Crime and Deviance in Cyberspace

David S. Wall, DavidS. Wall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351570756
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This volume presents the reader with an interesting and, at times, provocative selection of contemporary thinking about cybercrimes and their regulation. The contributions cover the years 2002-2007, during which period internet service delivery speeds increased a thousand-fold from 56kb to 56mb per second. When combined with advances in networked technology, these faster internet speeds not only made new digital environments more easily accessible, but they also helped give birth to a completely new generation of purely internet-related cybercrimes ranging from spamming, phishing and other automated frauds to automated crimes against the integrity of the systems and their content. In order to understand these developments, the volume introduces new cybercrime viewpoints and issues, but also a critical edge supported by some of the new research that is beginning to challenge and surpass the hitherto journalistically-driven news stories that were once the sole source of information about cybercrimes.

Part I
Developments in Thinking about Cybercrimes

[1]

The Novelty of ‘Cybercrime’

An Assessment in Light of Routine Activity Theory

Majid Yar
University of Kent, UK

ABSTRACT

Recent discussions of ‘cybercrime’ focus upon the apparent novelty or otherwise of the phenomenon. Some authors claim that such crime is not qualitatively different from ‘terrestrial crime’, and can be analysed and explained using established theories of crime causation. One such approach, oft cited, is the ‘routine activity theory’ developed by Marcus Felson and others. This article explores the extent to which the theory’s concepts and aetiological schema can be transposed to crimes committed in a ‘virtual’ environment. Substantively, the examination concludes that, although some of the theory’s core concepts can indeed be applied to cybercrime, there remain important differences between ‘virtual’ and ‘terrestrial’ worlds that limit the theory’s usefulness. These differences, it is claimed, give qualified support to the suggestion that ‘cybercrime’ does indeed represent the emergence of a new and distinctive form of crime.

KEY WORDS

Cyberspace / Ecology / Internet / Virtual Crimes

Introduction

It has become more or less obligatory to begin any discussion of ‘cyber-crime’ by referring to the most dramatic criminological quandary it raises, namely, does it denote the emergence of a ‘new’ form of crime and/or criminality? Would such novelty require us to dispense with (or at least modify, supplement or extend) the existing array of theories and explanatory concepts that criminologists have at their disposal? Unsurprisingly, answers to such questions appear in positive, negative and indeterminate registers. Some commentators have suggested that the advent of ‘virtual crimes’ marks the establishment of a new and distinctive social environment (often dubbed ‘cyberspace’, in contrast to ‘real space’) with its own ontological and epistemological structures, interactional forms, roles and rules, limits and possibilities. In this alternate social space, new and distinctive forms of criminal endeavour emerge, necessitating the development of a correspondingly innovative criminological vocabulary (see, for example, Capeller 2001 and Snyder 2001). Sceptics, in contrast, see ‘cybercrime’ at best as a case of familiar criminal activities pursued with some new tools and techniques – in Peter Grabosky’s metaphor, largely a case of ‘old wine in new bottles’ (Grabosky 2001). If this were the case, then ‘cybercrime’ could still be fruitfully explained, analysed and understood in terms of established criminological classifications and aetiological schema. Grabosky (2001: 248) nominates in particular Cohen and Felson’s ‘routine activity theory’ (RAT) as one such criminological approach, thereby seeking to demonstrate ‘that “virtual criminality” is basically the same as the terrestrial crime with which we are familiar’ (2001: 243; also Grabosky and Smith 2001). Others, such as Pease (2001: 23), have also remarked in passing upon the helpfulness of the RAT approach in discerning what might be different about ‘cybercrime’, and how any such differences (perhaps ones of degree, rather than kind) present new challenges for governance, crime control and crime prevention. Indeed, crime prevention strategies derived in part from RAT, such as situational crime prevention, have been proposed as viable responses to Internet crime (Newman and Clarke 2002, 2003). Nevertheless there has yet to appear any sustained theoretical reflection on whether, and to what extent, RAT might serve to illuminate ‘cybercrimes’ in their continuity or discontinuity with those ‘terrestrial crimes’ that occur in what Pease (2001: 23) memorably dubs ‘meatspace’. The present article aims to do just that, in the hope of shedding some further light on whether or not some of our received, ‘terrestrially grounded’ criminology can in fact give us adequate service in coming to grips with an array of ostensibly ‘new’ crimes.

The article is structured as follows. I begin by briefly addressing some of the definitional and classificatory issues raised by attempts to delimit cybercrime as a distinctive form of criminal endeavour. I then explicate the formulation of routine activity theory that is utilized in the article, and offer some general reflections on some of the pressing issues typically raised vis-à-vis the theory’s explanatory ambit (in particular its relation to disposi-tional or motivational criminologies, and the vexed problem of the ‘ration-ality’ or otherwise of offenders’ choices to engage in law-breaking behaviour). In the third section, I examine cybercrime in relation to the general ecological presuppositions of RAT, focusing specifically on whether or not the theory’s explanatory dependence on spatial and temporal convergence is transposable to crimes commissioned in online or ‘virtual’ environments. After considering in a more detailed manner the viability of Felson et al.’s conceptualization of ‘target suitability’ in relation to the presence of persons and property in virtual environments, I engage in a similar examination of issues related to ‘capable guardianship’. In conclusion, I offer some comments on the extent to which cybercrimes might be deemed continuous with ‘terrestrial crimes’. Substantively, I suggest that, although the core concepts of RAT are in significant degree transposable (or at least adaptable) to crimes in virtual environments, there remain some qualitative differences between virtual and terrestrial worlds that make a simple, wholesale application of its analytical framework problematic.

Cybercrime: Definitions and classifications

A primary problem for the analysis of cybercrime is the absence of a consistent current definition, even amongst those law enforcement agencies charged with tackling it (NHTCU/NOP 2002: 3). As Wall (2001: 2) notes, the term ‘has no specific referent in law’, yet it has come to enjoy considerable currency in political, criminal justice, media, public and academic discourse. Consequently, the term might best be seen to signify a range of illicit activities whose common denominator is the central role played by networks of information and communication technology (ICT) in their commission. A working definition along these lines is offered by Thomas and Loader (2000: 3), who conceptualize cybercrime as those ‘computer-mediated activities which are either illegal or considered illicit by certain parties and which can be conducted through global electronic networks’. The specificity of cybercrime is therefore held to reside in the newly instituted interactional environment in which it takes place, namely the ‘virtual space’ (often dubbed ‘cyberspace’) generated by the interconnection of computers into a worldwide network of information exchange, primarily the Internet (Castells 2002: 177).

Within the above definition it is possible to further classify cybercrime along a number of different lines. One commonplace approach is to distinguish between ‘computer-assisted crimes’ (those crimes that pre-date the Internet but take on a new life in cyberspace, e.g. fraud, theft, money laundering, sexual harassment, hate speech, pornography) and ‘computer-focused crimes’ (those crimes that have emerged in tandem with the establishment of the Internet and could not exist apart from it, e.g. hacking, viral attacks, website defacement) (Furnell 2002: 22). On this classification, the primary dimension along which cybercrime can be subdivided is the manner in which the technology plays a role, i.e. whether it is a contingent (‘computer-assisted’) or necessary (‘computer-focused’) element in the commission of the offence.

Although the above distinction may be socio-technically helpful, it has a limited criminological utility. Hence, one alternative is to mobilize existing categories derived from criminal law into which their cyber-counterparts counterparts can be transposed. Thus Wall (2001: 3–7) subdivides cybercrime into four established legal categories:

1. Cyber-trespass – crossing boundaries into other people’s property and/or causing damage, e.g. hacking, defacement, viruses.

2. Cyber-deceptions and thefts – stealing (money, property), e.g. credit card fraud, intellectual property violations (a.k.a. ‘piracy’).

3. Cyber-pornography – activities that breach laws on obscenity and decency.

4. Cyber-violence – doing psychological harm to, or inciting physical harm against others, thereby breaching laws pertaining to the protection of the person, e.g. hate speech, stalking.

This classification is certainly helpful in relating cybercrime to existing conceptions of proscribed and harmful acts, but it does little in the way of isolating what might be qualitatively different or new about such offences and their commission when considered from a perspective that looks beyond a limited legalistic framework. Consequently, most criminological commentators (especially those of a sociological bent) focus their search for novelty upon the socio-structural features of the environment (‘cyberspace’) in which such crimes occur. It is widely held that this environment has a profound impact upon the structural properties and limits that govern interactions (both licit and illicit), thereby transforming the potential scope and scale of offending, inexorably altering the relationships between offenders and victims and the potential for criminal justice systems to offer satisfactory solutions or resolutions (Capeller 2001). Particular attention is given to the ways in which the establishment of cyberspace variously ‘transcends’, ‘explodes’, ‘compresses’ or ‘collapses’ the constraints of space and time that limit interactions in the ‘real world’. Borrowing from sociological accounts of globalization as ‘time–space compression’ (Harvey 1989), theorists of the new informational networks suggest that cyberspace makes possible near-instantaneous encounters and interactions between spatially distant actors, creating possibilities for ever-new forms of association and exchange (Shields 1996). Criminologically, this seemingly renders us vulnerable to an array of potentially predatory others who have us within instantaneous reach, unconstrained by the normal barriers of physical distance.

Moreover, the ability of the potential offender to target individuals and property is seemingly amplified by the inherent features of the new communication medium itself – computer-mediated communication (CMC) enables a single individual to reach, interact with and affect thousands of individuals simultaneously. Thus the technology acts as a ‘force multiplier’, enabling individuals with minimal resources (so-called ‘empowered small agents’) to generate potentially huge negative effects (mass distribution of email ‘scams’ and distribution of viral codes being two examples). Further, great emphasis is placed upon the ways in which the Internet enables the manipulation and reinvention of social identity – cyberspace interactions afford individuals the capacity to reinvent themselves, adopting new virtual personae potentially far-removed from their ‘real world’ identities (Poster 1995; Turkle 1995). From a criminological perspective, this is viewed as a powerful tool for the unscrupulous to perpetrate offences while maintaining anonymity through disguise (Snyder 2001: 252; Joseph 2003: 116–18) and a formidable challenge to those seeking to track down offenders.

From the above, we can surmise that it is the supposedly novel socio-interactional features of the cyberspace environment (primarily the collapse of spatial–temporal barriers, many-to-many connectivity, and the anonymity and plasticity of online identity) that make possible new forms and patterns of illicit activity. It is in this alleged discontinuity from the socio-interactional interactional organization of ‘terrestrial crimes’ that the criminological challenge of cybercrime is held to reside. I will now turn to consider whether and to what extent the routine activity approach, as a purported general theory of crime causation (Felson 2000), can embrace such novelties within its conceptual apparatus and explanatory ambit.

Delimiting the routine activity approach: Situational explanation, rationality and the motivated actor

Birkbeck and LaFree (1993: 113–14) suggest that the criminological specificity of routine activity theory (RAT) can be located via Sutherland’s (1947) distinction between ‘dispositional’ and ‘situational’ explanations of crime and deviance. Dispositional theories aim to answer the question of ‘criminality’, seeking some causal mechanism (variously social, economic, cultural, psychological or biological) that might account for why some individuals or groups come to possess an inclination toward law- and rule-breaking behaviour. Dispositional theories comprise the standard reference points of criminological discourse – Lombroso, Durkheim, Merton, the Chicago School, Bonger, Chambliss, and so on being ‘text-book’ examples.

In contrast, situational theories (including various ‘opportunity’ and ‘social control’ approaches) eschew dispositional explanations, largely on the grounds of their apparent explanatory failures – they appear recurrently unsuccessful in adequately accounting for trends and patterns of offending in terms of their nominated causes (Cohen and Felson 1979: 592, 604). Routine activity theorists ‘take criminal inclination as given’ (Cohen and Felson 1979: 589), supposing that there is no shortage of motivations available to all social actors for committing law-breaking acts. They do not deny that motivations can be incited by social, economic and other structural factors, but they insist that any such incitements do not furnish a sufficient condition for ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Developments In Thinking About Cybercrimes
• Part II Changes In The Organization Of Crime Online
• Part III The Changing Nature Of Cybercrime
• Part IV Regulating Cybercrime
• Part V Policing and Preventing Cybercrime
• Name Index