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SALT LAKE CITY — Police agencies across the country need better ways to gather data on technology-based crime, according to an article published this week in The New York Times.
The Times gave an overview on a newly-released report titled "The Changing Nature of Crime and Criminal Investigations," from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) and the Department of Justice, on cyber crime and how to tackle it. In an era where the U.S. faces more digital and online crime, local law enforcement agencies often have inadequate ways to track it, the report found.
As one example, the report says Utah Commissioner of Public Safety Keith Squires brought together a team of analysts to track patterns of online distribution of the drug fentanyl. This, after he realized a lack of data on that trend was slowing criminal investigations.
The work Utah's team did to combat cyber crime was so effective that, in conjunction with the PERF report, the Department of Justice released an in-depth case study on Utah's Cyber Crimes Unit titled "The Utah Model."
According to the case study, in 2010 there were 25,000 to 30,000 cyber attacks on Utah state networks per day. But in 2016, Utah's Department of Technological Services estimated "100 to 200 million attempted cyber attacks bombarded Utah state networks in one day." While part of the increase is attributed to the new NSA building in Lehi, the increase also highlights how criminals are shifting to online crimes. Squires is advocating for more funding for cyber crime units around the country.
“Most cyber crimes are property crimes, so people may think that they’re less important than violent crimes," Squires said, according to the case study. "But cyber crimes can be devastating to victims. Police have a fundamental duty to help protect people from cyber criminals.”
Squires created Utah's cyber crimes unit in 2012. The unit works with local law enforcement and the FBI, among other agencies.
Politicians and government leaders in various parts of the country tout lower rates for traditional crime, but online offenses often are not counted in those statistics, the report said. Cyber crimes include things like identity theft, ransomware attacks, fentanyl purchases over the dark web, revenge porn, sexual exploitation and various gift or credit card schemes.
The Times says it's partly because those crimes have no geographic borders, making it tough for local police agencies to track them. Also, some consider tools used to fight and measure criminal trends in the U.S. outdated.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine launched a panel to modernize local and federal crime-classification systems, the paper said. More accurate data will help those responsible know how to respond to trends, allocate resources and funds, and come up with crime-fighting strategies.
Also, the Washington-based research group PERF recommends local agencies do things like develop their own digital expertise, hire civilian analysts and mine technology to help solve technology-based crime.
“Crime data reporting — in its current state — is not collecting the right information to understand and analyze current events,” FBI spokesman Stephen G. Fischer Jr. told the Times. “Today’s information age has changed how we see the world and what the world expects from policing.”
Many cyber crimes go unreported, according to another PERF report. For example, an FBI center created to track internet crime received 298,728 complaints in 2016, the report says. But leaders of the center said that number only represents about 10 to 12 percent of cybercriminal victims in the U.S.
Cyber crime units need to be funded, and that funding shouldn't be based solely on arrest numbers, Squires said.
“You can’t define success in cyber by the number of handcuffs you put on people," he said.
The other reason why there's a need for state- and city-level cyber crimes units is that local cyber crimes are overwhelming national agencies.
“If we can free up the FBI’s investigators and resources to work on national security and terrorism cases, then that alone makes our participation worth it," Squires said.
