Chapter 3: Cybercrime: globalisation, power and harm in the new media age. BLOCK 1, BOOK 1

Question 1

DEVELOPMENT AND IMPACT OF ‘INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES’ (ICT’s).

(CASTELLS, 2009)

Answer 1

1. Development of information and computer technologies (ICT’s) impacts on areas of the social, cultural, economic, and political (CASTELLS, 2009)
2. We live in in an information/knowledge society - i.e a digital world.
3. The Information era - changes the nature and patterns of criminal behaviour
4. The information era - also presents new challenges for CRIME PREVENTION and CRIME CONTROL.
5. The internet brings perpetrators and victims into contact and makes it difficult for perpetrators of ‘ONLINE VICTIMISATION’ to be identified.
6. So, people in their own ‘SAFE SPACE’ of home (LOCAL) are vulnerable to intrusion from people in other countries (GLOBAL).

Question 2

GROWING DIMENSIONS OF CYBERCRIME.

Including statistics of COMPUTER ACCESS and PATTERNS OF COMPUTER USE (ITU, 2012)

Answer 2

1. The internet is a global network - a ‘network of networks’ (CASTELLS, 2003)
2. Information and computer technologies (ICT’s) are used in financial markets, military, governments, business and universities etc.
3. UNEQUAL ACCESS of the internet follows lines of existing ‘SOCIAL EXCLUSION’ within individual countries.
4. STATISTICS : (ITU, 2012)
   a) EUROPE - 70% of households have access to the internet
   b) AFRICA - 6% have access to the internet.
   c) 2012 - 2.4 billion - 34.3% of the global population had access to internet.

FACTORS:

Employment/income/education/ethnicity/disability are reflected in ‘PATTERNS OF INTERNET USE’. In criminology this is important as it tells us about the potential of both cyber criminals and cyber victims.

MOST PEOPLE ONLINE PER 100 people:

a) Iceland - 97
b) Norway 95
c) Sweden - 95
d) Denmark - 95

UK in tenth position with 90.

Question 3

DEFINITIONS OF CYBERCRIME

Answer 3

1. Term ‘CYBERCRIME’ does not refer to a single activity of ILLEGAL ACTIVITY.
2. It covers a ‘wide range of offences’ that are legally defined as crimes carried out using the internet through various devices.
3. These crimes are carried out over social media platforms such as twitter, as well as email and instant messenger.
4. 1. CYBERCRIME - Illegal acts committed with the assistance of, or by means of, the internet.

Question 4

DEBATES FOR CRIMINOLOGISTS AROUND CYBERCRIME.

Answer 4

1. CRIMINOLOGISTS - consider if the growth of the internet has transformed ‘PATTERNS OF ILLEGAL ACTIVITY’
2. They also debate if this has generated ‘NEW FORMS OF CRIME’ and created ‘NEW CHALLENGES FOR POLICING AND SECURITY (WALL, 2007).
3. Some think that new and distinctive forms of criminal activity emerge in cyberspace and that new criminal vocabulary to describe this is required - for example SNYDER, 2011.
4. Others - See CYBERCRIME as ‘familiar’ criminal activities pursued with the help of new tools and techniques, for example GRABOSKY, 2001.

Question 5

CLASSIFICATIONS OF CYBERCRIMES - These are classified by and distinguished between by (WALL,2001):

Answer 5

WALL, 2001 distinguishes between:

1. COMPUTER-INTEGRITY CRIMES
2. COMPUTER-ASSISTED CRIMES
3. COMPUTER-CONTENT CRIMES

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Question 6

1. COMPUTER-INTEGRITY CRIMES (WALL,2001):
   a) spreading MALWARE/viruses/worms,Trojans
   b) Denial-of-service’ attacks
   c) hacking

Answer 6

1. COMPUTER-INTEGRITY CRIMES - aimed at both the network and hardware/software.

EXAMPLES include:

a) THE SPREADING OF MALWARE - i.e viruses, worms, Trojans to affect the operation of the devices.
b) DENIAL-OF-SERVICE attacks - to force the web-based services offline by flooding them with unmanageable communication requests.
c) HACKING - Unauthorised access to, and potential interference with a computer system.

POINTS:

A) Computer-integrity crimes generate new kind of victimisation targeting states,businesses and individual computer users

B) This form of CYBERCRIME both entrenches existing patterns of POWER, i.e) the states control over its citizens

and

enables the ‘powerless’ such as political protest movements and activist groups to use hacking to publicise their causes on a local and global scale.

Question 7

2. COMPUTER-ASSISTED CRIMES (WALL, 2001):

A) Online Theft
B) Online Fraud
C) Online Interpersonal victimisation

Answer 7

1. COMPUTER-ASSISTED CRIMES - reworking various forms of theft, fraud, and interpersonal victimisation.

EXAMPLES of theft and fraud of include:

a) goods, services, money, finance and information (i.e, confidential data, personal data, bank details etc).

EXAMPLES of INTERPERSONAL VICTIMISATION include:

b) sexual harassment, virtual abuse, cyberstalking, cyberbullying, cybersexploitation, virtual child abuse, and online grooming.

Examples of ONLINE FRAUD include:

1. Auction fraud
2. Retail fraud
3. Government official scams and online victimisation - elderly are the most victimised as they are the most trusting and are assumed to be more wealthy.
4. Dating and Romance scams - the elderly, divorced and widows are the most victimised.
5. Computer-assisted crimes such as theft can intersect with computer integrity crime such as hacking as theft is an important motive for hacking, both on an individual and collective basis (CHOO, 2008).

Question 8

3. COMPUTER-CONTENT CRIMES (WALL, 2001):
   a) obscene and violent pornography
   b) child sexual abuse (CSA) imagery

C) Terrorist DISCOURSE

d) Hate speech

Answer 8

1. These centre on the ‘content’ of computerised communication itself.
2. Communication that breaches legally defined limits on speech that are considered harmful to society.

EXAMPLES of this include:

a) OBSCENITY AND VIOLENT PORNOGRAPHY - The circulation of obscene and violent images.
b) CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE (CSA) IMAGERY - Sexualised images of children
c) TERRORIST DISCOURSE - Expressions that incite political violence such as terrorism
d) HATE SPEECH - against ethnic, religious, sexual, or other minorities.

Question 9

HOW THE ‘REPACKAGING’ OF FAMILIAR CRIMES THROUGH ‘RELOCATION’ INTO CYBERSPACE TRANSFORMS THESE CRIMES IN SIGNIFICANT WAYS.

DEBATE: QUESTION TO CONSIDER:

Does ‘cybercrime’ just reproduce existing crimes, or does this mean that new crimes are produced as a result of cybercrime?

Answer 9

1. Offenders can make their pitches electronically to millions of victims at the same time through spam emails, text messages, social media.
2. Increasing use of ICT’s for financial transactions makes users vulnerable to theft of sensitive information, i.e credit card and bank account details.
3. People are more vulnerable to bullying, abuse, and threats through electronic communication channels.
4. Offences can be committed at a distance and does not have to come into contact with the victim.
5. ‘PATTERNS OF ONLINE VICTIMISATION’ are complex. They reflect UNEQUAL POWER RELATIONS that exist offline. The elderly, children, young people, women, and ethnic and sexual minorities suffer disproportionate levels of harm.
6. Networked communications allow content to be globally spread.
7. Such communications grant perpetrators a degree of anonymity that makes them difficult to identify and prosecute.

Question 10

THE INTERNET AND ITS IMPORTANT ROLE IN GLOBALISATION.

Answer 10

1. Increasing ‘interconnectedness’ between societies means events in one part of the world affect societies in others (Bayliss and Smith, 1997).
2. Internet plays a key role in the globalisation of economies, politics, culture, and crime.
3. By crime - the internet connects perpetrators and victims across huge distances (AAS, 2007).
4. Differences between laws and enforcement strategies across countries add to the challenges cybercrime presents.

Question 11

THE INTERNET AND THE UK (THE LOCAL)

Answer 11

1. The internet and ICT’s touch most areas of our daily lives, i.e mobile phones/smart phones.
2. Most people in UK use internet to study,work, shopping, socialising, entertainment etc
3. As a consequence - most people are affected to some degree by risk and harm associated to use of the internet, while at the same time enjoying its benefits.
4. HOWEVER - not everyone has EQUAL ACCESS to the internet in the UK and this may leave some people feeling isolated from a range of opportunities others take for granted.

Question 12

1. ‘HACKING’ - A COMPUTER-INTEGRITY CRIME:

Answer 12

1. Unauthorised access to, and potential interference with a computer system.
2. HARMS resulting from hacking include:
   a) causing websites to crash through ‘denial of service attacks’.
   b) widespread distribution of viruses and malware
   c) Exploitation through victimisation - unevenly distributed victimisation of the least experienced computer users, younger people, the elderly, those with poor educational levels.
3. 4. HACKING: INDEPENDENT DEFINITION - Hacking generally refers to unauthorised intrusion into a computer or a network. The person engaged in hacking activities is known as a hacker. This hacker may alter system or security features to accomplish a goal that differs from the original purpose of the system. Hacking can also refer to non-malicious activities, usually involving unusual or improvised alterations to equipment or processes (REF - TECHNOPEDIA website)

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Question 13

EXAMPLES OF HACKING:

NOTE: - The availability of techniques for HACKING, INTRUSION, and DISRUPTION entrench EXISTING PATTERNS of POWER already evident within societies

and

enable the POWERLESS to engage in conflict with and resist POWERFUL STATES. They would not be able to do this otherwise, i.e ACTIVIST GROUPS.

Answer 13

1. CYBER-WARFARE - state actors target other governments, foreign citizens, and members of their own population.
   a) EXAMPLE - Nuclear facility in Iran realised its computer systems had been infected by malicious software called STUXNET (FARWELL, 2011).
   b) and Edward Snowdon leaked documentation claiming mass surveillance by the NSA and GCHQ in the UK
2. CYBER-TERRORISM - attacks by terrorist groups with a political agenda could use internet to cripple nations electronic infrastructure (VERTON, 2003).
   a) However, there are not many instances of cyber attacks by terrorists as they prefer to stick to more conventional methods of violence and intimidation.
   b) However - many states have introduced laws to combat cyber-terrorism, spending lots of money to protect computer systems against cyber attacks.
3. ACTIVIST GROUPS - Social and political protest movements see ACTIVIST GROUPS using HACKING techniques to publicise their causes, such as resistance to oppression and injustice.

EXAMPLE - ‘ELECTRONIC DISTURBANCE THEATRE’ - A cyber activist group used ‘denial-of-service’ attacks to shut down Mexican government websites.

This was in support of a land rights movement that aimed to secure access to farmland for Mexico’s poor and marginalised rural groups (PICKERILL, 2006)

EXAMPOLE - WIKILEAKS - released classified intelligence documents than the rest of the world combined (WIKILEAKS, 2015).

Question 14

SURVEILLANCE AND MONITORING OF COMPUTER USERS ONLINE ACTIVITIES: This refers to ‘POWER’.

QUESTION FOR DEBATE - Is there a need for STATE BODIES/GOVERNMENTS to have sweeping access to users online communications?

Answer 14

1. These measures/laws are controversial as they involve intensive and extensive surveillance and monitoring of computer users online.

This places computer users ‘right to privacy’ in jeopardy

EXAMPLE - In UK, Conservatives proposed ‘DRAFT COMMUNICATIONS DATA BILL’ (dubbed THE SNOOPERS CHARTER) to collect and retain detailed records of users browsing activities, emails, and messages. This was met with huge resistance from civil rights campaigners and was rejected.

2. ANSWER FOR DEBATE - A balance needs to be struck, as governments may need to access private records such as telephone or email data, for purposes of national security.

However- citizens have the right to expect that this access will not be unlimited, and will be subject to legal controls where there must be reasonable level of suspicion for access to be granted.

Question 15

CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE (CSA) IMAGERY.

This is a COMPUTER-CONTENT crime.

Answer 15

1. This is a computer-content crime.
2. TAYLOR ET AL (2001) - created a tenfold typology of such images ranging from:

a) indicative - non-erotic images of children
b) nudist and erotic posing
c) extreme representations of sadistic violence/assault etc.

3. Online trade in ‘CSA IMAGERY’ is worth $3 billion per annum (IFR, 2004)
4. UNICEF estimates there are 4 million websites featuring CSA IMAGERY (WOLF, 2010)
5. STUDY found USA half of reported paedophile websites were hosted in USA, whereby US citizens made up 32% of the global users (TELEFONO ACROBBALENO, 2004)

Question 16

CIRCULATION OF OBSCENE AND VIOLENT IMAGERY INVOLVING ADULTS

This is a computer-content crime.

Answer 16

1. This is a computer-content crime.
2. British Obscenity laws were extended in 2008 to counter production, circulation, and possession of extreme and violent pornography.
3. ISSUE EXAMPLE - JANE LONGHURST court case, where GRAHAM COUTTS sexually assaulted and murdered her. By this, there was an effort to link his online consumption of violent pornography, i.e strangulation, rape, necrophilia, to why he committed this act.
4. The Jane Longhurst ‘campaign’ against violent internet pornography of 50,000 signatures led to legislation criminalising the possession of extreme pornography, with a punishment of up to 3 years imprisonment (Jewkes, 2010).
5. However - these acts have been challenged as they criminalise consensual acts of fantasy scenarios that only appear to cause harm to the participants, but are not in reality (Harper and Yar, 2011).

Question 17

HATE SPEECH

This is a COMPUTER-CONTENT crime.

Answer 17

1. This is a computer-content crime.
2. HATE SPEECH - Any form of speech that depicts individuals or groups in a derogatory manner in reference to their ethnicity, religion, sexuality, physical/mental disability in a manner to provoke hatred.
3. Forms of online HATE SPEECH occur on websites, chatrooms, and forums, social media, YouTube, and Facebook by extremist political groups that are:
   a) far-right, ultra-nationalist, white supremacist, and Neo-Nazis in orientation.
   b) christian fundamentalists
   c) anti-abortion groups
   d) anti-government militia groups
4. They target blacks, Jews, Muslims, women, homosexuals, and disabled etc online.
5. IN 2010 - Although hard to gauge, evidence suggests there were about 11,500 ‘HATE SITES’ online (LOHR, 2010).
6. Although there are legal provisions in place against hate speech such as ‘THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE’S CONVENTION ON CYBERCRIME’ - the global nature of the internet presents obstacles to EFFECTIVE ENFORCEMENT.
7. EXAMPLE - the ‘FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION’ in the USA prohibits lawmakers from encroaching upon freedom of speech, even when that speech is clearly racist, sexist, homophobic, or discriminatory.

However, thee only exemption to this FIRST AMENDMENT is if the speech is deemed a serious threat to life against an identifiable person, or incites others to commit criminal acts against them.

Question 18

TERRORIST DISCOURSE

This is a COMPUTER-CONTENT crime.

Answer 18

1. This is a computer-content crime.
2. Terrorist organisations could turn to the internet to computer-mediated crimes to attack, but are more likely to stick to conventional methods of torture, brutality etc.
3. However - organisations and their sympathisers could use the internet to communicate and coordinate terrorist activities by email and forums etc (Shelley, 2003)
4. Advantages of this is communication on a transnational basis, greater anonymity, and security.
5. At a low cost, terrorist organisations can use the internet to target a global audience by disseminating propaganda, secure publicity, recruit supporters, soliciting donations, and fundraising (getting supporters to make payments to these groups via front organisations) etc
6. Numerous terrorist organisation s now maintain their own websites to do this, and internet banking makes more difficult for authorities to detect suspicious transactions (FITZGERALD, 2003).

Question 19

SOCIAL RESPONSES TO CYBER CRIME.

Answer 19

1. The sheer volume of offences requires a degree of selectivity to police and regulate. This is down to what is deemed as the most serious offences. Dominant understandings of seriousness are based on the severity of harms caused to the victim.
2. Police have not got the resources to investigate every range of internet based offences. HMIC REPORT (2014) indicates that police forces in England and Wales lack knowledge, training, and skills to deal with cybercrime.
3. Police mainly focus on offences such as CSA IMAGERY, HACKING, POLITICAL OFFENCES related to TERRORISM, and INTERPERSONAL OFFENCES where there is risk of real world harm to an individual/victim.
4. ‘SPECIALISED UNITS’ TO ADDRESS THIS INCLUDE:
   a) NATIONAL CRIME AGENCY (NCA)
   b) CHILD EXPLOITATION AND ONLINE PROTECTION CENTRE (CEOP).
   c) INTERPOL, EUROPOL, ENISA (GLOBAL level).
   d) NON-STATE ACTORS THAT POLICE THE INTERNET - include child-protection charities, computer software companies and internet users themselves.
   e) EXAMPLE - The ‘INTERNET WATCH FOUNDATION’ (IWF) provides a ‘hotline’ for people to report crimes and a ‘blacklist of websites’ that it deems to contravene UK laws around child sexual abuse material, hate speech, and criminally obscene material.
   f) INTERNET USERS - take measures to protect themselves from victimisation by using anti-virus software, firewalls, and password management programs.

Question 20

FUTURE TRENDS IN CYBERCRIME:

NOTE - The more extensive us of social networking etc brings an increased risk of harassment, hate speech, theft of personal information. So this intersects POWER, HARM, and ONLINE VICTIMISATION.

NEW OFFENCES occur as a result of cloud storage services, smartphones, networked communications to control devices remotely.

Answer 20

1. TREND 1: SMARTPHONES:
   a) People accessing internet using smartphones makes them vulnerable as effective security measures aimed at desktops lag behind when it comes to smartphones, tablets etc.
   b) Smartphone users with a range of apps and services are vulnerable to hacking of information, particularly in unsecured ‘WIFI HOTSPOTS’.
   c) Also NFC Equipped smartphones are vulnerable to sensitive payment data being intercepted, altered, or faked by hackers.

2 TREND 2: THE CLOUD:

a) This is a cost-effective way of storing data using remote services that allow you to access this when needed via internet connection.
b) However, such storage services used by governments, businesses and individuals are a target for cyber-criminals (KAUFMAN, 2009)
c) EXAMPLE - THE CIRCULATION of intimate, private celebrity photos across the internet that were hacked from a cloud storage service that backs up photos taken by smartphones (VINCENT, 2014).
3. TREND 3 - NETWORKED COMMUNICATIONS:
a) DEVICES can be controlled and interacted with remotely over the internet
b) EXAMPLES include surgical implants and wearable devices that monitor, record, analyse bio-metric data.
c) the controlling of lighting, security, heating, cookers, fridges etc at home.
d) ISSUES WITH THIS - personal bio-metric data could be stolen, altered, erased, placing individuals health at risk.. Devices could be hacked or hijacked by state actors to monitor peoples activities, and corporate actors could profile consumers.

Question 21

DEVIANCE

Answer 21

1. DEVIANCE - A twentieth-century sociological concept intended to designate the aggregate of social behaviours, practices, acts, demeanours, attitudes, beliefs, styles or statuses that are culturally believed to deviate significantly from the norms, ethics, standards and expectations of society.
2. The term first emerged in the USA in the 1930s, as a solution to the problem of how sociologists in an emergent welfare state could designate such matters as delinquency, mental and physical disability, criminal behaviour, drug abuse, cultural rebellion, and so on without being obviously dismissive.
    
    

 
 

 
 

 
 

Question 22

SOCIAL EXCLUSION

Answer 22

1. SOCIAL EXCLUSION - Social exclusion refers to the dynamic, multi-dimensional process of being shut out, fully or partially, from the various social, economic, political or cultural systems that serve to assist the integration of a person in society. When combined, acute forms of exclusion are created that find a spatial and concentrated expression in particular localities and communities.