What is a crime? In basic terms, a crime is an illegal conduct that is penalised by the State or another authority. A crime or offence is an act that is damaging not just to a person but also to a community, society, or the State.
Offences can be divided mainly into three categories: Penal Code offenses, other Statutory Offenses, and Gazette Regulation offenses.
For committing a crime, the judiciary has the authority to severely limit one’s liberty. In today’s society, investigations and trials must follow certain protocols. If found guilty, an offender may receive a suspended sentence, community service, or, depending on the nature of the crime, jail, life imprisonment, or, in certain countries, death.
Most jurisdictions sentence people with the intention of punishing them or a combination of the aforementioned behaviors, while others sentence individuals to programs that focus on or provide for their rehabilitation.
Violent appearance
Who is a criminal? Any person who commits an offense under the law of a country. As soon as we say “criminal,” we think of a man with a tattoo, a knife hidden in his waist, a weapon in his possession, a language of his own, and a violent appearance.
But today, the criminals are the well-dressed, seemingly unrecognizable people in front of a keyboard. They always explore cyberspace using another person’s identity. Identifying a cybercriminal is often quite difficult. But it is very easy to find the location of the electronic device used for a crime and the location where the signals were obtained.
The internet can be divided into three surface areas, dark areas, and deep areas. It is like an iceberg that has sunk in the deep sea. Only a small area is visible on the surface. As a percentage, we are using the surface area, which is 4 percent, and the other 96 percent is dark and not visible to ordinary people like us.
This 96 percent can be accessed only by people who know how to handle the technology, such as hackers. There is a manual process to get access to such dark websites using a browser called the ‘Onion Browser’.
On these websites, there are many numbers of illegal things going on that cannot be traced by Governments because they are using decentralised crypto currency block-chains, which cannot be traced by any Government in the world, to pay for illegal services such as child pornography, drugs, weapons, and so on.
Number of services
When concerning the different eras of the world, now we are in a hi-tech era, which is full of new technological means. Nowadays, we can use only one electronic device (smart mobile phone, laptop, and tablet) for a various number of services within a few minutes.
Today, a person does not need to physically go to a bank, post office, shop, and so on. He/she can use a smart mobile phone and get access through the internet to online banking applications, online shopping applications, and other online platforms to get the service that is needed.
The next world which is yet to come in the near future is the concept of “meta verse’. A meta verse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection.
People can use this technology to do anything at all virtually by using a VR box, for example, shopping, gaming, calling, banking, and so on.
One day in the future, this whole world will be a virtual world, and physical currency will disappear from the world and be replaced by crypto currency. We are stepping into a digital world.
A few eras back, according to the timeline, the industrial revolution came, then the technological revolution, and finally, now we are in the data-based revolutionary era. The crimes have also changed accordingly.
In the first stage, criminals used basic techniques. But now criminals have also been changed and upgraded with the world, and they have so many opportunities to commit a crime without being physically involved in the scene. These crimes are known as cybercrimes.
For instance, a bank robber may rob the bank using an internet method rather than physically traveling to the bank and displaying firearms. Additionally, all crimes, excluding murder and rape, have been changed to an online manner. However, technical tools may sometimes play a role in the causation of such murder and rape offences.
Money laundering, fraud transactions, drug dealing, pornography, child abuse, sexual harassment, cyber bullying, blackmailing, identity theft, hacking, stealing confidential data and information, are some of the forms of cybercrimes.
Illegal offences
Currently, some people are involved this type of illegal offences. These culprits come in the form of different people on social media platforms, especially on Face book. I will explain their process of carrying out fraud or cybercrime with money.
They will reach you in various ways, using messenger, the comments section of a post, email, mobile phone, or whatever medium they can contact you.
They say many stories to surprise you with financial support. Sometimes these people tell you that you have won a cash prize of a large amount of money, that you have won a BMW car, an Audi car, or any valuable thing, or sometimes they will say that they have a trust or bunch of money that belongs to a deceased person and they want to distribute it among poor people in Sri Lanka as per the last will of that deceased person.
This person may be a spouse, friend, relative, or any close person. Then they suggest you use a method called “agent delivery.” That means one of their agents will come to Sri Lanka with the money, but before that, you have to make a small amount of payment to them.
Then they will send you an account number to deposit that amount of money. Once you deposit the money, this Face book account will be deactivated and you will be blocked. You will have nothing at all but a loss. Sometimes they use payment methods like Skill, PayPal, crypto currency, and so on. Because transactions through such methods cannot be easily traceable.
When it comes to murder and rape, any person cannot kill or rape someone by a technological mean without been at the scene, but they use technological means to plan their offense. As an example if any action related to any offense including the murder and rape has been recorded in a CCTV or any technological mean such as camera or mobile phone, they would try to erase or change the footage by using technological methods.
Some people use Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram or any other platform to insult others or to create a problem related to religions, nation, race, skin colour or whatever which makes a different sector of the society.
And also some criminals create false rumours on these platforms which lead to an unlawful assembly. Sometimes criminals use these platforms to launch drug parties, prostitution offers, because they can easily approach the youth of the country. These are offenses under the Sri Lankan law.
As an example, very few people read the privacy policies and terms and conditions of any website, mobile application, and so on.
When the data is on in your electronic device, you are always connected to the universe and you are not safe at all. Every application and website has two ends: your end and their end.
They have access to your end if you have permitted it in the initial stage. Other than you and the owner of such an application or website, third parties can also get access through cyber-attacks or hacking into the system and get your details or confidential information.
Your responsibility is to check the validity, enter your details, and give access to the location, gallery, and settings of your device because there are so many scams that have been created by cybercriminals.
These scam applications and websites are very similar to the original ones. As an example, you are going to order a shirt through an online shopping application. If this application or website is a scam, once you enter your credit card or debit card details into the payment gate, they take your money and get lost. Finally, this application or website ends up with a “404 Error”.
Scam platform
The same thing may happen if you are buying crypto currency through such a scam platform. Using a separate debit card for such online payments will secure your money and also get confirmation from the application or website before using it. If you use scam link and buy crypto currency, your money would be lost in a second and you will not get access to the site or application again.
Sometimes they create fake coins or tokens and provide a chance to purchase them on the internet. You would be able to buy such coins or token, but there is no value for such coins on the cyptocurrency market cap.
These scams are very rapidly shared through whatsapp and facebook. Sometimes these links are ransom ware and virus. When you click the ransom ware link your device data would be taken by them and they try to get a ransom from you to release such data and give access to you. Sometimes you would not get any access to your own data. Therefore, you should be very careful when clicking unknown links.
The technology which is used to collect such evidence is known as computer forensics. Computer forensics is the process of methodically examining computer media such as hard disks, diskettes, tapes, pen drives, Google drives, and so on for evidence.
In other words, computer forensics is the collection, preservation, analysis, and presentation of computer-related evidence. Computer forensics is also referred to as computer forensic analysis, electronic discovery, electronic evidence discovery, digital discovery, data recovery, data discovery, computer analysis, and computer examination. Computer evidence can be useful in criminal cases, civil disputes, and human resources/employment proceedings.
Most countries have changed their systems of laws and regulations to govern these areas. But the thing is, the laws and regulations cannot be amended, altered, or implemented rapidly in parallel to the development of these new technological innovations because every second a new technological is coming to the world.
Accordingly, the patterns of crime are changing instantly. The process of making laws is still not that fast. When it comes to the Sri Lankan context, it is very slow in comparison to other developed countries. Therefore, most of the cyber criminals in Sri Lanka would get rid of laws and regulations.
However, the basic elements of a crime are not changing universally. Only the pattern, or the way of doing a crime, is changing.
Therefore, the investigation process and the evidence-collection methods should be updated accordingly; otherwise, criminals would escape based on a lack of evidence.
Now the Sri Lanka police have established a separate division called the Computer Crime Division, and the CERT institutions and the Sri Jayewardenepura University supports the division.