Greatest challenges facing law enforcement in investigating exploitation and cyberstalking

Cyberstalking

The rapid changes witnessed over the course of the last two decades has demonstrated how technology and, more specifically, the internet, have expanded the rule of law and the accompanying challenges that lie in enforcing the law. The purpose of this essay is to describe the greatest challenge facing law enforcement agencies in investigating exploitation, cyber stalking and obscenity. This challenge is the mere scope of problems that this platform has created. This essay will also discuss how jurisdictional issues often interfere with the true and honest law enforcement in this area.

Subjectivity as the Leading Challenge

Living in a free society, where free speech is protected by federal law, subjective differences often arise when discussing what is obscene or not. This subjective quality of human behavior is the root of all these issues and should be respected as a problem that must be solved, yet individual liberty and freedom of expression also needs to be protected as well. This is the difficult framework law enforcement officials are presented with and creates the boundaries on which this investigation is conducted within.

Each locality has its each unique and individual set of behavioral standards that are very difficult to standardize and objectify. This is the greatest challenge to law enforcement officials as their application of "reasonable" must accurately reflect the standards of the community. This is extremely difficult and asks to remove the human element out of the law enforcement official. Too much is expected out of these professionals and it is time where law and order is understood in much more tolerant and open minded manner.

Cyberstalking

Kumar (2011) suggested that "Cyberstalking dramatically signals the potential of the Internet to facilitate some types of crimes, as well as pointing to the interventions available and likely to prove effective. Cyberstalking is an entirely new form of deviant behavior that uses technology to harass others in a variety of ways. " This new way of criminal behavior presents a starting point for law enforcement officials as new set of problems the internet poses. Once again, subjective guesses must be made to determine what exactly is stalking and what is not. This problematic course of deduction often leaves law enforcement officials either too aggressive or not aggressive enough. It is ironic that a practice such cyber bullying and cyberstalking can also create real life bullying and stalking.

This problem compounds itself because of certain protections the internet provides. Knowing his or her victims are unable to identify the source of the harassment or threats makes the cyberstalker bolder, encouraging him or her to continue the harassment. This makes many perpetrators more willing to continue pursuing the victim not only at work, but at home, with all the information in the world about the target. Numerous websites provide personal information, including unlisted telephone numbers and detailed driving directions to a home or office. For a fee, other websites will provide social security numbers, financial data, and other personal information.

The Issue of Jurisdiction

The outcome for a person victimized by cyberstalking may vary considerably depending on where the person lives and the cyber skills of the officers at the agency that the victim would report the stalking to. Some state and local agencies also have been frustrated by jurisdictional limitations. In many instances, the cyberstalker may be located in a different city or state than the victim, making it more difficult (and, in some cases, all but impossible) for the local authority to investigate the incident. Even if a law enforcement agency is willing to pursue a case across state lines, it may be difficult to obtain assistance from out-of-state agencies when the conduct is limited to harassing e-mail messages and no actual violence has occurred. A number of cases have been referred to the FBI and U.S. Attorney's offices because the victim and suspect were located in different states and the local agency was not able to pursue the investigation.