Environmental Crime

Today is the anniversary of the first train robbery in 1873, which calls to mind how crime invariably adapts to new technology. Old-timers like me will recall how we needed locks on our cars’ gas tanks to prevent siphoning in the early 1970s when prices shot up during the first oil embargo. Of course, nowadays we have cybercrime, e.g., the never-ending attempts to gain unauthorized access to our bank accounts, stock portfolios, etc.

In the 1990s, computer viruses aimed to ruin the victim’s computer. But criminals quickly realized: Hey, while this may be fun, according to our sick ways of thinking, where’s the value?  Now we have malware that steals the identity of those who are sufficiently gullible to think they’ve won a lottery in Nigeria, or to click on a link: “Wells Fargo needs you to log in here!”

We also have a horrific amount of eco-crime, in which perpetrators gain illegal advantage by doing things like dumping toxins onto our land or into our waterways simply to avoid incurring the cost of cleaning up after themselves.  Of course, the Chevron case in Ecuador is a prime case in point.  Though eco-crime isn’t at all new, the extent to which it has the potential to destroy large land masses, e.g., huge swaths of the Amazon jungle, is unprecedented–and so is the amount of legal horsepower that perpetrators (like Chevron) bring to bear to help them defend the indefensible.