This is I think false - the will to prosecute by authorities is often low. Almost every online platform has great evidence of various frauds and crime. I heard Facebook reports 20 million images or more PER YEAR. I’ve had a few experiences. In one someone was cashing bogus checks and we got them to provide the account they’d been asked to deposit them to. There was zero interest in taking a report or looking at whose account that was (person in org who’d been cutting the checks stopped showing up and we were pretty sure was involved). Endless card fraud on tape at merchants- again crickets.
> the will to prosecute by authorities is often low
I hate that this type of statement always pops up as soon as I see any mention of LE. While it might be true for some parts of the US (and probably other countries), it isn't true for the majority of people involved in this field. It's just incredibly hard (thankfully) to convict someone of a crime. It requires a lot of evidence and paperwork. Meanwhile there's a pretty limited amount of resources to work on this kind of thing.
It would be impossible for 'authorities' to investigate 20 million images they receive from Facebook. But implying that authorities don't investigate anything, and don't even want to, is just flat out wrong. For example, here's a story about an awful child predator that was caught in The Netherlands, because American authorities started an investigation into reported images: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_sex_crimes_case
This case is also an example of what authorities tend to focus on, which is producers. A lot of effort is spent trying to prevent producers/abusers from causing more harm. All of this effort can't be invested in investigating brokers/spreaders of 'known' CSAM. Time is limited for everyone and it is too for authorities.
And yes, a probable majority of fraud cases don't get picked up, even if they seem obvious and easy to solve. This is because the man hours for actually getting someone convicted is huge and authorities usually focus on cases involving violence. I personally had to cut short fraud investigations, because preventing a wife from getting murdered by her husband or stopping an illegal arms shipment took preference. And I can't say I feel guilty about that.
And you shouldn't. But it's still a problem that lots of fraud, scam etc just gets ignored.
There's so much fraud out there that looks easy to stop, because it's clear who does it, it's clear that they do it (online, with plenty of evidence) etc etc. Yet when you bring it to the attention of the authorities, they'll look at the individual case and say "okay, but it's only 50€, there's not enough public interest", which I could understand, if it wasn't a commercial-grade criminal operation that does the same thing thousands or tens of thousands of times.
I get that paperwork sucks and investigations take a lot of time and often get nowhere because something just doesn't materialize, but I get the feeling that we're more and more policing non-violent crime like Google & Co do tech support: if there's not a very public issue that the media is actively reporting on, it gets ignored.
And if it's a resource issue: get more resources, it'll pay for itself many times over. A recent example in Germany where some Clan from Turkey had been defrauding the elderly for years and ran up dozens to hundreds of millions of Euros in damages could've been stopped very quickly if there had been more interest from law enforcement. I'm sure we could've paid a person or two with that kind of money.
For fraud, also, there are civil remedies. If you really want it prosecuted, sue in civil court, win, and refer it for criminal prosecution. By and large prosecutors prioritize prosecuting acts for which there are no civil remedies.
Yeah, the failure is unlikely to be on the platform side.
I visited a police station in person to report a $3000 fraud with clear evidence and also document forgery. Police told me to get a lawyer, gave me the fraud report but told me I'm wasting my time if I fill it out.
I've also had a stolen laptop, tracked with Find my Mac, and again, police handed me the report form and told me to contact my insurance.
My dad was an auto mechanic and they had one of the garage vehicles stolen. The thieves broke a window, grabbed a set of keys, and took off with the car. The police came out, took a report and were leaving and the garage manager asked what the police would do next? Would somebody come and dust for prints?
The cop said something like "What's your deductible? Something like $250? Well how much work do you think we should do for $250?" (this was in the 80's).
Cops are too busy making 6 figures directing traffic and hanging out inside their idling SUVs all day to investigate any kind of property crime. I'm sure they would say they just need even more money to buy more guns and then they would help.
I hear you guys on the (relatively small time) financial fraud / theft, but the article mentions far worse. If you went to the police with a video and PII of a violent crime, would they still not open an investigation?
> If you went to the police with a video and PII of a violent crime, would they still not open an investigation?
The short answer... It depends.
People always assume a lot of things when they imply that video evidence makes something an easy case to solve. Identifying people in videos isn't as easy as it seems, for example. It's also not safe to assume that the person posting a video is also the person who filmed it, nor that the location data is correct. So who's the suspect?
Also, where does TikTok send the video? Do they send it to Police in a city where a video is geo tagged, or where it was uploaded, or where the user account was created?
This type of stuff seems trivial when reading an article like this, but it isn't in real life. It's all stuff that may take weeks to figure out and all that time can't be spent on other cases. So yes, sometimes (maybe even often) such reports don't lead to cases. And even if they did, there's no guarantee it would lead to anything.
