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       考研英语外刊阅读能力的提升，需要日积月累才能看得到效果。接下来，北京文都考研网为帮助2020考研学子，在英语水平上更上一层台阶，特意整理出考研英语外刊阅读精选:网络犯罪亟待执法，供考生参考。

2020考研英语外刊阅读精选:网络犯罪亟待执法

About half of all property crime in the developed world now takes place online. When so much of our lives, and almost all of our money, have been digitised, this is not surprising – but it has some surprising consequences. For one thing, the decline in reported property crimes trumpeted by successive British governments between 2005 and 2015 turns out to have been an illusion. Because banks were not required to report fraud to the police after 2005, they often didn’t. It would have made both banks and police look bad to have all that crime known and nothing done about it. The cost of the resulting ignorance was paid by the rest of government, and by the public, too, deprived of accurate and reliable knowledge. Since then, the total number of property crimes reported has risen from about 6m to 11m a year as the figures have taken computerised crime into account.

The indirect costs to society are very much higher than the hundreds of millions that individuals lose. One example is the proliferation of plagiarism software online, which developed an entire industry in poor, English-speaking countries like Kenya, serving idle or ignorant students in England and North America. The effort required by schools and universities to guard against such fraud has been considerable, and its cost entirely disproportionate to the gains made by the perpetrators.

There is worse, too: the fact that recorded crime figures continued to fall throughout Theresa May’s tenure as home secretary, all while she cut 20,000 police jobs, was an important fact in making her appear a competent candidate for prime minister in 2015.

A recent paper from Cambridge University has examined the changing landscape of crime online since 2012. The news is not all bad. Although the general level continues to rise, some forms have diminished. Sometimes this is the result of deliberate effort: credit card fraud has grown in absolute terms, but it is now a smaller proportion of a much larger pie. More often it is the result of developments in the law-abiding world that have made some older crimes unprofitable. It is no longer worth anyone’s while to counterfeit Viagra now that it has come out of patent and is sold without prescription; the fraudulent copying of music has been almost eliminated by digital streaming services. Even software is now largely sold on subscription and no longer pirated.

Some forms have grown immensely. Bitcoin and other digital currencies have no realapplication as a means of exchange except for things that may not be legally sold, like drugs, or to pay ransoms to criminals – both the WannaCry and NotPetya ransomware demanded payment in bitcoin from their victims. The invention of this payment mechanism has led to a corresponding boost in the profitability and supply of these ransomware.

We are not helpless against this onslaught, but the police in Britain still act as if we were. Because much of cybercrime is international, it requires close and quick collaboration between national police forces, and even within the EU this is not the case. The British police are reluctant to investigate property crimes in the real world and still more so online. This reluctance is backed up by a lack of resources. But until it can be overcome, crime will continue to flourish online since there is no detectable law enforcement there. It took 10 years for the British government to acknowledge that so much crime was taking place online. How many more years will it take before any government sets out to fight it?

【参考译文】

在发达国家，目前一半的财产性犯罪都发生在网上。我们生活的一大部分以及我们几乎所有的资金都已数字化，这并不令人惊讶——但它却引起了一些出人意料的后果。原因之一就是，从2005年到2015年间，接连几届英国政府都大力鼓吹报道中财产性犯罪的下降，后来证明这只是一个假象。因为2005年之后，银行并不需要向警方报告欺诈事件，他们通常也不会这么做。要是这样做了话，所有的犯罪行为就会公开，而警察对此却无能为力，这会有损银行和警方的形象。这种无知的代价却由政府其他部门承担，当然还有不知道准确可靠消息的公众。自那之后，所报道的财产性犯罪总数已经从每年600万上升到了1100万，因为统计数字将计算机化的犯罪也考虑了进去。

相较于数亿的个人损失，社会的间接成本更加的高。一个例子就是在线盗版软件的剧增，在贫穷的英语国家如肯尼亚，这发展成了一个完整的产业，服务于英国和北美的那些懒惰或者无知的学生。学校和大学在防止这类欺骗行为上已经作出了巨大的努力，但这种欺骗行为的代价相比犯罪者的收益来说根本微不足道。

还有更糟糕的情况：在特蕾莎·梅担任内政大臣期间，记录在案的犯罪数量持续下降，这个重要的事实也让她在2015成为一个看似合格的总理候选人。

近期一份剑桥大学的论文仔细研究了2012年以来网络犯罪情况的变化。结果并不都是坏消息。尽管整体水平持续上升，但是某些形式的网络犯罪已经减少了。有时这是刻意努力的结果：信用卡诈骗案的绝对数量一直在增长，但是它占总体的比例却更小了。这更多的是守法环境发展的结果，这种环境让一些旧式犯罪无利可图。”伟哥“已经不值得任何人去仿制了，因为现在它已经过了专利期了，并且不要处方就能买到;欺诈性的音乐盗版因数字流媒体服务而绝迹。甚至软件现在都是用订阅的方式售卖，也不再有人盗版了。

一些形式的犯罪大量增长。比特币和其他电子货币作为交换方式并无实际应用，除了用于购买一些或许不能合法出售的物品如毒品，或者用于向罪犯支付赎金——WannaCry和NotPetya两种勒索软件都要求受害者使用比特币支付。这种支付方式的发明导致这类勒索软件获利和供应也相应增长。

面对这种攻击，我们不是毫无希望，但是英国警方表现得好像我们是毫无希望。因为大部分网络犯罪都是国际性的，它要求各国警方之间紧密快速的合作，甚至在欧盟内部，情况也并非如此。英国警方不愿在实际中调查财产性犯罪，以及更多的网络财产性犯罪。这种不愿意是由于缺乏资源。但是在这个问题解决之前，网络犯罪将会持续增长，因为在英国还没有可见的执法。英国政府花了十年时间才承认发生着如此之多的网络犯罪。还需要多少年的时间才有政府开始解决这个问题呢?

       以上是北京文都考研网给出的“2020考研英语外刊阅读精选:网络犯罪亟待执法”，希望对2020考研者有所帮助!祝2020考研成功!

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