Blog #10: Europe Cracks Down on Cybercrime

    As I was searching for a global current event on crime for this week I ran across another article that deals with cracking down on cybercrime. This article was titled, “Europe Cracks Down on Cybercrime,” by Harvey Morris. Throughout this article it discusses how much profits are made from cybercrimes and also it discusses some o the new steps that The European Union plans to use to crack down on cybercrime. One of the EU’s major steps was building a cybercrime center and the proposal of mandatory jail time across all 27 member states for some online offenses. To show how much profit is made from cybercrime, Morris stated: “The Commission said cybercrime was a global and cross-border phenomenon that now brought more profits for organized crime-$388 billion a year worldwide-than the global trade in marijuana, cocaine and heroin combined. This amount shows how important it is to put a stop on cybercrime. The EU believes that by making jail time mandatory for cybercrimes is going to change these numbers. 

    This article is very significant because it shows that more countries around the world are beginning to take action to crack down on cybercrime. Last week, an article was posted that discussed how Europe was calling for a unified response to cybercrime threats, now this week they are taking a step closer to add in mandatory jail time for individuals being caught for cybercrime. From the sociological perspective, this is very important news and is important that this news is spread around the world so that other countries will possibly use some of Europes’ steps to crack down on cybercrime. This article shows just how big and serious cybercrime is all around the world. Seeing that cybercrime makes more money a year than the profit of three major drugs combined proves the seriousness of this crime. 

http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/europe-cracks-down-on-cybercrime/