To expedite a process that commonly requires a lot of time, an Arkansas police station proposes a very innovative method.
A police department located in Arkansas, United States, has adopted a novel position for its investigations on online crimes: Bitcoin mining. According to local media, the Benton County authorities began generating their own BTCs for use in tracking offenders online. The project is conducted through the department's Cyber Crimes Division, and will focus on crimes such as the proliferation of child pornography, among other examples.
In a chat with the KHBS news channel, which took place in the first days of October, Benton County Detective David Undiano explained that the proposal would help investigators in his office to investigate crimes that had previously They were not prepared to drive. He said:
The criminals are selling child pornography on the Dark Web and in many other corners of the Internet, accepting only bitcoins as a means of payment. Obviously we can not use the credit card of the sheriff's office, let alone exchange child pornography, so we need some kind of currency to obtain the material and then identify who we are getting it from. This is how we can arrest the criminals
However, not everyone in Benton County supports this initiative. And it is that in a conversation published in the newspaper Arkansas Online, the position of Sheriff candidate Glenn Latham was revealed: the officer argued that the plan translates into high amounts bills for local taxpayers. According to his words:
The necessary machines consume too much energy and the costs to feed them will be higher. This will bring higher bills for providers