Crime and Deviance on the Internet Flashcards
What is Cybercrime?
- Technologies have changed the landscape of criminality
We might now look beyond traditional approaches to understanding offenders and their decision making
Cyberactivities
Any task carried out with a computer and internet connection, encompass many computing activities that rely on internet connectivity (e-mail, online research, streaming media, gaming etc…)
Activities that Constitute Cybercrime
Phishing, Ripping, Hacking, Luring, Stalking, Spamming, Skimming, Trafficking
Typical police involvement with the internet has involved…
Child pornography or luring.
- Limited resources has meant that cybercrime has been limited to physical harm and human victims beyond financial loss and service disruption
Cybercrime
Any criminal offence or series of offences committed through the use of a computer and a computer network or Internet connection
Cyberterrorism
Using a computer to orchestrate large-scale “attacks on information,” including government or critical infrastructure servers or any database of interest to national security
Recent cases of Cybercrime
• April 2014: Canada Revenue Agency’s website was compromised by the Heartbleed security bug
• Dec. 2013: hackers accessed Target’s database and stole customers’ credit card info, huge
• May 2014: five Chinese military officers added to FBI most wanted list after China infiltrated and compromised the servers of US corporations to steal industrial secrets (many charges)
July 2015: Ashley Madison site hacked
Potential threats of E-crime and Cybercrime
- These cases reflect the vulnerability in the digital age and the potentially disastrous consequences of a full cyberattack against state interests
- Cyberterrorism has the potential to permanently disrupt the economic or environment stability of entire nations or regions
- This includes network attacks against critical infrastructure sites: any location or asset (physical or virtual) that is vital to socio-economic and physical security of a nation or region including but not limited to water treatment facilities, telecommunications centres, hospitals and healthcare, nuclear and other power-generating facilities, airports and railway stations, and centres of major economic activity such as stock and security exchanges
- Cyberterrorism is one of the most pressing issues facing government and law enforcement today
- Doesn’t need to be tied to geopolitical or ideological motives, it can take the form of any attempt to damage data or cause large-scale disruption
- Cybercrime includes: attacks that arent directed at against the state or an institution for the purpose of causing a large scale harm. Instead, these attacks are against individuals who are targeted for a variety of reasons
- To understand what brings victims and offenders together is to understand how social media functions as the new public sphere of the 21st century.
Technological Determinism
Theory that technological innovation is the key driving force behind changes in society and that new technology helps shape culture and human behaviour, not vice versa
Cybermobbing
a group activity that in effect merges cyber deviance with learning theories of crime and interactional models. In short, many users (a mob) within a virtual space follow the lead of a cyberbully and publicly gang up on a single victim through harassing and humiliating messages
When Social Media becomes Anti-social …
- Because national security is increasingly dependent on network systems, it is difficult to determine where the line between crime and deviance is drawn in online communities, difficult to classify black and white, mostly grey areas, also why 20th century laws are inadequate for dealing with 21st century crimes
- Specific operating systems and social networks have their own distinct cultures and social norms which complicates blanket assumptions
- The architecture of a digital environment and the dominant culture of that environment play a major role in offending
- 32% of cases are via texting while 15.5% are on social media, females are a lot more likely to be victims or report crimes
- Access to a computer seems to have enabled individuals who might not otherwise show a propensity for offending to engage in deviant behaviour (antisocial people becoming deviant)
Social media is prone to anti social behaviour, in many cases behaviour is deviant but not criminal
Deviant Cybercommunities
Subcultural networks of people who seek to circumvent the customary user experiences of websites, social media, and other online technology, their culture and customs would be seen as deviant in an offline world but in actuality is accepted and even endorsed in an online environment
They seek to exploit weaknesses and vulnerabilities (“soft targets”)
Paradox of Cybercommunities
serve a “social” purpose but also intensify deviant and antisocial impulses among some (because they are anonymous)
List of Paraphilia’s
Erotomania, Exhibitionism, Scopophilia, Scatologia
“New Media”
exposes how electronic manifestations of identified paraphilias have no clear online referent –> Thus they are more difficult to define and to legislate & because technology changes faster than bills go through parliament, cybercrime’s relation to new media remains poorly understood
