Combatting the global cyber crime pandemic is becoming an increasingly urgent issue, as identity theft and spyware are occurring with alarming frequency. Early instances of cyber crime found individuals, corporations, and law enforcement unprepared, uninformed, and unmobilized to address cyber crime responsively. This resulted in victims suffering long, drawn-out battles to regain their identities; with no guidelines to assist them, many victims endured frustrating battles that yielded little benefit. Corporations likewise faced many obstacles in their uncharted course to recover from data theft and hacking. Since then, however, cyber crime has become recognized as a serious threat, and new laws as well as useful information for preventing and resolving it have been developed.
One excellent repository for cyber crime information is the http://www.cybercrime.gov/ website, a Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) site (2005) that contains information presented in the context of eight different categories. Although some of the information overlaps across categories, each category has specific information related to the category and includes a number of links to further data.
One of the siteÆs categories is ôCitizen interested in high-tech privacy.ö This category provides information useful to someone who would like to understand more about computer privacy but who is not employed in a field connected with it, such as law enforcement or the high-tech industry. Information regarding privacy issues, testimony on digital privacy, guidelines for searching and seizing computers, instructions on how to refer potential privacy violations to the Department of Justice, information on encryption and computer crime, and frequently asked questions (FAQ) on encryption policy are all covered under this category. Each of these areas is further broken down and additional links provided to...