Cybercrime: Current Trends and its Diffusion

We are living in a world which has indeed entered the digital age where technology is ever-present and all-pervasive. Technology is a double-edged sword. Just as fire helps us make food, it can also burn our house down. The development of technological innovations facilitates our day-to-day lives. But they also make significant contributions to criminality. Cybercrime has become a serious problem globally.

There is still no precise definition of cybercrime academically. It is often referred to as ‘electronic crime,’ ‘computer crime,’ ‘computer-related crime,’ ‘hi-tech crime,’ ‘technology-enabled crime,’ ‘e-crime,’ or ‘cyberspace crime’.

According to Britannica, cybercrimes has been classified as Identity theft and invasion of privacy, phishing, Internet fraud, ATM fraud, Wire fraud, File sharing and piracy, Counterfeiting and forgery, Child pornography, Hacking, Computer viruses, Spam, steganography, e-mail hacking, sabotage etc.

Economic and institutional factors facing cyber-criminals and potential victims in the developing world are different from those in the developed world. In economies characterised by low internet penetration rates and few resources devoted to fighting cyber-crimes, formal institutions related to such crimes tend to be thin and dysfunctional. A cyber-criminal is less likely to be stigmatised in such economies. Moreover, organisations’ and individuals’ technological and behavioural defence mechanisms are likely to be weaker. Many people in developing economies are also attracted to cyber-crime because of high unemployment and low wages.

The meteoric rise of cybercrime in a relatively low digitally literate country like ours is something which can no longer be ignored. The volume and magnitude of such crimes have risen exponentially in the last decade. ATM fraud, defamation, hacking of personal social media accounts, e-mails constitute the majority of cybercrimes in India, which has highly vague cybercrime legislation for redressal. Moreover, in many instances, the cross border nature of such crimes present a grave challenge to the effectiveness of our domestic law enforcement.

Because existing laws in many countries are not tailored to deal with cybercrime, criminals increasingly conduct crimes on the Internet to take advantage of the less severe punishments or difficulties of being traced. No matter, in developing or developed countries, governments and industries have gradually realised the colossal threats of cybercrime on economic and political security and public interests. However, complexity in types and forms of cybercrime increases the difficulty to fight back. In this sense, fighting cybercrime naturally leads to a dire need for cooperation that transcends borders.

In India, the infamous tales of ‘phishing’ gangs of a town called Jamtara in Jharkhand presents a deeply serious picture of the grave perils cybercrime shows to society’s equilibrium. What is more terrifying is that not many technical skills are required to engage in the unlawful acts these ‘phishing’ gangs undertake. According to tales of Jamtara, SIM cards bought with fake IDs, cell phones and a persuasive voice is all that is needed to dupe people financially by pretending to be bank employees.

Jamtara’s cybercrime infamy constitutes only a slice of the whole picture. Defamation of estranged lovers, leaking pictures of the opposite sex on adult websites also reveals the darker side of cybercrimes. Cross border cyber terrorism is also something which has been a constant irritant to security agencies of developing nations in Southeast Asia.

Another modern manifestation of cyber-dependent crime is the work of the ‘hacktivist,’ someone who protests against an organisation’s actions or policies. Mention may be made of the 2010 Anonymous hacktivist attack on Mastercard, Visa and Paypal in retribution for their ceasing to transact donations to the WikiLeaks group.

The most significant concern to governments, however, is the ability of cybercriminals to use the Internet for purposes of espionage and terrorism across the globe. The borderless nature of the Internet, and hence cybercrime, means that governments can be targeted from anywhere in the world, making law enforcement not only challenging but, in some instances, almost impossible. Moreover, today’s criminals can engage in espionage without the need for high-level technical skills.

Fraudulent scams, today, are highly sophisticated and therefore incredibly damaging. These scams have seen lonely hearts swept up in false relationships, with the unsuspecting victims sending vast amounts of money electronically to support the ‘unfortunate’ situation of their fraudulent ‘partner’. Businesses, too, are perennially vulnerable to scammers.

These elements herald stricter and more defined legislation to deal with cybercrime in our country. In this age of rapid technological evolution, the volume and corrupt nature of cybercrimes are inevitably bound to grow, if not averted in time. Also, international and regional co-operation is undoubtedly a requirement when the nature of these crimes are not limited to domestic borders anymore. The need of the hour is to seek international co-operation between the public sector, academia, industry and private practitioners in countering cybercrimes together.

Data protection laws in India are currently facing many problems and resentments due to the absence of a proper legislative framework. The Information Technology Act, 2000 is a law in India framed to counter cybercrimes. Section 43A of the Act advocates Compensation for failure to protect data while Section 72A states that any disclosure of information, knowingly and intentionally, without the consent of the person concerned has been made punishable with imprisonment for a term extending to three years.

However, these provisions neither protect any breach of information on the one hand nor enforce a right-based framework on privacy. Supreme Court in Justice K. S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) Vs Union of India (2017) unanimously held that citizens have a constitutionally protected fundamental right to privacy that forms an intrinsic part of life and liberty under Article 21. Therefore, to establish a robust data protection regime, the government has proposed the Draft Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018 (based on the recommendation of the Justice BN Srikrishna Committee).

State of the art technological support to cybercrime units of state law enforcement agencies will go a long way in keeping up and eliminating such threats to society (huge obstacles to cybercrime units of small states of India due to lack of proper technological support; they have to rely on data sent from other states’ cybercrime units. This slows down the crime-fighting process in the field where even a second matters).

Surveillance by government agencies can be an effective means of curbing crime at some level. To that extent, the role of public and government has become very necessary. In the short term, criminal justice responses are usually a case of ‘too little, too late’ – assuming that police can detect the behaviour at all. It is rarely the case that they can thwart it ahead of time. At the global level, the Council of Europe’s Budapest Convention on Cybercrime is such an international multilateral treaty dealing with international co-operation for combating cybercrimes at the global level. India has also engaged itself in various bilateral agreements like cyber agreement with Russia and a framework agreement with the US, Indo-Israel cyber framework to counter and streamline cybercrimes.

Perhaps the most important and urgent requirement is increasing digital literacy amongst all age groups of the country’s population.

This article was penned down not due to expertise on the matter but due to a growing concern on the rising instances on cybercrimes being conducted in our country, which has vague cybercrime laws.