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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday March 11 2017, @09:44AM   Printer-friendly
from the technology-is-the-new-Baba-Yaga dept.

Sounds plausible. Banks do use technology for their activities:

Technology is now at the "root" of all serious criminality, says Europe's police agency. The returns generated by document fraud, money laundering and online trade in illegal goods helps to pay for other damaging crimes, said Europol. The wider use of technology by criminal gangs poses the "greatest challenge" to police forces, it said in a study[PDF]. It revealed that Europol is currently tracking 5,000 separate international organised crime groups.

[...] The "comprehensive" study of organised crime in Europe found a wide range of crime groups ranging from loose networks of individual criminals up to large trans-national bodies that generate profits which rival those of legitimate multi-national corporations.


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  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday March 11 2017, @04:06PM

    by looorg (578) on Saturday March 11 2017, @04:06PM (#477774)

    That technology is behind all serious crime, in Europe, isn't very odd. Everything changes with the advancement of technology, they even conclude that in their own report on page 56 (tackling organised crime in the age of technology -- this flexibility is particularly apparent in the ease with which criminals adapt to changes in society). They are a bit more extensive in their definitions then the submission seem to hint and they prefer to use the term or see it as serious organised criminal activity or groups and then they go on to define that as a group of three or more people existing over a period of time acting in concert with the aim of committing crimes for financial or material benefit. But even with that in mind they later talk about individuals as criminal entrepreneurs.

    A lot of what they mention is not new crime, it's just old crime updating itself with technology. That doesn't really make it new crime or a new threat. Robberies, burglaries and theft happened before the current technology levels - so them getting a cellphone or talking and planing their crimes on those devices or a computer doesn't exactly make them high-tech crimes. They are just updating themselves as the rest of society does by getting a cellphone or a computer and using them. They for some reason gloss over the fact what a treasure trove all those devices are in the form of evidence, more about that later. As an example they consider the growing of cannabis to now be a technology related crime due to the advances in horticulture with new cutting edge and sophisticated equipment being used in the growing. It's not exactly on the top of my list when I think of high-tech crime. Naturally there are a lot of "new" crimes that require technology since they would not have been possible without technology, it's quite hard to have computer- or cyber-crime without computers. They mention nothing about the crime that has gone away due to changes in society - what are all the highwaymen, brigands and horse-thieves up to these days ...

    In some regard it's a bit odd how quickly they gloss over the fact that technology is also helping law enforcement authorities in the fight against serious and organised crime, it gets two sentences on page 25 - somewhat obscured by a man in a clean suit holding a chip of some kind taking up the full page. They mention computer forensic tools, the usage of big data analysis and drones as helpful tools for law enforcement. One would assume that the sender of report, Europol, has an agenda with it - it's not just about informing the public (which almost never reads these reports) or those in need. One can only assume they want more power, more jurisdiction, more money to hire more people (people with technology skills) and buying more technology to use in the fight of crime.

    * (btw there is a very odd image on page 49. Why are all the people escaping from the EU leaving it from Finland?)

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