Are Cyber Criminals Ever Persecuted?

Cyber criminals are often able to get away with their crimes and avoid persecution by the law because of jurisdictional issues. Since cybercrime is not limited by physical boundaries, cyber criminals are able to victimize people regardless of their geographic location. However, because different states and nations have different laws, cyber criminals often get away as authorities cannot enforce laws in other jurisdictions. For example, in May 2000, a virus known as the “love bug” emerged from the Philippines. This virus infected computers worldwide and caused huge losses to many large corporations such as the Ford Motor company. In spite of this, the perpetrator of this crime was never persecuted because the effected nations did not have jurisdiction

Many crimes that would otherwise be considered serious legal offenses are thus often not taken as seriously when committed via a virtual platform. For example, while threating bodily harm or death would be considered as serious offenses in the physical world, the same actions when performed through a digital platform are often dismissed as non-serious. In one such case in the U.S, a man named Jake Baker used email communication with a friend to list descriptive gruesome details of his fantasy to sexually assault one of his female classmates. However, when the case went to court, Jake was never charged because authorities did not classify this incident as a threat (Kshetri 2009). In another well-known case, a software developer and blogger known as Kathy Sierra was swamped by numerous rape threats and death threats via the online world. The cyber bullies went to horrifying extremes to haunt Ms. Sierra by posting edited photos of her screaming while being strangled by lingerie and dread-inducing pictures of her with a noose beside her neck. Furthermore, these cyber criminals even publicly displayed Ms. Sierra’s social security number and home address online. These appalling incidences of vitriolic behavior left Kathy Sierra feeling violated and unsafe within

Since the evidence of cybercrime is completely in digital form, it can easily be erased, deleted, altered and manipulated. This allows savvy cyber criminals to outmanoeuvre forensic investigators without difficulty by permanently removing all the evidence. As the technological methods for encrypting data and maintaining anonymity continue to advance, criminals take advantage of this to inflict harm for personal gain without fear of detection. Moreover even if cyber criminals do not make use of encryption techniques to hide evidence, investigators may still be unable to recover the digital evidence if they wait too long because digital data doesn’t remain stored indefinitely. In one case that occurred in 2003, cyber extortionist made use of the nature of digital evidence and threatened office employees that they would delete important files and plant incriminating pornographic pictures on their computers unless a ransom was paid. As a result, many employees actually ended up paying the ransoms because the easily alterable nature of digital evidence could have destroyed their reputations (Brenner, Brian and Henninger 2004). The digital nature of cybercrime can also make locating cyber criminals very difficult. Cyber-attacks are often carried out use different IP addresses which makes locating the cyber criminals an awfully challenging task. While GPS software