Perez Hernandez 

Alejandro Perez Hernandez 

SOC 305 Cybercrime: a Sociological Perspective 

Omar C. Bourouh

11/06/2022

Obstacles to Cybercrime Investigations

Cybercrime is one of the most recurring problems facing the police today.

According to the article called 39 Worrying Cyber Crime Statistics [Updated for 2022]

estimates, nowadays, "an average of 2,244 times a day, [a cybercrime is

committed]"(Lazic, 2022). This is because the more technology advances, the more we

expose ourselves to this world full of people looking to steal your information so they

can capitalize on it, like selling it on the deep web or blackmailing you into not being

made public. In this paper, I will summarize the Obstacles to Cybercrime Investigations

article and critically evaluate it, giving my views on the subject. Furthermore, I will

mention some crucial hurdles such as anonymity, legal hurdles, attribution, and

technical challenges by which the police cannot catch cybercriminals.

First, we must mention that anonymity plays an essential role in preventing cyber

criminals from hiding their identities while doing illicit activities. According to the article,

there are different ways and tools in which hackers can conceal their true identity; some

examples of them are Proxy servers and "anonymity networks [such as] Tor, Freenet,

and…[I2P]"(katharina.kiener-manu, 2019). This is because it helps them mask their IP

address and replace it with a different IP address, which makes it difficult for the police

to identify and track the cyber criminals. From my point of view, this part, in particular,

seemed very interesting because I was unaware of most of the anonymity networks
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currently exist. In addition, I was pretty surprised that some of them were created by the

United States government, which made me understand why they are not penalized or

taken down from the network. It's really fascinating and sad at the same time how the

creation of tools can have both a positive and a negative impact. On the one hand, we

have that these networks and tools are used to keep government secrets, but they can

also be used to hide the identity and actions of cybercriminals.

Another hurdle police face is attribution, which refers to who is responsible for

cybercrime. In general, cybercriminals, when carrying out illegal actions, try to do it most

efficiently and securely so as not to leave a trace. According to the article, one of the

ways to do this is by infecting devices such as computers and cell phones with malware

or botnets in order to control the victims' devices and commit crimes without their

knowledge (katharina.kiener-manu, 2019). This point also seemed very interesting to

me, and this undoubtedly affects an essential aspect in the investigation of cybercrimes

because techniques such as these prevent the evidence that is collected from not being

entirely accurate and blame or attribute the crime to innocent people.

Legal hurdles are another major factor limiting cybercriminal investigations. This

is due to the lack of laws to prosecute cybercrimes, the involvement of the law in

cybercrimes, and the lack of cooperation between countries in collecting evidence and

extradition processes (katharina.kiener-manu, 2019). I totally agree with this, and it is

that today cybercrimes are something new that we have to deal with and learn from day

to day, so I can say that we must work hard on aspects such as the creation of more

laws that regulate and penalize cybercrimes. In addition, most cybercriminals come

from other countries, so it is difficult for the police to do anything about it because they
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are outside their jurisdiction. Added to this is the limitation of cooperation between

nations, which makes it impossible to create a case without sufficient evidence.

Lastly, technical obstacles are undoubtedly another of the main factors since the

collection of evidence for this type of crime requires qualified personnel and tools for

forensic analysis. In addition to this, most of the time, there is not enough budget;

therefore, the necessary tools are not available, and many qualified people choose to

look for jobs in the private sector. On this last point, it is not something to be expected

because cybersecurity is very expensive. So many times, not enough is invested in

protecting companies or continuing research of crimes in this in this particular field; This

is mainly due to people's expertise in various areas and, consequently, they are not paid

what corresponds to them; As mentioned, they choose jobs that offer them higher pay.
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References:

katharina.kiener-manu. (2019, March). Cybercrime Module 5 Key Issues: Obstacles to

Cybercrime Investigations. Www.unodc.org.

https://www.unodc.org/e4j/en/cybercrime/module-5/key-issues/obstacles-to-cybercrime-

investigations.html

Lazic, M. (2022, January 17). 39 Worrying Cyber Crime Statistics [Updated for 2022].

Legaljobs.io. https://legaljobs.io/blog/cyber-crime-statistics/#:~:text=Hackers%20attack

%20people%20worldwide%20roughly