How do you catch criminals in the age of digital and cryptocurrencies?
Many dedicated law enforcement agencies (from the FBI to the INTERPOL) set their task to track and trace criminal activities through the web in order to bring them to justice wherever they are in the world. It explores the complex and challenging investigations the various individuals in this global hunt has to adapt to in order to track the use of cryptocurrency to enable various crimes (and some of these crimes are truly heinous).
What do I learn from these tales of modern online investigations?
- You should question any assumptions and be curious, e.g. Don’t assume Bitcoin is safe.
- There is always a balance of privacy people need vs. ability to police bad actors. This is not black and white.
- Collaboration leads to more success than going at it alone.
- Our childhood built our future characters. Both the investigators and the criminals got their core values from the way they grew up (e.g. one agent visited her parent’s DA office building her sense of justicr vs. another criminal grew up in a family separation making him long for a toxic alpha male image
- CSA is horrible. I am glad we see some people involved get their justice in this book.
- Psychology of a criminal is morbidly fascinating. They may be rich but are they truly happy?
- Government agents moving to private sectors is commonplace but does the system adequately address the conflict of interst issue?
- Dedication and perseverance. It takes. Gotta be passionate
- Sophistication of the techniques and tasks involved
- The successful investigators need to be curious and paranoid, be Perseverant and have attention to detail. Most of all, the passion needs to start in their youth as those fragments of meaning and purpose continue to solidify
Cryptocurrency, especially bitcoins, are billed as untraceable but that’s not the case thanks to some of these warriors. Amidst the intersection of technology and law enforcement, these techno investigators toil in the midst of obscurity to crack the cases and bring the right people to justice. More people should know what it takes.