Jumping the Firewall

With criminals spreading their web in cyberspace, efficient and effective policing is making it imperative to master new digital tools.

- E. Kumar Sharma

He is up 19 hours a day with a good part of his early mornings and late nights spent in group chats on WhatsApp. No, he is not another teen living life in cyberspace glued to his smartphone and tab. It is a slice out of a typical day of 53-year-old U. Ramamohan, the superintendent of police dealing with cyber crimes at the office of the CID in Hyderabad. “In cyber crime, there is no crime scene from where to begin your investigations. In many cases, the criminal is not even physically present,” says Ramamohan. This is one challenge he needs to constantly face; the other is coming up with innovative ways to outsmart the digitally-savvy criminal. That partly explains the time he chooses to spend in group chats. These are with international expert groups where knowledge is often shared on new trends in tracking crime. “It gives me a starting point for new methods of investigation,” he says, with good reason. Digital policing, after all, is a complicated business, and victory for those tracking crime and its perpetrators is clearly linked to their ability to stay ahead in the game.

Cyber crime can present itself in several forms; technology could be leveraged to either pose a direct threat to human life through a terror attack or to commit financial fraud. But equally dangerous is the increasing trend of using technology to indulge in identity theft, defacement of social media accounts of individuals, hacking into personal e-mails, or even resorting to copyright violations. In most cases, the perpetrators of crime take shelter under the anonymity that cyberspace offers.