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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.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @05:03PM
Before 9-11, all sorts of crimes that are now labeled "terror" were just crimes -- for example, aircraft hijacking. I wish (however unlikely it may be) that we could go back to the old definition where crime is something done by an individual or group, and war is something done by a state.
The whole "war on terror" only succeeds in elevating small criminal cells (with or without religious overtones) into state actors. This has the direct effect of making them seem much more dangerous than they really are. Sending in military forces instead of police only compounds the problem.
If there are 5000 international organized crime groups, maybe a few dozen(?) of these are driven by ideology, while the rest are motivated by theft/money. Oddly enough, many crime groups that start out with ideology, also turn to more traditional types of crime to fund their activities...