CyberCrime : a new war on terror ?

Cybercrime. We can think of it as a remote, weird, isolated fact that only concerns professional hackers and pirates, but as Internet use increases, users are seen, then the opportunity for any crime that can be commited using the Internet as a medium will also be increasing.

There are many types of crimes that are perpetrated using the web, financial crimes, identities being misued, sexual or racist contents circulating... I'll try to focus on cybercime that are taking place in "real life" and which are posted on Youtube later on.

• Not so funny Games

Cyber criminals aren't all professional hackers who are willing to capitalise on people's reliance on their computers in their daily lives or pedophiles using the net as an well-hidden and well-organized network. The cybercriminal can have a very familiar and innocent faces. innocent? For sure. Some of them are not even aware that they are actually commiting an e-crime !

What are they doing exactly ?
Well, they slap, injure, assault people randomly in the streets. And they tape it. And then, they post these on Youtube.

Who are these people exactly ?
Mostly teenagers. Mostly stupid teenagers to my mind. They're used, from their first step to their first degree to be photographed, to be taped for all these "greats steps" in their lives and to share these moments with all their relatives. Thanks to social networks, myspace pages or Youtube, they're now free to share on their own initiative the visual documents showing moments they are proud of. Even if there is nothing to be proud of.

If I say that they're maybe unaware that posting this actually doubles the importance of the crime they've comitted by agressing is simple : YouTube doesn't have a clear policy concerning what's being broadcasted.The society only declares in its terms of use that's it's not responsible for the contents that the user broadcasts. And most people while creating an YouTube account don't even give a glance to the terms of use. They don't even know that posting this is forbidden and illegal.

• Smooth criminal

On the net, the victims have to front a new humiliation, after being mistreated in public, they have to cope with a public image being harshly damaged. By the time they realized that their agression is on the web, the video had all the time to create its own buzz among the internauts who are craving this kind of dirt.

Why does it takes so much time ?
Because the process to report a shocking video is long. The person being molested has to notice the video (some of the victims are even unaware that there was a video taken), to denounce it to YouTube, to explain why, then Youtube has to check the video, to stop the broadcast...But nothing hardly ever happens for the one who post it, because while registering as a Youtube user, you're are not obliged to give you real name...And a simple IP adress can just help to find which computer has been used to post, but not the identity of the one who posts.


That's why people can be easily blackmailed by anydbody who has a compromising video of them, and threatens to post it. These theme is a very actual problem ; cases like this participates to the dramatic moment in Desperate Housewives, or in the last Ken Loach movie Looking for Eric.

Facing these unpunished criminal hidden behind a computer screen, are we completely harmless?

• War on Terror

In French Law, the fact to tape and broadcast an agression is, in court, a heavy aggraving circumstance.

I think there should be more cooperation from Youtube and others websites dedicated to videos sharing, in order to restrain as much as possible the broadcast of these contents. To my mind, the terms of use should appear more clearly for anyone joining YouTube and much more employees hired in the department of reported contents, in order to stop the share of these compromising videos as quickly as possible.

I also believe that a work should be done upstreamby these wbesites . These teenagers can be educated, and be aware of the possible sanctions they can suffer, and being taught about the moral aspect of any agression and how compromising it can be for their victims, and for them as well. Maybe this work could be done by schools as well, using computing classes not only to learn about the technics of the web, but also to know more about its ethics!