the lack qualified personnel to perform investigations and the lack of resources to provide on-going training. This paper examines these challenges     

A social graph based text mining framework for chat log investigation

This paper presents a unified social graph based text mining framework to identify digital evidences from chat logs data. It considers both users' conversation and interaction data in group-chats to discover overlapping users' interests and their social ties. The proposed framework applies n-gram technique in association with a self-customized hyperlink-induced topic search (HITS) algorithm to identify key-terms representing users' interests, key-users, and key-sessions. We propose a social graph generation technique to model users' interactions, where ties (edges) between a pair of users (nodes) are established only if they participate in at least one common group-chat session, and weights are assigned to the ties based on the degree of overlap in users' interests and interactions. Finally, we present three possible cyber-crime investigation scenarios and a user-group identification method for each of them. We present our experimental results on a data set comprising 1100 chat logs of 11,143 chat sessions continued over a period of 29 months from January 2010 to May 2012. Experimental results suggest that the proposed framework is able to identify key-terms, key-users, key-sessions, and user-groups from chat logs data, all of which are crucial for cyber-crime investigation. Though the chat logs are recovered from a single computer, it is very likely that the logs are collected from multiple computers in real scenario. In this case, logs collected from multiple computers can be combined together to generate more enriched social graph. However, our experiments show that the objectives can be achieved even with logs recovered from a single computer by using group-chats data to draw relationships between every pair of users.     

The Impact of Negative Publicity on Police Self-legitimacy

High-profile events involving police use of force in various cities throughout the US and internationally have garnered enormous media coverage and demonstrated the importance of police-community relations. To date little empirical attention has focused on how such events may negatively impact police officers. Using survey data from 567 officers, this study considers whether perceptions of negative publicity are adversely related to officers’ sense of self-legitimacy (i.e. the confidence they have in their authority). Findings revealed officers who felt less motivated as a result of negative publicity expressed less self-legitimacy. However, the degree to which officers felt their job had become more dangerous as a result of negative publicity was not significantly related to self-legitimacy. These findings increase our understanding of the sources of self-legitimacy and reveal that negative publicity surrounding law enforcement presents a unique challenge to officers’ confidence in their authority, which can have important implications for the community.     

Measuring double consciousness among black law enforcement officers to understand the significant role of race in law enforcement occupational cultures

The current study correlates Merton's anomie theory and W. E. B. Dubois's double-consciousness theory to measure black law enforcement officers' reactions to occupational strain resulting from officers' ethnic-identification. Measuring levels of anomic behavior provides a scale for identifying levels of risk affecting the well-being of individual officers and organizations. Testing hierarchal regression models with a national sample of black state- and federal-level law enforcement officers (n = 84) reveals a presence of double consciousness as a significant predictor for levels of anomic behavior in law enforcement occupational cultures. It also further suggests that race remains a significant factor in law enforcement organizations and cultures, whereas many police executives would prefer to believe that race issues in policing are settled.     

Forensic investigation of cross platform massively multiplayer online games: Minecraft as a case study

Minecraft, a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG), has reportedly millions of players from different age groups worldwide. With Minecraft being so popular, particularly with younger audiences, it is no surprise that the interactive nature of Minecraft has facilitated the commission of criminal activities such as denial of service attacks against gamers, cyberbullying, swatting, sexual communication, and online child grooming. In this research, there is a simulated scenario of a typical Minecraft setting, using a Linux Ubuntu 16.04.3 machine (acting as the MMOG server) and Windows client devices running Minecraft. Server and client devices are then examined to reveal the type and extent of evidential artefacts that can be extracted.     

Investigating the demographic and attitudinal predictors of rape myth acceptance in U.K. Police officers: developing an evidence-base for training and professional development

Efforts to understand rape myth acceptance (RMA) as a cognitive framework in police, unifying key cognitive/attitudinal and demographic factors into one coherent model, are lacking. Using a cross-sectional survey design, predictors of RMA were assessed by linear hierarchical regression, including demographic (age, length of service, gender, experience of specialist rape investigation training) and attitudinal factors (hostility towards women, sexist attitudes, and explicit power/sex beliefs) among officers from a large U.K. police force (N = 912). The final model explained 44% of variance in RMA. Gender and previous specialist training significantly predicted RMA, but to a much lesser extent than attitudinal variables, which explain 42% of RMA variance. Only specialist rape investigation training remained significant when attitudinal variables were added. The greater contribution from attitudinal variables suggests that efforts to address RMA in officers must consider the broader attitudinal structures underpinning RMA. Findings highlight implications for evidence-based training for rape investigators.     

Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) for digital forensic investigators

This paper describes the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) with a focus on relevance to digital forensic investigators. RDAP was developed as the successor to the aging WHOIS system and is intended to eventually replace WHOIS as the authoritative source for registration information on IP addresses, Domain Names, Autonomous Systems, and more. RDAP uses a RESTful interface over HTTP and introduces a number of new features related to security, internationalization, and standardized query/response definitions. It is important for digital forensic investigators to become familiar with RDAP as it will play an increasingly important role in Internet investigations requiring the search and collection of registration data as evidence.     

A MULTILEVEL FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING POLICE CULTURE: THE ROLE OF THE WORKGROUP

Relying on a well‐established theoretical paradigm from organizational psychology, the aim of the current inquiry is to apply a multilevel approach to the study of police culture that identifies workgroups as important entities that influence officers’ occupational outlooks. More specifically, we propose that police culture be assessed in a way similar to concepts in criminology, such as collective efficacy and street culture, whereby the shared features of individuals’ environments are considered. Within this framework, we draw on survey data from five municipal police agencies to examine how strongly officers within 187 separate workgroups share culture, as well as the extent to which culture differs across these workgroups. Collectively, the findings suggest that the workgroup serves as a viable context that patterns culture in police organizations. As such, the study provides a way to move beyond conceptualizations of police culture as either a purely monolithic or an individual‐level phenomenon.     

我国侦查主体与侦查权的合理设置与配置

我国现行侦查主体设置与侦查权配置的二元化模式不符合国际"侦查主体一元化"的潮流,因此后者必然成为我国在此方面改革的借鉴。"检警一体化"的侦查模式由于其存在特定缺陷也难以与我国历史情况与现实国情契合,因此按"警察一体化"的侦查模式重新调整我国现有的检警关系成为我国对此改革的方向。独立、垂直的职务犯罪侦查局的设置可以将剥离出来的检察机关对职务犯罪的侦查权和纪委对党员干部涉嫌职务犯罪的调查权或称之为"准侦查权"合并吸纳,有利于对职务犯罪的实际预防、控制和惩处。     

The legal aspects of corporate e-mail investigations

The undertaking of e-mail investigations was previously limited mainly to law enforcement agencies. However, UK organisations are increasingly undertaking e-mail investigation activities for incidents such as fraud, accessing or distributing indecent images and harassment amongst others. Organisations are also increasingly using computer forensic analysts to search through e-mail archives in order to gather evidence relating to e-mail misuse. In this paper we examine the legal aspects of UK corporate e-mail investigations.     

Confessing their Crime: Factors Influencing the Offender’s Decision to Confess to the Police

Confessions are crucial to successful police investigations but scholars have significantly overlooked factors that contribute to an offender’s decision to confess a crime. This study aims to examine a large array of factors that play a role in the offender’s decision to confess a crime to the police and potential interaction effect among them. A total of 221 adult males incarcerated in a federal Canadian penitentiary were recruited. Correctional files, police reports, and offenders’ self‐reported data were collected and analyzed. Controlling for sociodemographic, criminological, and contextual factors, a series of logistic regression analyses were conducted. Findings highlighted the predominant role of police evidence over and above other factors analyzed. Furthermore, sociodemographic and criminological factors played a more important role in the offender’s decision to confess when police evidence was weak. Findings are discussed in light of the current scientific literature on the determinants of offenders’ decision to confess their crime.     

Police Enforcement of Domestic Violence Laws: Supervisory Control or Officer Prerogatives?

Police officers are afforded a high degree of discretion in the exercise of their authority, and the control of this discretion is an important issue. While it is assumed that individual officer attitudes and preferences shape their discretionary activity, these officers are also members of a paramilitary organization with leaders over them. The present study explored the influence of both officer attitudes and management influences to explain variation in officer domestic violence arrest rates. Hierarchical linear modeling was used with a sample of 311 patrol officers and 61 supervisors from 23 municipal police agencies across multiple states. Unlike much of the previous literature, the results revealed that officer occupational attitudes had no effect on this particular officer work behavior. Management influences (such as rewards and written policies) significantly influenced officers’ domestic violence arrest behavior. The findings emphasize the complexity involved in the control of officer discretion.