Tackling Internet Crime - January 25th 2007

POLICING IS NOW A MUST

The internet has thrived and grown at least partly because of its anarchy. Anyone can add almost anything they like and few are censored. As the internet grew, we began to see the beginnings of censorship. Child pornography is for example almost completely banned, and quite right too. Some countries, notably China, police the internet and decide what their citizens can see and what they can’t. This is generally regarded in the west as not a good thing. Terrorists use the internet to plan atrocities and criminals to launder money. Whatever you think of censorship, and everyone has their own ideas, there is a huge problem with the internet that has got to be fixed in some way.

This problem is the huge increase in internet crime both to send fake (i.e. phishing) e-mails and to attack particular companies to extort money from them. Most of these crimes are committed by shady figures in all corners of the world who hijack computers and add them to botnets that do the dirty work for them. Vint Cerf, the "father" of the internet who co-developed TCP/IP, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos estimates that one quarter of the computers connected to the internet (some 150 million of them) have been hijacked into one of these botnets and that most of the victims of these hijackings have no idea what their computer is being used for. It has also been estimated that over three quarters of all e-mails sent are spam. This junk just clogs up the internet, slowing it down for all us users.

Together, this is truly crime on a massive scale and it must be lucrative or there wouldn’t be so many of these cyber criminals. So how can we tackle this problem and stamp it out before the internet is overwhelmed?

The first important step is of course education. The more people who know what is going on and who take the relatively simple steps necessary to prevent it, the less the criminals will profit. But that will never be enough to stamp out the problem. Several people have suggested that a charge should be made for every e-mail sent. Making this work would mean that every e-mail must have a valid return address that can be verified as correct. Not a particularly simple technical problem to solve, but it would go a long way to cutting down spam. Owners of hijacked computers would soon clean them up if they were presented with some huge bills.

One possibility is for the internet to be controlled by an international police force under the auspices of the UN. This body would have to have the power to block traffic from suspect computers until they have been cleaned up and the power to disconnect whole countries from the internet if they didn’t prosecute the criminals hiding there. Sounds draconian, I know, but in reality some of this policing is already going on. It is widely suspected that the US Department of Homeland Security scan all e-mails looking for terrorist activity. China is more open about the policing it does and although its current motive is more control of its population than fighting crime, there is a precedent here that could and perhaps should be followed by others.

It is a shame that enjoyment of the internet should be spoiled by a relatively few abusers. It is unfortunate that we all have to suffer in order that the problem may be controlled. In many ways, the steps that need to be taken are analogous to the restrictions on international travel. We all have to line up for hours at airport security in case one of our number is a terrorist carrying some harmful substance. Does any traveler really want that security to be reduced? Sure it's inconvenient, but arriving late is much better than not arriving at all!

Comment by Cosmicbrat on November 17th 2007

I sent this item to several majors who are hellbent on implementing an Internet police force legal system... Something needs be done to stop them, or we all pay the price for their meddling... And it could happen very soon, if we don't stand up for our rights...

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All this Media noise about Internet Crime is getting to the point that something must be done to curb the big mouths of the almighty mindless ones...

An Internet Police Force seems like it will be good thing... BUT!.. there is more in it than the noise makers see and realize... It runs along the same lines as "humanity messing with nature"... It's like how mankind imported certain biologicals to deal with specific other biological pests in various parts of the world.. then the imports became a greater problem than the original pest...

You IT people, and others like you, who are proclaiming that there should be strict regulations governing the Internet, are pushing the system to create and install a full blown Internet policing system, incorporated into the whole rigmarole legal system...

Who will pay for the policing and legals of this new Internet policing..? Air?.. Water?.. Your mummies?.. Hell!.. We all will pay for it in the form of "pay per email"... You GD meddling christian imbeciles are pushing the system to make it so we all must pay per email... And when that happens, you fools will all say, "How and Why did this happen to us?"...

It's same as a year ago when the American media was hellbent on slandering China for its internet policies... Americans blabbering about China's misuse and abuses... till I sent a letter to the majors, detailing how their assenine christian-yapping would quickly push China into creating their own Internet for that half of the world, "ChiNet".. and America would thereby lose out on all the Money and control... Then suddenly all America's noise about China's misuse of the Internet ceased...

It's time you idiots STOPPED pushing for the system to force us all to pay per email.. which would make it so blogs and forums cost a hundred bucks to join...

Get The HELL OUT OF OUR LIVES, IT!.. Crawl back into your holes!.. Instead why not work on saving the owls.. or the whales.. or the sea cucumber..?
WE DO NOT WANT TO HAVE-TO PAY FOR EMAILS!..

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Add your voice to quell that insane activity which could result in all of us paying for Internet crime by paying for emails like we pay for postage stamps... because then the parasitic scammer politicians would thereby attach themselves to the money flow, like a lamprey attaches itself to a victim fish... Once established, "pay per email" could not be removed.. like a cancer that you just can't get rid of.. like a lost limb, that you can't regrow.. like democracy's take on the ancient Roman slavery system, maintaining us in herds, with only enough power and energy to be strong slaves, but not enough to escape their parasitic system... When we make too much noise to be ignored, they simply toss us a big cookie, to silence us for yet another month...

The question remain: Do you want to pay for emails, or not?..

Comment by David Sawers on November 17th 2007

Well, that's an interesting rant. But like many rants it doesn't do anything to move the debate forward.

If you don't think there's a problem with internet crime that needs to be addressed then either you are not thinking or you are part of the problem.

Clearly you don't think that paying for e-mails is a good way to pay for policing so what's your solution?

Currently, the internet is policed by ICANN a US government organisation paid for by the US taxpayer. There are strong moves afoot to transfer ICANN to UN control. This may or may not be a good move for freedom of speech but it would certainly be good for transparency.