Information Sharing: Hackers vs Law Enforcement

The fields of information assurance and digital forensics continue to grow in both importance and complexity, spurred on by rapid advancement in digital crime. Contemporary law enforcement professionals facing such issues quickly discover that they cannot be successful while operating in a vacuum and turn to colleagues for assistance. However, there is a clear need for greater IT-based knowledge sharing capabilities amongst law enforcement organizations; an environment historically typified by a silo mentality. A number of efforts have attempted to provide such capabilities, only to be met with limited enthusiasm and difficulties in sustaining continued use. Conversely, the hacker community achieves rapid advancement due to its diligent emphasis on knowledge sharing through technology. The characteristics of knowledge sharing willingness and effectiveness within these two communities create a distinct advantage for hackers. In what follows, these two highly disparate communities are juxtaposed in terms of what drives their relative effectiveness in knowledge sharing efforts. The resulting conclusions lay a foundation for deeper empirical investigation into this phenomenon, which in turn may drive design decisions for emerging law enforcement knowledge sharing platforms such as th