Cyber Crime Future– Israeli police point of view
This post is also available in: 
עברית (Hebrew)
The Future Cyber Crime – How the Israeli police sees it and how it challenged it
At the Israeli ISOC 20 years convention of commercial internet in Israel Brigadier Adv. general Meir Ohaion said that even though the capabilities of criminals in the cyber space are growing, the police has managed to cope with all of them.
At the past the police divided the communications arena into two, the telecom world versus the internet world. According to Ohaion, “this has changed and today we are looking at one world of communications – the cyber, and everything is happening together.” He added that this new conception had affected many areas at the police’s work. It changed the operations concept, the recruitment process, the training method, budget allocations and more. This new era requires constant research for effective police work.”
Ohaion described the challenges that the police is facing in fighting against cyber crime. The first being the ability for anybody to be anonymous in a single click, the second is the fact that each and every one of us possess a number of mobile devices and communications aids. Moreover, share of knowledge is a challenge as well, criminals are using the cyber space for international cooperations that leads to international cons, they are also using the cyber space to share and marchandize in knowledge and in identities, credit cards and est. In addition, when the police want to file charges, it encounters a problem in the process of producing digital evidences. He added that there is a problem with the lifetime of the digital evidence, “this is an important aspect when collecting digital evidences, you need to make preferences according to the lifetime of the evidences and it requires research on how and where the police investigator will search and collect evidences.”
Other difficulties that the police encounter in the fight against cyber crime are the difficulty to identify the criminal and legal prove it. This difficulty toughens the revealing of evidences during trial. There is also a complexity with the cooperation wiאh major commercial organizations that tend not to file complaint on a cyber crime until it get to major disasters, for example that shout down of all cellular activity. In addition, the jurisdiction area is sometimes limited compare to the area of the operation and there is different legislation in each country, which can affect the police’s work.
In order to encounter the jurisdiction and legalization in cyber crime Israel is now in the process of joining the The Convention on Cyber-crime, also known as the Budapest Convention on Cyber-crime which is the first international treaty seeking to address Computer crime and Internet crimes by harmonizing national laws, improving investigative techniques and increasing cooperation among nations.
Describing cyber crime, Ohaion mentioned three typical crimes. The first is similar to the crime we are familiar with, such as protection fees that can be easily adapted to the virtual world. The second is classic cyber crime like the spyphone software which was once available. The third type of cyber crime is the use of the cyber as means of communications and a place where criminals merchandize in stolen identities, credit cards and more.
As for the fight in cyber crime, Ochaion said that is challenges the police, but since the criminals moved to work in the cyber space, so is the police, and implanting a under covered police investigator in the cyber space is less risky than implanting an under covered police investigator in the physical world. “We are using technology to better catch criminals and to bring a valuable intelligence and there is a need,” said Ohaion.
