Criminal Justice Paper

Technology and Crime

Orquidea Quinones

Nova Southeastern University

Cyber-Crime

Technology has led to changes in the conduct of various activities in the society. As it has positively made people to experience easy movement through improved transportation and communication platforms, it has also changed the nature of crimes. The introduction of sophisticated communication platforms that are internet-enabled has led to the emergence of a new wave of illegal activities known as cybercrime. Cybercrime is an act where an individual decides to use computer enabled platforms to perpetuate his or her criminal-related intentions. One of the features of computer-empowered networks is that they support anonymity and as such various persons have used this opportunity to create havoc in the society.

Although cyber-crime is focused on the computer, there are various types of this felony. First, there is phishing that entails the use of unauthentic emails for purposes of obtaining data from the web (Taylor, Fritsch & Liederbach, 2014). The second type of cyber-crime is the theft of another person’s identity for criminal activities. Third, there is the access to networks of other people or institution's website. Mostly, people refer to it as hacking, and it is the common one among the types of cyber-crime. Fourth, there is the spread of inflammatory information for organizations such as terrorist groups. Apart from understanding the forms of cyber-crime, it is significant for stakeholders to realize that with cyber-crime, it takes a "Lonewolf Terrorist" perspective. Here, the implication is that with this type of crime, the perpetrator acts without having to follow instructions from an outlines authority (Spaaij & Hamm, 2015). Considerably, this makes it dangerous because with such types of the felony. As such, it means that some people can engage in this act since everyone can individually initiate a terrorist action.

References

Spaaij, R., & Hamm, M. S. (2015). Key issues and research agendas in lone wolf terrorism. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 38(3), 167-178.

Taylor, R. W., Fritsch, E. J., & Liederbach, J. (2014). Digital crime and digital terrorism. Prentice Hall Press.