Conclusion
The past few years have ushered in unprecedented challenges to the criminal justice system caused by global crises and runaway trends like the COVID-19 pandemic, the digitization of everyday life, and the rise in violent crimes facilitated by technology. The present situation has created an imperative for criminal justice practitioners and researchers to develop and implement better tools, systems, and strategies for using internet data to combat violent crimes like mass killings and stranger-imitated homicides while safeguarding the free speech and privacy rights of citizens. While the Internet is legally recognized as a public space, the courts need to more clearly define the specific kinds of online speech that are not protected by the Constitution, and they need to adopt a practicable intent standard for prosecuting credible threats while protecting innocent individuals from being punished for unpopular or offensive constitutionally protected speech. Citizens rights can be protected, and their privacy concerns can be addressed by law enforcement through several strategies including educating citizens about their online rights and vulnerabilities, partnering with communities and integrating their input into threat assessments, and maintaining transparency as much as possible about digital surveillance and data mining tools employed. Finally, the growing field of digital behavior analysis shows great promise as a mechanism for protecting citizens from dual threats of tyranny and violent crime by capitalizing on the data mining and organizing capacities of machine intelligence while relying on human intuition, judgment, and professional experience to guide decisions.
58 Steel, “Idiographic Digital Profiling,” 8-10.
59 Douglas et al., Crime Classification Manual, 45.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Misconstrual of Privacy in Cyberspace
- Demystifying True Online Threats vs. Protected Violent Speech
- Cyberspace is a Hunting Ground
- Shrinking Big Data
- Behavioral Profiling and Human Judgment
- Conclusion
- Bibliography