10 August 2014

Illegal wildlife trade as cybercrime


Coming back to the illegal trade of endangered species through the Internet, and again in direct relation with the subject of my Master Thesis ( Enforcement measures to combat illegal wildlife trade: A comparative study of different systems), I have found a new tool to inform/report about these deals.


In Spain the leading enforcement agency against illegal wildlife trade is the Guardia Civil, a national law enforcement service which dates back to 1844. Recently, the Guardia Civil has presented its collaboration with a private company for the use of the tool named "EGarante" to fight cybercrime. The video (in Spanish) may be seen here below:



Even though it is not a tool designed exclusively for the wildlife trade cybercrime, it may very well be a useful tool to report this type of transactions in Spain. 

The EGarante tool seems to work as a kind of "independent third party" in relation to the truthfulness of the content of a website at a specific moment in time. Once the illegal offer has been identified and reported to the Guardia Civil, they could use it to identify potential cyber-offenders and investigate further their involvement in potential illegal wildlife trade. One draw-back though: for legal reasons, if a formal report wants to be filled the person has to go personally to the Guardia Civil premises with the copy of the document produced by EGarante.

I leave the link to the tool which will be duly taken into consideration next time I come across somethig that looks like wildlife cybercrime in Spain. 

http://www.egarante.com/eg-web/

Cheers and enjoy this beautiful Sunday!

No comments: