Taking on the Smart Criminals

Financial Times ^ | Emma Jacobs

[nickcarraway]

In the mid-1990s, Marc Goodman, then an investigator in the Los Angeles Police Department, tried to convince his boss of the need for a computer crime unit. The reaction? Utter bafflement. “This captain said to me, ‘Computer crime, what is that? Like if you take the monitor and hit somebody in the head and kill them?’”

It is a telling anecdote. While law enforcement agencies have become in­creasingly sophisticated technologically, criminals have the edge, according to Mr Goodman. That was something he observed when investigating drugs and vice in LA. “In those days the only people that had pagers in the US were physicians. Then you’d start to see street dope dealers carrying pagers. I’m like, ‘You don’t look like a doctor.’”

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Criminals are the true early adopters, says Mr Goodman. Synthetic biology, drones, artificial intelligence: the smart crooks are already on to it. “These people are really clever . . . innovating technologies for fraud, financial gain or personal vendetta,” he says.

Drug cartels, he insists, are investing in research and development. “Crime Inc”, as he calls it, is hiring assembly-line workers from local aircraft factories to work in covert narco-drone plants in Mexico.

Criminal hackers are not isolated pimply youths of popular mythology tinkering about for fun, he says. They are older (40 per cent, he says, are over 35) employees of organised crime syndicates. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the cost of cyber crime alone could be up to $575bn.

[BenLurkin]