India is raising a force of cyber experts to penetrate into the murky world of black markets to identify slimy operators leading to their arrest. The Narendra Modi Government has planned to open the doors of the Central Armed Police Force and State police force for the computer geeks.
Police forces across the country have been directed to raise Information and Technology (IT) Cadre to deal with increasing cybercrime. Hiring cyber-cops is being done to checkmate serial fraudsters. The Government has also issued a direction to set up state-of-the-art cyber police units at districts and sub-divisional level, and cyber forensic labs.
The geeks would also be roped in for patrolling in the cyberspace and investigating cybercrimes. Sources in the Union Home Ministry stated that the police chiefs of States and Union Territories have been directed to raise a new IT cadre and hire cyber experts. The recruits of IT cadre would be deployed at the cyber police units which would be like any other police station in the country.
They would be assigned duty to gather criminal intelligence and collaborate on operations to combat crime. Their job would include identifying the sophisticated perpetrators operating key criminal services in the cyber underground marketplaces.
Their main task would be to crack down on darknet websites, which generally target marchants and customers. They need to identify who are involved in illegal drugs, weapons, trafficking, and facilitators of child pornography. Actually, the darknet is a privileged place for cyber criminals where they operate in anonymity. The criminals on the darknet are many steps ahead of law enforcement agencies and this has led the Central Government to take swift action.
“The cyber space is used by the terrorists more frequently, and to deal with them the IT cadre will help its ground team. As terrorist organisations are hiring computer expertise to radicalise and recruit members, the job of the IT cadre would be to trace the recruiters,” said a senior IPS officer.
Witnessing all this, the Government decided to build technical capabilities in order to support technical investigations into subjects using darknets. Also these geeks can be involved as an “undercover agents” to infiltrate black marketplaces to identify its operators.