Determining Cyber Crime Responsibility and Jurisdiction

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Determining Cyber Crime Responsibility

Showing Ignorance

The people commit the crimes, not the devices, and used as tools. Most show their innocence and lay the blame on the computer which might be containing the virus, malware or hacked. It is too complicated to determine the person role in a cybercrime. The experts can efficiently investigate the hacked computer, email account, database or a man in the middle attacks on banks and classify cybercrimes. The device or a machine examined by which cybercrime committed for obtaining evidence. The computer may be the target of the crime, an instrument of a crime or evidence container. Sometimes all the above possibilities are there which get revealed during an investigation.

Investigator's Role

When the computer is a victim or a container, as in most of the cases the investigator looks into the data stored in it, the access log, the log of the data deleted, altered and time of the crime. All are a significant repository of evidence relevant to provide an element of cybercrime. For an investigator, a computer is irrelevant, as it is just one medium. The evidence collected from data stored in it, ownership or control, data and time of processes and fruits of crime are relevant to an investigator.

An investigator follows the structured, verifiable and ethical process to collect digital evidence. Afterward, analyze and examine the same to discover and determine the scope of legal action, the perpetrator involved in it and further prepare it for presentation in court.

Involvement of Experts

The above process is not so natural as the first investigator has to verify its legal rights to access the information which may be private. Then comes the security of the evidence collected as it is easy and quick to edit, alter, manipulate or delete the digital data. Hence, forensic experts use specialized forensic software, so that information collected remains unaltered and verifiable, i.e., reproducible in front of a jury.

The cybercrime fruits are also received and preserved, the nature of attack, motives or intentions of witnesses and all the actors involved.

Defining Jurisdiction

Once cybercrime committed is established, the next decision comes is the jurisdiction. The physical location of perpetrators is immaterial as it can be undertaken from any part of the world, hence treated as shared jurisdiction crime. The administration defined by the area of the crime, the state where it occurred or its effect as felt. Therefore the state describes its punishment.

Sometimes the perpetrators are citizens of other countries then an agreement for an exchange of information and extradition treaty is needed to have held on suspects.