Today, Europol publishes the European Union (EU) Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment, the EU SOCTA 2021. The SOCTA, published by Europol every four years, presents a detailed analysis of the threat of serious and organised crime facing the EU. The SOCTA is a forward-looking assessment that identifies shifts in the serious and organised crime landscape.
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<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">The insightful report emphasizes that both street and organized crime are gradually leveraging digital transformation to hinder police investigations, increase profits and expand criminal businesses globally. </span></p> <p> </p> <p><span lang=\"EN-US\">We are dealing with a mature, well-organized and international network of crime. Sadly, most law enforcement agencies are currently unequipped and understaffed to timely discover, intercept and decrypt digital communications from perpetrators. </span></p> <p> </p> <p><span lang=\"EN-US\">Worse, many gangs aptly leverage lawful online platforms and messengers for their transactions to ensure the </span>criminal activity gets lost in the noise. By creating temporary accounts, obfuscating their messages with creative stenography techniques, hackers become technically untraceable and uncatchable. While digital currencies are the new rocket fuel for the criminal ecosystem that provides secrecy and impunity.</p> <p> </p> <p><span lang=\"EN-US\">This is an extremely dangerous and alarming trend as governments will soon have to select between privacy protection and investigation of serious crimes. It is not impossible to hypothesize that some countries will start imposing mandatory interception, retention and inspection of all digital communications in their jurisdictions, while usage of undecipherable communications will be flatly prohibited. </span></p> <p> </p> <p><span lang=\"EN-US\">It is likewise a myth that governments cannot control cryptocurrencies: a national law criminalizing mere possession of governmentally unapproved digital coins or tokens – may be perfectly constitutional and enforceable in many countries. We will likely see an increase of regulatory regimes soon around the globe.</span></p>