FBI's Most Wanted Person of the Year: You

In 2006, the World Wide Web became a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of criminals and making them matter.

To be sure, there are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened throughout the years. From mobsters to terrorist cells, it often seems that the history of egregious crimes reads like the biographies of infamous and terrible men. From Osama bin Laden to Al Capone, from James J. "Whitey" Bulger to Warren Jeffs, it seems that 80% of the crimes are committed by 20% of criminals.

But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about crime syndicates or criminal masterminds. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of copyright violations that are YouTube and those elusive file-sharing programs. It's about the increasing prevalence of identity theft. It's about phishing and scams that originate from all over the world. It's about the sexual predators and stalkers that pervade social networking sites. It's about the many wresting power from the few and harming one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

And we weren't just victims, we also committed crimes. Like crazy. We scammed people on eBay and made up false and poorly-punctuated stories about Nigerians with inordinate amounts of money who inexplicably need a total stranger to transfer it to his account and retain an unusually large commission. We camcordered movies before their release dates and built tools to distribute unlicensed versions of software.

Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I'm not going to watch Lost tonight. I'm going to turn on my computer and attempt to acquire personal information about people by telling them they've won a British Lottery? I'm going to mash up someone's reputation with libelous, anonymous comments? I'm going to illegally redistribute pirated copies of software or movies or songs? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?

The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global criminal opportunities, for founding and framing the new digital crime structure, for beating the pros at their own game, the FBI's Most Wanted Person of the Year for 2006 is you.