Another response is the formation of computer crime units to handle the investigating and prosecuting of computer-based crimes. The U.S. Justice Department also has units, as do many states, to investigate computer crime. The law enforcement community is taking a shot at dealing with computer crimes, but is far from the point where it can be said to be on equal footing with its adversaries. A good analogy to the current situation is the introduction of the automobile to crime earlier this century. It took law enforcement some time to develop responses to bank robbers using cars rather than horses to escape a crime scene.
Law enforcement is set up for responding to a robbery at a residence.
Another problem with investigating and prosecuting high-tech crime is that victims are often reluctant to come forward. Executives at a defrauded company may not want the stock-buying public to know about a theft, or may hesitate to go to trial on a trade secrets case because proprietary information about the company may be made public. While training officers and forming special units in some police and sheriff departments should make life more difficult for criminals, getting law-enforcement resources allocated to this phenomenon may not be forthcoming in the near future. But the problem now is that these cases are labor intensive. An investigator may only work on one high-tech case in a week, while other, less complex types of investigations generally don't take as much time and effort.