The Hindu Business Line : Unfairly placed

Cyber criminals are now exploiting technology to work in synergy. This places law-enforcement authorities at a terrible disadvantage. It's time to adopt unconventional tactics to fight fraudsters.

PROBABLY the most alarming byproduct of globalisation is the synergy of criminals. Crime has transcended boundaries of specialisation, geographies, nationalities and intensities. Criminals who previously operated in the silos of their core specialties have begun to leverage the potential of working together. So a hacker could penetrate a bank's electronic vaults and launder money for drug dealers, which could be used to fund terrorist activities. Three different genres of crime, being perpetrated by three different breeds of criminals - and quite possibly in three different continents.

There are some remarkable and disturbing aspects to this phenomenon. To begin with, these were distinctly disparate crimes until about five years ago. Second, these three breeds of criminals have probably never even met each other physically. And third, the law-enforcement organisations that are battling these criminals are still doing it in their own compartments. Unfair fight.

It's an established fact that the elements of the underground comprehend and exploit the benefits of technology ahead of the law-enforcement establishments. Be it mobile phones, the Internet or even manipulation of financial transactions, the criminals and terrorists seem to realise and execute the potential; way before the law-enforcement agencies can even anticipate the threat, much less come up with combating strategies. But the frightening aspect is the new found paradigm shift of the criminals working in conjunction - whereas law enforcement authorities are tied down in the red tape of jurisdiction, interests, lack of coordination and resources.

History has proved that smaller armies that have better communications, mobility, synergy and speed have constantly defeated much larger opponents. And that is probably what we are witnessing in the amalgam of cyber crime, money laundering, contraband trafficking and terrorism. Ironically in this battle the criminal has an unintended ally. The law itself.

Consider this. If a law-enforcement agency had to investigate a suspect, they could possibly obtain a judicial order to tap his phone, within a reasonable period of time. However, if they needed the same intrusive ability to investigate his encrypted e-mail, they would need the cooperation of the e-mail service provider (who could be in any other country), the cooperation of the root authority (to get the PKI keys) and the necessary criminal expertise to make sense of the information they find. In addition, they will need to execute highly specialised procedures to maintain chain of custody of digital evidence if they wanted a prosecutable case.

`A wild lawless country without frontiers' is an analogy that is often used to describe the Internet. And in such an environment, traditional procedures could possibly straitjacket law enforcers. Summary action is called for to deal with fleeting opportunities. A radical idea is to learn from the analogy of the Wild West and use vigilantes and bounty hunters. Skilled personnel who could operate without the accompanying encumbrances of establishments - roaming cyberworld and hunting down cyber criminals. The concept is not without precedent. Virtually all countries have covert operations specialists who operate without `official' sanction and execute operations that necessitate `deniability' by their government masters. Why not carry it forward to cyberspace?

Of late, there have been initiatives by various governments to establish a unified code of investigative and punitive operations, especially while dealing with cyber crime.

But by any stretch of imagination, the ability of bureaucratic dinosaurs to match the agility and boundary-less operability of cyber-criminals is an uneven fight. And unless law-enforcement agencies decide to adopt unconventional strategies and tactics, this battle will soon be beyond any hope of winning.

Picture by Sampath Kumar G.P.

The author is CEO, Mahindra Special Services Group.

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