Rethinking Cybercrime

The following chapter draws upon the latest incarnation of the ever-evolving, meta-theoretical, Genetic-Social framework, recently employed by (Owen in Crime, Genes, Neuroscience and Cyberspace, 2017; Owen et al. in New Perspectives on Cybercrime, 2017; Owen in Raconteur, 2018), and Owen and Speed in (New Perspectives on Cybercrime, 2017), and the intention is to demonstrate its explanatory potential, in particular meta-constructs such as the biological variable [the evidence from behavioural genetics for an, at least in part, biological influence upon human behaviour], psychobiography [the unique, asocial, inherited aspects of the person such as disposition], and neuro-agency [a new term which acknowledges the influence of neurons upon human ‘free-will’], in the task of conceptualising what has come to be known as cyberterrorism. In what follows, cyberterrorism is reconceptualised, moving the definition beyond the usual notions described in the introduction of this chapter. It is the contention here that the synthesis ‘applied’ to cyberterrorism via flexible causal prediction may be of use to criminological theorists, social policy-makers and practitioners working in the field of the criminal justice, and social commentators in the task of constructing predictive models of cyberterrorism.

Developing a typology for internet grooming offenders is complex and difficult to achieve as online offenders can cross typologies or work through different stages of typologies, therefore any typology associated with online child sex abusers should be seen as fluid. The creation of the internet and the advancement in technology of mobile and portable devices has led to a new set of tools being made available for children to use and a new set of interactions for children to participate in (Berryman et al. in Developmental Psychology and You. Blackwell, Oxford, 2002; Li and Atkins in Pediatrics 113:6, 2004; Rogoff and Morelli in Developmental Psychology – A Reader. Arnold, London, 1998; Vygotsky in Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press, London, 1978). Through research involving 859 Scottish school pupils, aged 10–17 years, Vygotsky’s (Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press, London, 1978) theory of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and Wood et al.’s (Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 17, 1976) development of the concept of scaffolding were identified as offering an explanation of the behaviour of both child victims and child sex abusers when online. How these tools could be implemented by child sex abusers to communicate with children within their zone of proximal development can explain the fluid nature of online grooming. It is argued therefore that ZPD and scaffolding provide a promising way to understand the way children and young people’s normal developmental processes can be exploited by unscrupulous people.

Fourteen years after its creation in 2006, s3A Computer Misuse Act 1990 remains as problematic, if not more problematic than ever. Established to support the fight against cybercrime, the offence of misuse of tools has not only the paradoxical effect of endangering legitimate security research, as foreseen in 2006, but has also become a threat to established newsgathering practices. Its broad structure, combined with the vagueness of the other CMA offences, and the absence of public interest defences, criminalises the very tools which facilitate the work of, respectively, security researchers, and whistle-blowers and journalists-, leaving these actors exposed to criminal liability for resorting to dual-use hacking tools and obfuscating tools. Ultimately this pattern of over-criminalisation harms the fight against cybercrime and crime, defeating the very objective of deterrence cybercrime offences harbour. It is time, not just for reforming the CMA and in particular s3A, but also for the legislator, both in the UK and at international level, to properly engage with the security industry and civil society.

Hacktivism, or the use of hacking techniques as a means to express a political message, has been a phenomenon that has existed for almost 30 years now. From the anti-nuclear protesting worm (WANK) infecting a NASA-operated network (DECnet) in 1989 and the Digital Zapatistas of the Electronic Disturbance Theater to the various exploits of Anonymous and the more recent eco-activist manifestations, hacktivism is seemingly an inextricable part of the Internet’s everyday life. Despite its long history, the phenomenon only gained major media, and consequently, popular attention after the recent protests of the contemporary collective, Anonymous, and its offshoots. In fact, so much was the attention hacktivism received at the beginning of the 2010s, that 2011 was branded: ‘the year of the hacktivist’. This paper acknowledges the complexity of the phenomenon of hacktivism beyond the recent headlines and looks at hacktivism more holistically, as an inextricable part of cyberspace politics since its inception. It is only after we have looked at hacktivism’s history that we are able to fully comprehend the phenomenon, its various aspects and its organic development alongside socio-political, technological and also legislative developments. \Therefore, this historical overview is not only meant to familiarise us with the various characteristics, tactics and transformations of hacktivism, but to also help us understand the challenges of dealing with such a multi-faceted phenomenon from a criminal justice perspective and imagine its future reincarnations.

In this chapter we seek to elucidate the potential of linguistic analysis in the undercover pursuit of criminals online. We examine the relationship between language and online identity performance and address the question of what linguistic analysis is necessary and sufficient to describe an online linguistic persona to the extent it could be successfully assumed by another individual. We compare the performance of trainee undercover officers (UCOs) at online impersonation of a specific individual before receiving any linguistic training to their performance after such input. We also report on a series of experiments in which participants engaged with each other over Instant Messaging (IM), before an impersonation situation was engineered. Information was collected about what level of accuracy and confidence individuals can detect the substitution of one interlocutor with another, what linguistic criteria give rise to such suspicions, and how individuals prepare for impersonation tasks. We also draw on other data sets including from police training and operational settings where identity disguise is employed online in the context of investigations into child grooming and the distribution of abusive images.

Despite the decentralized, borderless, and pervasive nature of cyberspace, the exercise of jurisdiction over cybercrimes remains largely based on the principle of territoriality. This is explained mostly by the existence of very strong ties between the notions of state sovereignty and territoriality, the latter being the necessary corollary of the former in the Westphalian legal order. The objective of this paper is, however, to point out the limits of objective territorial jurisdiction, one of the two main forms of territoriality, and thereby call into question the territorial dogma in the digital age. More specifically, this paper aims at demonstrating that, although territoriality constitutes one of the keystones of the international legal order, the adequacy of its objective expression with regard to Internet-based offences is questionable as its exercise may easily lead to a violation of the accused’s rights. Objective territorial jurisdiction, which can be claimed by any state on the territory of which the result of an offence occurred, can indeed be claimed by so many States when an offence qualify as cybercrime that its exercise may seriously undermine the principle of legal foreseeability as well as the ne bis in idem rule. One therefore needs to think beyond objective territoriality to better protect the rights of the suspect of a cybercrime

This paper is a continuation and expansion of my book chapter ‘Something you wish you had never seen – Videos of death & murder on Facebook, You Tube and other media platforms’ (Noble 2017, pp. 241–252). It includes a number of incidents in which acts of violence and murder have been ‘livestreamed’ on social media. This paper will also discuss the motivations behind such actions and the evolution of criminals recording their deviant actions.

This chapter does not speculate on or make any judgements with regard to what has happened to Madeleine McCann or who is responsible for her disappearance. The focus rather is on elucidating the rationale for the continued hostility towards the McCann’s on social media, over a decade after Madeleine’s disappearance. Whilst there have been several theories presented regarding the reasons for this hostility, this chapter focuses exclusively on explanations relating to the management of risk and the ideology of motherhood. This encompasses an analysis of risk society, whereby individuals are judged as the executers of their own suffering when they make a ‘wrong’ choice; particularly in situations where they are considered to have the benefit of appropriate knowledge to avoid potential dangers. It is argued that an ideology of motherhood not only persists in society but it thrives as motherhood continues to be an ‘institutionalised’ role (Gatrell 2004) and ‘intensive mothering’ (Hays 1996) reigns supreme.

The growing use of computer technologies, devices and communication platforms in everyday life create a paradox. The Internet-of-Things (IoT) based on interconnected devices makes everyday life smarter, more convenient and more efficient and everyone benefits from this technological development, albeit with little understanding of the security concerns. The increased use of the Internet-of-Things migrates away from the laptop, the tablet and the smartphone, and the security features on these internets linked devices such as GPSs, VRDs, cameras, cars, businesses and home automation, sensors and alarm systems lag far behind. Smart devices or the Internet-of-Things are not sufficiently updated, and security measures are lacking, which creates a surveillance wonderland for several actors. The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was introduced in 2018, and the regulation established rules for data processing and controlling of identifiable personal data. Despite this regulation, data collection is booming for various reasons. Due to the lack of transparency about data collection, the online IoT users are often unable to identify the countless number of actors involved in the data collecting and processing procedures despite the transparency requirement in the GDPR. This chapter focuses on the challenges related to the IoT market and the security of the devices. The predominant focus is on smart TVs and the use of surveillance measures in a public and private context. The chapter discusses the security problems related to the Internet-of-Things, the lack of regulation and awareness of the security threat.

The evolution of the Internet amidst a rapidly growing global economy has created a completely new environment in which traditional crime prospers. Equally the convergence of computing and communication has changed the way we live, communicate and commit crime. Cybercriminals in Nigeria commonly known as ‘419 scammers’; a word coined from the Nigerian criminal code that penalises people from obtaining money under false pretence cost the Nigerian consumer $13.5 billion dollars in losses in 2012 (Clarke in European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 10: 55–63, 2004; Sesan et al. in Economic Cost of Cybercrime in Nigeria, 2013; Grabosky in Social and Legal Studies 10: 243–249, 2001). Previous studies have focused on the causes and effects of cybercrime in Nigeria (Hassan et al. in ARPN Journal of Science and Technology 2: 626–631, 2012; Adesina in Canadian Social Science 13: 19–29, 2017); laws penalising against misuse of computer (Olusola et al. in The International Journal of Engineering and Science 2: 19–25, 2013; Saulawa and Abubakar in Journal of Law, Policy and Globalization 32: 23–33, 2014) and have focused relatively on financial cost and socio-economic effects of cybercrime (WITFOR in Social, Ethical and Legal Aspects, 2005; Sesan et al. 2012). Even though some studies have tried to explore cybercrime from the perspective of law enforcement Agencies in the UAE and Jordan (Maghaireh in Jordanian Cybercrime Investigations: A Comparative Analysis of Search for and Seizure of Digital Evidence, 2009; Alkaabi in Combating Computer Crime: An International Perspective, 2010), none has been done holistically from the view of law enforcement and members of the Cybercrime Advisory Council in Nigeria. Adopting a classical criminological framework of Routine Activity Theory (RAT), this research examined particularly cyber-enabled crime of advance fee fraud in Nigeria within the scope RAT which argued that for crime to take place, three requirements must be present namely; a motivated offender, a suitable target and an absence of a capable guardian. The research examined the factors that motivate an offender and what elements make a target (i.e. victim or computer) suitable for a crime. In the process, it considers the suitability of law enforcement officers and some members of the Cybercrime Advisory Council (CAC) as capable guardians and what factors limits their capabilities in mitigating the activities of cyber criminals. The research has been framed on an interpretivist paradigm and relativist philosophical stand, with focus on an inductive qualitative approach involving semi-structured interviews and documentation. These involved policy makers, members of parliament, telecommunications and ICT regulators on one hand; and investigators, prosecutors, forensic analyst and media practitioners particularly from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which is a leading law enforcement agency in the fight against cybercrime. The multi-dimensional evidence explains the role played by each of the stakeholders, the measures and partnership deployed in tackling cybercrime, and the challenges and recommendations needed in the international effort to tackle cybercrime globally. Findings suggest that the proliferation and lack of effective policing of the internet enabled by the greed of individuals and lack of enforcement and collaboration of relevant stakeholders have led to financial losses to victims. The findings further show how lack of proper education and awareness of individuals, and adequate training and provision of tools for law enforcement officers contributes to the high prevalence of cybercrime in Nigeria. Evidence is provided that documents the way members of the Cybercrime Advisory Council and especially the EFCC have attempted to overcome these challenges through partnership, capacity building and enforcement of relevant laws and policies aimed at addressing the issue of cybercrime in Nigeria. The finding equally extends the criminological understanding of deviant behaviours and furthers the current discussion on the role of law enforcement in policing the Internet.

Within contemporary society, it is evident that cybercrime has progressively become an unavoidable danger. This risk is particularly alarming in relation to the vulnerable members of society where social networking sites have become tools to target, allure, and infiltrate a child’s domain. My research analyses three distinct zones which enable and facilitate online grooming: paedophilic pathways, self-endorsed victimisation, and societal failures. By focusing on these three distinct areas, I will be able to identify the specific facilitators of online grooming. Within ‘paedophilic pathways’, my objective is to commence a discussion as to why paedophiles are empowered through the online world. This will initially consider the difference between online and offline grooming, and will reflect on their merging. Subsequently, within the ‘self-endorsed victimisation’ dimension, the researcher would like to analyse target stages of how and why adolescents capacitate victimisation and will consist of two strands. Firstly, the unconscious authorisation, where the adolescent is mostly unaware of their predator prompting vulnerability and secondly, self-endorsed victimisation where the researcher will attempt to understand why teenagers purposely evoke vulnerability online. Within the ‘societal failures’ dimension, the research will attempt to investigate what preventative measures are currently in place concerning family life, the education system and law enforcement, to suggest why they are ultimately failing. The overall aim of my research will be to deliberate a contingency plan in order to advocate an individual and societal cut-off by categorising elements of risk detection, grooming obstruction and possible further paedophilic prohibition.