Cybercrime and Digital Deviance

Roderick S. Graham, 'Shawn K. Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780815376309
• eBook ISBN: 9781351238076
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Cyber Security
• Index: Computer Science

Cybercrime and Digital Deviance is a work that combines insights from sociology, criminology, and computer science to explore cybercrimes such as hacking and romance scams, along with forms of cyberdeviance such as pornography addiction, trolling, and flaming. Other issues are explored including cybercrime investigations, organized cybercrime, the use of algorithms in policing, cybervictimization, and the theories used to explain cybercrime.

Graham and Smith make a conceptual distinction between a terrestrial, physical environment and a single digital environment produced through networked computers. Conceptualizing the online space as a distinct environment for social interaction links this text with assumptions made in the fields of urban sociology or rural criminology. Students in sociology and criminology will have a familiar entry point for understanding what may appear to be a technologically complex course of study. The authors organize all forms of cybercrime and cyberdeviance by applying a typology developed by David Wall: cybertrespass, cyberdeception, cyberviolence, and cyberpornography. This typology is simple enough for students just beginning their inquiry into cybercrime. Because it is based on legal categories of trespassing, fraud, violent crimes against persons, and moral transgressions it provides a solid foundation for deeper study.

Taken together, Graham and Smith's application of a digital environment and Wall's cybercrime typology makes this an ideal upper level text for students in sociology and criminal justice. It is also an ideal introductory text for students within the emerging disciplines of cybercrime and cybersecurity.

Chapter 1

Understanding Cybercrime in the Digital Environment

Introduction: A Brief History ¹

The origins of the Internet began as a military project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It was through this project that computer scientists developed the protocols (computer language) used to transfer information between computers. In 1969 the first computer to computer links— or network—was established between four university computers. The network was called ARPAnet. ² The first message was sent from a computer at the University of California, Los Angeles to Stanford University. The first message sent was “lo.” The intended message was “login,” but the system crashed before the entire message could be sent. From these humble beginnings grew the Internet of today.

In those early years of government-funded research and development, computer networks were in universities, military installations, and some financial institutions. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the construction of several lines that connected these several computer networks, interconnecting separate networks, forming what can be considered the original Internet backbone. This investment by the NSF led to DARPA ceding control over the administration of the Internet to the NSF.

From the beginning of the Internet’s development in the 1960s through its NSF years, there was no need for Internet security as we know it today. The users of the network were few in number, and those that could use a computer network were generally highly skilled academics or military personnel. Advances in usability and the existence of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) were not common. Moreover, there was no e-commerce of any kind. There wasn’t a need for the users who operated a computer to prove it was truly them.

The modern Internet began in 1993, with the NSF granting licenses to several commercial service providers who could then sell Internet service to citizens. Most of these providers were phone companies, as it was through a phone line that a person could connect their computer to the network. This commercialization could be said to have created the Internet as we know it. Economic incentives compelled companies providing internet service to gain subscribers. This included building new telecommunication lines out to new areas of the country and finding cheaper ways of connecting people.

Economic incentives were also the foundation for the many innovations that occurred, as companies developed services and products to sell through the technology. E-commerce, pornography, search engines, and more were all developed shortly after the commercialization of the Internet. The convergence of people and commerce made the Internet a space highly conducive to crime and deviance. As we will discuss later, the ability of computer users to connect to the network without personal credentials being verified—being anonymous—made deception much easier and crime inevitable.

Thinking about Technology and Society

When a new technology is introduced into society—let’s say for example a new application that connects individuals with cars to people who need transportation—the response by the media and many writers is to ask: “How will the technology impact society?” or “How will the technology change the way we do things?” For everyday discussions of technology, this is a perfectly valid way of talking about and thinking about new technology.

Figure 1.1 Mobile driving services such as Uber (shown) and Lyft are relatively new applications that link people who need transportation with people willing to provide that service. One way of thinking about these applications is to ask how they change the way we travel in cities. However, a more nuanced way of thinking about these applications is to ask the additional question of how do people modify and adapt the technology to their personal goals (https://marketresearchupdates.com/2019/03/06/grab-reportedly-valued-14-billion-investment-softbanks-vision-fund/).

However, most scholars of technology believe that there is an interplay between what a technology can do, often called the “affordances” of a technology, and the values and goals of individuals (Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch, 2012; MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999). Technology does not simply “impact” society. The makers of a technology will have a use in mind when they initially design it and introduce it to the public. But after its introduction, people often find new uses for the technology (see Figure 1.1).

For example, the initial thoughts of Twitter developer Jack Dorsey were to create a new version of the citizens band, or CB radio, for the Internet age. Its original purpose was to allow small groups to maintain contact with each other. Twitter has indeed become a kind of mobile, quick messaging system that is similar to how truckers used CB radio.

But Twitter has become much more than what its founders dreamed it would be. Groups with specific values and goals began using Twitter in ways that helped them achieve their goals. Twitter is now a public platform to publicize causes such as police brutality and sexual violence against women (Gill & Orgad, 2018; Graham & Smith, 2016; Mendes, Ringrose, & Keller, 2018; Royal & Hill, 2018). Groups seeking revolutionary changes in their countries have used Twitter to communicate their cause and organize on a mass scale. It has not all been positive for Twitter. The platform has also taken criticism as a space where racist, sexist, and homophobic ideas proliferate.

The point here is that a technology rarely ever impacts society in a simple, one-way fashion. Instead, a technology is designed with a series of affordances that the designer believes will lead to a given usage (Davis & Chouinard, 2016; Graves, 2007; Shaw, 2017). However, the goals and values of individuals will create new uses from these original affordances. Consequently, the patterns that develop around a technology after it is produced are hard to anticipate.

We import this understanding of technology into our exploration of cybercrime and cyberdeviance. For example, we should not only ask “How do algorithms impact practices in the criminal justice system?” This is a good starting question because indeed algorithms have already changed aspects of the criminal justice system in the form of predictive policing and risk assessment in sentencing. However, we must also ask a more difficult, but more rewarding question: “How do the values and goals of people influence the way algorithms are used in the criminal justice system?”

Criminal behavior via technology is often the result of people taking technology designed for one purpose, and finding new, illegal uses for the technology. Take asymmetric key ­cryptography. Asymmetric key cryptography makes it possible to share a message over a distance without two people physically meeting. A mathematically related key is made and split into two separate keys. One key is used for decrypting a message and is kept private by the user. The second key is used to encrypt messages and is made public. Anyone who wishes to send a private message can use the public key to encrypt a message, and then send it to the person with the public key. There are many benign or positive applications of asymmetric key cryptography, with militaries, governments, and banks all needing to send secure messages through computer networks. But it can also be used by terrorists, child pornography distributors, and other cybercriminals who wish to share sensitive information as well.

Interconnected Technologies

Complicating our thinking about technology is the fact that the Internet is not just one ­technology, but several interconnected technologies that produce the experience of being online. As an example, if law enforcement is looking to collect evidence for a case they will probably not look “on the Internet.” Instead, they will look on a suspect’s hard drive. They will request information about the suspect’s social media activity from the social media company (information stored on its databases). They may examine the log files on the suspect’s home router. All these technologies work together to produce interconnected computer networks—the Internet.

The Internet is a complex ecosystem of technologies that produces an environment for social interaction. This environment is produced through several layers of technology. This includes the infrastructure through which computers communicate (e.g. copper wires, fiber-optic cables), the machines that house computer processors (e.g. smartphones, desktops, and increasingly household appliances), and the software applications or “apps” that power the machines. This co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copy
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Challenges of Studying and Investigating Cybercrime
• 1 Understanding Cybercrime in the Digital Environment
• 2 Cybertrespass
• 3 Cyberpornography
• 4 Cyberviolence
• 5 Cyberdeception and Theft
• 6 Investigating Cybercrimes
• 7 Organized Cybercrime
• 8 Algorithms, Big Data, and Policing
• 9 Cybervictimization
• 10 Cybercriminology
• Index