THE FUTUREOF DIGITAL CRIMES AND DIGITAL TERRORISM

 The future of science and technology sounds so promising. Unprecedented advances in computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, genetics, neuroscience and biotechnology hold the potential to radically transform our world for the better and create mass abundance for all.” (Mark Goodman, CNN). Information technology (IT), computers and the internet have changed the world as we knew it over the last two decades. It has taken over our lives, now days just about everything is based using some form of one of them. IT has and will continue to have a huge impact on everything that surrounds us from the economy to society. IT is being utilized in the battle against digital crimes and digital terrorism. Technology has made our world increasingly open, all of this openness may have unintended consequences such as cyber-crimes and terrorism. For example, in 2008 terrorist assault on Mumbai, India. The perpetrators were armed with AK-47s, explosives and hand grenades. But heavy artillery is nothing new in terrorist operations. The lethal innovation was the way that the terrorists used modern information communications technologies, including smartphones, satellite imagery and night-vision goggles to locate additional victims and slaughter them. Also the terrorists in the Mumbai incident used search engines during their attack to identify individual hostages and to determine, based upon their backgrounds, who should live or and who should die. These innovations gave terrorists unprecedented situational awareness and tactical advantage over the police and the government. India was not prepared or expecting all of those tactics would be utilized after they realized they were being attacked. I believe that our nation should begin to prepare for anything that can be thrown at us; criminals and terrorists have shown their ability to take up technological arms to harm the general public. Everybody has to help prepare for an attack including federal agencies and ordinary citizens.  This way if our nation becomes under attack all of the tactics that were used in other attacks will be ineffective against us,  which gives us the trump hand and can fend off any that wants to attempt attack. 
	Many issues arise when the law enforcement agencies have challenges to face in regards to digital crime and terrorism. Crime is always changing and policing must change too, overall crime may be down in numbers but cyber-crime is increasing. They do not always have an accurate picture of what the problem is exactly. Only about 10 percent of digital crimes are reported each year, banks find it less expensive to reimburse the victims and in return they avoid publicity about the failure to protect the system. However there is a cause for concern, in 2013 over a 10 hour period ATM machines lost $45 million, which is more than the total loss from all “traditional” bank robberies in the U.S. in any given year. Jurisdictional issues are always a difficult situation when dealing with incidents that happen millions of miles apart. The FBI, Secret Service, and other federal agencies have limited resources that are used on the largest cases, cyber-crimes involving $500 or less are not even investigated by local police because they don’t want to deal with the jurisdictional issues. Several local police executives know that they are behind in finding a role for their agencies with cyber-crimes. The strategy I propose the U.S. could use in order to mitigate these challenges will be making a dramatic increase in awareness of these issues by the public and by the police, local police agencies need to identify roles for themselves and elected officials need to increase resources for fighting cybercrime. Also we will probably need new laws to deal with the jurisdictional issues as well. 
	The federal government is unfortunately unable to provide total security to all places on the internet. The U.S. is an open, imperfectly networked country of 300 plus million citizens who conduct business and personal interactions on both domestic and foreign servers. Even if they were able to do so security threats and security vulnerabilities would still exist. So the question is, how can the U.S. government reasonably protect cyberspace without compromising its economic competitiveness and political values along the way?
 I have 3 different proposals the government can use to protect the nation against these digital crimes and terrorism. First, establish a comprehensive strategy, the U.S. government will have to make difficult choices in terms of what are and are not national level cyber assets, based on a firm understanding of what America’s national interests and constraints are. Appropriate authorities should continue to address and attempt to reduce the obvious digital vulnerabilities. Keep law enforcement and U.S. military combating ordinary street crime, local and state law enforcement officials should take the lead in hindering threats to their own communities’ digital infrastructure. Second, maintain strong deterrents, meaning the U.S. should maintain both overt (active) and covert (passive) capabilities to establish that severe repercussion will be carried out if the U.S. is seriously threatened. Third and final strengthen public-private partnerships; Taken from a historical relationship the government has long worked with private industries on digital infrastructure issues. Public-private partnerships have been the cornerstone of the digital age, the Department of Defense (DoD) may have established the foundation of the internet but it has been the private industry that harnessed and expanded it to become what it is today. Also they can further protect the government and military infrastructure by putting private firms’ abilities to use in the field of corporate and informational security. 
	My opinion of the key future trends in digital crime and digital terrorism is that people can adapt to any obstacle and gain knowledge from adapting, also they can become educated about the new and improved technology as it becomes available. A fundamental change to the operating system of our society has to happen in order to combat digital crime and terrorism. We must vastly increase citizens’ involvement and even crowdsource elements of our own security. The time is now to take control of these situations so when they arise we are ready for them.
	To wrap up this paper on the future of digital crimes and digital terrorism, there are so many concerns that need to be addressed so that there is a future in the c