Distributed security: Moving away from a reactive model of law enforcement

Cybercrime creates significant challenges for our current model of law enforcement: The reactive model of law enforcement evolved to deal with real-world crime, which is spatially-based and is committed on a limited scale. Cybercrime ignores borders and can be committed on a much greater scale than real-world crime. For these and other reasons, the reactive model we use to control real-world crime is not an effective means of dealing with cybercrime. We must develop a new model to deal with cybercrime. The new model must be a flexible approach that shifts much of the responsibility for controlling crime from a cadre of designated professionals to those who use cyberspace. The focus must be on prevention, not reaction. To implement this model it is necessary to impose certain responsibilities upon those who use cyberspace; modified principles of criminal liability can be used to create incentives to prevent cybercrime.