But, on closer inspection, a lot of the 'insider' crime is committed by people doing dumbass things: like opening virus-infected attachments. Or, oh, heck using Microsoft Outlook and the IE browser where they don't even have to execute a file anymore! IOW, what's counted as "insider" crime is really mistakes. Ok so a "crime" was committed by a malware author. Pisswitted users like CEOs (who, IME, are the biggest offenders) facilitate the replication of the worm/virus. Each of the interviewed companies will say, "3 incidents of malware infection this year." "5 incidents." "1 incident." But was it one crime by one malware writer? Or 9 criminal incidents?
Also, in order to get police attention, they have to have suffered a certain amount of damange, money-wise, IIRC. Often, they inflate the costs of the crime to get police assistance. (OTOH, some of don't report real intrusions and so forth be/c they don't want the bad publicity. Which was why CA recently passed a law requiring firms to report identity theft crimes. Subsequently, that stat has gone up!
So, there are plenty of problems with reporting crime too and people would describe these as the "social construction of crime" In fact, they took it seriously enough that they changed the survey to account for the very existence of the "social construction of crime": http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict_rd.htm
See also, this: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/bgpcd.htm. I got that from surfing around beyond the link, below.
At 02:10 PM 6/30/2004, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>NP Childs:
> > That's a gross simplification, societal attitudes and mores play a
>role in these things as well;
> > the rate of reported spousal abuse has increased significantly in the
>last 20 years, does that
> > mean there's more of it or hat it's just being reported more? Crimes
>like sexual assault are
> > subject to the same thing; the amount of crime being reported is
>directly proportional to
> > having recognized 'authority figures' who validate that a crime
>occurred and a society
>
>That is why crime stats do not depend exclusively on police reports but
>use victimization surveys, such as NCVS
>(http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvictgen.htm).
>
>Claiming that crime is but social construction and a figment of
>imagination is a fantasy of armchair academics and demagogues. It is
>one thing to denounce crime fear mongering by politicians - but that
>does not have be going into the other extreme.
>
>Wojtek
>
>
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