DailyPost 2164
FUTURE CRIMES 2.0
Projecting the world of crimes in the foreseeable future or a little further, has been a favourite pastime of both law enforcement practitioners, thinkers, writers and even speakers. It’s fun to tell it to the people who don’t know as to how the crime world would unfold in the days to come. Crime has been as been as evolving as the society, economy and polity and with the onset of all encompassing technology, it has been provided with a propellent which the world could have never imagined. But we had never ever imagined that we would ever be living in this nature of a tech enabled world. Future is not ours to see, what will be, will be.
Still, this is an art and science that has existed for long. Projecting the future through the past and the present. If something has broken the glass ceiling of crime it the digital technology – the modus operandi and the imagination and both meet sooner than later. Criminals have been both first adopters of and responders to technology. At times what is happening in the criminal world, the direction it is taking and its potential remains unknown to all. This is more so in the technology propelled world we live. But is should be made known in our benefit.
A book by name Future Crimes by Marc Goodman has been an eyeopener. It was published in 2015 and opened before us the nature of crimes and what holds for the world with serious onset of the digital mesh all around us. It has been aptly described as ”inside the digital underground and the battle for our connected world.” It subtly describes it all; from computer virus, the bitcoin the currency of the digital underbelly, to the methodologies which have brought the critical infrastructure to its knees. Seven years is a long time in the exponential digital age, the trends discussed seems have consolidated, few lost out in the tech race and newer ones have completely changed the face of crime.
The complete interplay of state, non-state actors, ransomware gangs, data being manipulated and sold, and digital attribution being a non-deliverable in legal terms is the age of Future Crimes 2.0. Platform criminality has become the order of the day. The difference between crime and non-crime seems to evaporating. GRU and the US Presidential elections, the Cambridge Analytica modus operandi, the current lockdown of a hospital outside of France. The dismantled ransomware gang of Jan 2022 in Russia surfaces at Guwahati in India in a ransomware attack few months down the line. The open ransomware demands and nature of sale products / services and data in the DarkNet has thrown a criminal to all nation states of world.
THE OPEN RANSOMWARE GANGS SIGNIFIES THE LOWEST EBB IN THE HISTORY OF CRIME INVESTIGATION AND BRINGING THE CRIMINALS TO BOOK.
Sanjay Sahay