Handbook of Internet Crime

Yvonne Jewkes, Majid Yar

• Publisher: Willan
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134030668
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

An essential reference for scholars and others whose work brings them into contact with managing, policing and regulating online behaviour, the Handbook of Internet Crime emerges at a time of rapid social and technological change. Amidst much debate about the dangers presented by the Internet and intensive negotiation over its legitimate uses and regulation, this is the most comprehensive and ambitious book on cybercrime to date.

The Handbook of Internet Crime gathers together the leading scholars in the field to explore issues and debates surrounding internet-related crime, deviance, policing, law and regulation in the 21st century. The Handbook reflects the range and depth of cybercrime research and scholarship, combining contributions from many of those who have established and developed cyber research over the past 25 years and who continue to shape it in its current phase, with more recent entrants to the field who are building on this tradition and breaking new ground. Contributions reflect both the global nature of cybercrime problems, and the international span of scholarship addressing its challenges.

Chapter 1

Introduction: the Internet, cybercrime and the challenges of the twenty-first century

Yvonne Jewkes and Majid Yar

It is an incontrovertible fact that the Internet has brought with it major changes in the life of industrialised nations (and is increasingly doing so in the ‘developing world’). While it behoves us as academic observers to avoid ‘hype’ and exaggeration, it is well nigh impossible to deny that the development of networked computer technologies has transformed how we communicate and consume, work and play, and engage with others across the spheres of economic, political, cultural and social life. Viewed from a standpoint embedded within processes of rapid social and technological change, it is easy to forget just how profound those developments may have been and how quickly new forms of social action and interaction have become normalised and taken for granted. Given that the Internet is now a seemingly near-pervasive fact of everyday life, we can easily lose sight of just how much has changed in the past few decades. Yet it is worth remembering that 20 years ago the Internet was unheard of among the general populace, and was known only to a small and specialised community largely confined to academic and scientific institutions. From this position of marginality, the subsequent expansion of the Internet has been exponential. Consider that between 1994 and 2008 the number of countries connected to the Internet increased from 83 to more than 200 (GWE 2008). In December 1995 there were an estimated 16 million Internet users worldwide; by 2008 this figure had risen to 1.59 billion, some 20 per cent of the world’s total estimated population (IWS 2008). While the density of network connections varies enormously (following established lines of industrial development, economic resources and infrastructure capacity), almost 75 per cent of the North American population is now online; the corresponding figure for Oceania-Australia is around 60 per cent, and for Europe around 50 per cent (ibid.; see also Introduction to Part I).

However, the changes wrought by the Internet cannot be simply captured quantitatively by examining ‘penetration rates’ and number of users. In the short lifespan of the Internet there have occurred substantial qualitative changes that have transformed the nature of online interactions and activities. Early users were restricted by a combination of factors, including limited computing power (especially in the case of personal computers), restricted communication bandwidth (mainly using the copper-wire technology of existing telecommunication grids designed for telephony) and basic computer software. Under these constraints, basic text-based applications (such as electronic mail and discussion lists) prevailed. However, the range of mediated communications available via the Internet expanded significantly as ever higher levels of computing power became available and affordable for personal as well as commercial users; as software (such as web browsers) became more sophisticated and could transmit still images, audio and video content; and as bandwidth expanded through use of broadband, cable and wireless technologies. With greater scope, speed and flexibility the range of activities viable online extended massively. Work, entertainment, socialising, shopping, education, advertising and marketing, and political communication and recruitment, are just some examples of commonplace online activities. Moreover, the power, sophistication and communications capacity of the technology enabled a process of convergence between the Internet and existing media: we now see a ‘blurring’ of boundaries between media, as ‘old’ media take on a new life in the online environment (for example news reporting via websites; listening to radio and watching films and television programmes via ‘streaming’ audio and video content; online telephony and real-time interpersonal communication using voice-over-Internet services like Skype, and so on). The Internet has also expanded beyond its original platform of fixed-location computers and has migrated across multiple platforms including mobile communications devices such as telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and ultra-portable ‘netbooks’. Finally, with the development of so-called ‘Web 2.0’, users have moved from being recipients of mediated content to being active producers of self-generated content (Gauntlett 2004) (witnessed by the emergence and popularity of ‘social networking’ sites, ‘blogs’, ‘wikis’, and most recently ‘twittering’). Thus we have seen in a very short space of time a growth of the medium that is both qualitatively as well as quantitatively remarkable.

Since the emergence of the Internet (or more precisely the World Wide Web) as a mainstream social technology, commentators have variously embraced its transformational potential in glowing terms and decried it for the many (real or imagined) ‘social ills’ it supposedly brings in its wake. For ‘Net utopians’ the technology promised everything from freedom from state censorship and cultural control, through a means for the rebirth of community bonds and social solidarity, to the wholesale transcendence of corporeal limits associated with the ‘meat space’ of physical existence. However, early optimism and idealism have given way in significant part to darker (even dystopian) prognoses, with the Internet serving as a locus and leitmotif for many and varied problems, dangers, risks and threats. It should not surprise us that in tandem with the Web’s growth we have seen the emergence of associated forms of crime and deviance. Communications technologies, like all forms of institutionalised social action, are available for both legitimate use and illegitimate misuse. The use of mass-mediated communication for ‘nefarious’ purposes is as long established as the media themselves (Jewkes 2003, 2007; Wall 2007). A brief historical foray given serves to furnish ample evidence of this interconnection.

For example, the spread of daily newspapers in the nineteenth century brought forth a slew of advertising frauds from entrepreneurial ‘white collar’ criminals offering everything from phoney ‘wonder medicines’ to get-rich-quick investment scams (Sweet 2002). Charles Dickens was moved to take legal action when his serialised bestsellers were transmitted on a daily basis to the United States using the transatlantic telegraph, then reprinted for American readers without seeking the author’s permission or paying him any royalties – probably the first known case of ‘Net piracy’, which occurred more than a century before online ‘intellectual property theft’ became an economic and political hot potato (Vaidhynathan 2003). From the 1950s the introduction of automated switching technology in the US telephone system helped spawn a subculture of ‘phreakers’ who exploited inside knowledge of the system to make free long-distance telephone calls (interestingly, early 1970s phreaking enthusiasts allegedly included Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who later went on to worldwide fame and fortune as the founders of Apple Computers (Levy 2002)). Thus the phenomena associated with crime, deviance and rule breaking in the online environment should not surprise us, even if the challenges they bring in their wake may be fairly unprecedented in terms of scale and scope.

There now exists a distinction, well established among researchers and commentators, between ‘computer assisted’ and ‘computer oriented’ offences that centre upon the Internet (Wall 2001, 2007). The former category refers to those offences which, while pre-dating Internet technology and having an existence independent of it, find a new lease of life online. Such offences include: various forms of fraud, such as selling non-existent, defective, substandard or counterfeit goods; theft of monies through credit card and bank fraud; investment frauds such as pyramid schemes and fake stock and shares; intellectual property offences, including the unauthorised sharing of copyrighted content such as movies, music, digitised books, images, and computer software; posting, sharing and/or selling obscene and prohibited sexual representations; and harassment, ‘stalking’, bullying, sexual predation and forms of hateful and/or defamatory speech. These forms of offending are not unique to the online world (having long-established terrestrial counterparts), and have thus been described as merely ‘old wine in new bottles’ (Grabosky 2001). However, if we stick with this metaphor, we can certainly appreciate that we are dealing with an awful lot of wine in very many, differently shaped and capacious bottles. In other words, there are social-structural features of the Internet that enable the proliferation and dispersal of such offences on a large scale (notably the global reach of the medium, its capacity as a ‘multiplier’ of distributed effects, the use of automation, and the ways in which it affords offenders unprecedented opportunities to disguise and distort their identities (Jewkes 2003; Yar 2005a, 2006; Wall 2007)).

To such offences we can add those falling into the second category, namely those that are ‘computer focused’. Such offences take as their target the electronic infrastructure (both hardware and software) that comprises the ‘fabric’ of the Internet itself. Examples of such offences, all too well known among readers, include various forms of ‘malicious software’ (viruses, worms, Trojans) that corrupt software; ‘denial of service attacks’ that overload server capacity and effectively ‘crash’ websites; and various forms of ‘defacement’ through which Web content is manipulated, changed and/or deleted without permission or authorisation. Attention directed towards such computer-focused crime initially concentrated on supposedly ‘delinquent’ individuals or subcultures associated with ‘hacking’ activities (Yar 2005b). It later shifted to incorporate analysis of social activists (or ‘hacktivists’) who used these techniques as forms of political action and social protest (Jordan and Taylor 2004). Most recently attention has been directed, in the post-September 11 context of the ‘War on Terror’, towards the possibility of attacks upon computer infrastructure by ‘terrorist’ groups – so-called ‘cyber-terrorism’ (Verton 2003). We must, of course, retain a healthy scepticism about claims around such threats, as variously media commentators, politicians, criminal justice and security professions, and economic actors have shown a demonstrable tendency to sometimes overplay the risks presented. ‘Hard facts’ about the scope or extent of such offences can be thin on the ground, and exaggerated estimates of incidents and their economic costs circulate all too commonly (and are, indeed, generated and used by interest groups in pursuit of their particular agendas). Nevertheless, this broad range of crime problems cannot be dismissed as mere fabrications, nor ignored in preference for the better-established agenda of ‘terrestrial’ crime problems. These problems are, to a greater or lesser extent, present and in many instances growing apace; again, this should not surprise us as social use of, and dependence upon, such systems continues to expand and touch upon an ever-increasing range of social, economic and political domains.

A second level of problems arises not from Internet crime problems themselves, but from social and political responses to those problems. Awareness of such problems has incrementally increased, and in some cases has generated quite significant levels of concern and anxiety about issues such as child pornography and online sexual predation against minors via ‘chat rooms’ and social networking sites. Meanwhile, economic interests such as copyright holders in the media industries have attempted to push issues of ‘piracy’ and ‘digital theft’ up the policing and crime control agenda. Internet-based risks have, as already mentioned, entered discourses of national security via the issue of ‘cyber-terrorism’ and ‘information warfare’. As a result, new steps oriented at online crime prevention, control, detection and prosecution have been taken. Yet such measures have raised concerns over the introduction of ever more rigorous forms of surveillance and monitoring directed at users. For example, laws requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to retain ‘traffic data’ about the websites that users visit, and more recently mandatory requirements for data retention about email communications, have alarmed civil libertarians who see such steps as significant threats to privacy. Monitoring is also undertaken, often covertly, by commercial organisations seeking to collect detailed profiles of individuals’ online behaviour; this data can be exploited for targeted advertising and marketing, and also sold on to third parties for commercial and other uses. For example, US federal agencies including the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA have been shown to regularly source such data from commercial data providers (Yar 2006: 145). In addition to the intended uses of such data, there are also concerns about the security of information that is vulnerable to misplacement, loss and theft; given a spate of recent cases in which government departments and their subcontractors have managed to ‘lose’ large databases of personal information these concerns would seem to be entirely warranted. A second level of legal innovation has been directed at controlling the content of Internet communication. For example, intellectual property rights holders have been conspicuously successful in driving the introduction of new criminal sanctions to prohibit the sharing of copyrighted content, which have served in the eyes of critics to illegitimately curtail cultural communication and helped to stifle creativity. Concerns over sexually explicit content and cases of allegedly Internet-inspired homicides have seen recent moves to outlaw ‘violent and extreme pornography’ in the UK. These laws are worryingly vague in their definitions of precisely what is to be prohibited. They have also been opposed by groups representing the BDSM community and sex workers, who fear the criminalisation of entirely consensual sexual practices among adults. Finally, the febrile atmosphere around ‘the terrorist threat’ has inspired equally problematic measures to outlaw the ‘glorification’ and ‘encouragement’ of terrorism both online and offline. These measures have been criticised for their ‘chilling effects’ on free speech and the expression of political opinion, while doing little or nothing to counter genuine threats from political violence.

The mutually reinforcing relationship between criminal action and societal reaction is itself culturally mediated through the domain of symbolic representation. Cultural ‘imaginaries’ about the Internet and its associated problems are constructed across many domains of representation, including press reportage, film and fiction. It is worth remembering that the notion of ‘cyberspace’ itself emerged not from the realm of computer science or engineering, but from a science fiction novel – William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984). Gibson himself later admitted that:

All I knew about the word ‘cyberspace’ when I coined it, was that it seemed like an effective buzzword. It seemed evocative and essentially meaningless. It was suggestive of something, but had no real semantic meaning, even for me, as I saw it emerge on the page. (Gibson, in Neale 2003)

Yet, despite its status as an entirely speculative term constructed for literary purposes, cyberspace rapidly became the defining basis for a cognitive framework through which the realm of networked computer technologies was widely understood. Such fictions have also shaped the ways in which the risks and threats of the online environment are construed in official circles; one of the best known instances was the way in which the movie WarGames (1983) was subsequently presented to a US Congressional committee as an example of the danger to national security arising from computer hacking (Taylor 1999: 10). More broadly, cultural representations help to shape public perceptions about the nature, scope and extent of Internet-based crime problems, and in extremis can fuel disproportionate reactions, including avoidance behaviours and pressures for legal action. The increasingly commonplace idea that there are in fact what Sandywell (2006) calls ‘monsters in cyberspace’ plays an ongoing role in shaping definitions of the online ‘crime problem’ and how we ought to deal with it.

In light of the aforementioned dimensions of the debate, it would appear that research and scholarship in this area must perform a threefold task. Firstly, it must develop robust yet balanced insights into the contours of Internet-based crime problems, and it must situate these insights within the wider context of the medium’s social, economic and political evolution. Secondly, it must offer a critical analysis and appraisal of crime control measures directed at those (real or perceived) problems, including an evaluation of the threats to users’ rights, freedoms and liberties that might result from the excesses of legislative prohibition and online surveillance. Thirdly, it must seek to better understand how both of the above dimensions are crucially shaped and inflected by the circulation of cultural images, symbols and narratives that serve in many ways to frame both ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’. The contributions to this volume are intended to take up this challenge, bringing to bear expertise and insights drawn from across disciplines and national boundaries.

The volume

The Handbook of Internet Crime is, then, the most ambitious book on cybercrime to date. The volume brings together the leading experts in the field to explore some of the most challenging – yet, somewhat paradoxically, some of the most marginalised and neglected – debates facing criminologists and other scholars interested in cybercrime, deviance, policing, law and regulation in the twenty-first century. The Handbook reflects the range and depth of cybercrime research and scholarship, combining contributions from many of those who have established and developed cyber research over the past 25 years and who continue to shape it in its current phase, with more recent entrants to the field who are building on this tradition and breaking new ground. Contributions reflect both the global nature of cybercrime, and the international span of scholarship addressing its challenges. The aim, then, is to provide an essential referen...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and tables
• List of abbreviations
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Introduction: the Internet, cybercrime, and the challenges of the 21st century
• Part I Histories and Contexts
• Part II Forms of Internet Crime
• Part III Internet Law and Regulation
• Part IV Policing the Internet
• Glossary
• Index