Crime and the Internet

Crime and the Internet Is the Internet really powerful enough to enable a sixteen-year-old boy to become the biggest threat to world peace since Adolf Hitler? Are we all now susceptible to cybercriminals who can steal from us without ever having to leave the comfort of their own armchairs? These are fears which have been articulated since the popular development of the Internet, yet criminologists have been slow to respond to them. Consequently, questions about what cybercrimes are, what their impacts will be and how we respond to them remain largely unanswered. Organised into three sections, this book engages with the various criminological debates that are emerging over cybercrime. The first section looks at the general problem of crime and the internet; it then describes what is currently understood by the term ‘cybercrime’, before identifying some of the challenges that are presented for criminology. The second section explores the different types of cybercrime and their attendant problems. The final section contem- plates some of the challenges that cybercrimes give rise to for the criminal justice system. David Wall is Director of the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, Department of Law, University of Leeds Crime and the Internet Edited by David S. Wall London and New York First published 2001 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2001 selection and editorial matter David S. Wall, individual chapters the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Crime and the internet/edited by David S. Wall. p. cm Includes bibliographical references and index 1. Computer crimes. 2. Internet. I. Wall, David, 1956 – HV6773 .C75 2001 ISBN 0-203-164504 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-258630 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–24428–5 (hbk) ISBN 0–415–24429–3 (pbk) Contents Notes on contributors vii Preface xi 1 Cybercrimes and the Internet 1 DAVID WALL 2 Crime futures and foresight: challenging criminal behaviour in the information age 18 KEN PEASE 3Telecommunication fraud in the digital age: the convergence of technologies 29 PETER GRABOSKY AND RUSSELL SMITH 4 “Between the risk and the reality falls the shadow”: evidence and urban legends in computer fraud 44 MICHAEL LEVI 5 Hacktivism: in search of lost ethics? 59 PAUL TAYLOR 6 Last of the rainmacs? Thinking about pornography in cyberspace 74 BELA BONITA CHATTERJEE 7 Criminalizing online speech to “protect” the young: what are the benefits and costs? 100 MARJORIE HEINS vi Contents 8 Controlling illegal and harmful content on the Internet 113 YAMAN AKDENIZ 9 Cyberstalking: tackling harassment on the Internet 141 LOUISE ELLISON 10 The language of cybercrime 152 MATTHEW WILLIAMS 11 Maintaining order and law on the Internet 167 DAVID WALL 12 Policing “hi-tech” crime within the global context: the role of transnational policy networks 184 PAUL NORMAN 13The criminal courts online 195 CLIVE WALKER Index 215 Contributors Yaman Akdeniz is a Lecturer in Cyberlaw at the University of Leeds where he teaches and writes about Internet related legal and policy issues. Yaman is also the founder and director of Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK), a non-profit civil liberties organization (http://www.cyber-rights.org/ yamancv.htm) (Checked 29 June, 2001). He has given written and oral evidence on a number of occasions to governmental bodies which include committees of the European Union and the United Nations. His publications include Sex on the Net? The Dilemma of Policing Cyberspace (South Street Press, 1999) and The Internet, Law and Society (ed. with C. Walker and D. Wall, Longman, 2000). Bela Chatterjee is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Lancaster. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Leicester before taking a Master's degree in Child Law and Policy at Brunel University. She subsequently conducted research into cyberpornography, cyberidentity and law for her doctoral thesis. Louise Ellison is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Manchester and previously taught at the University of Reading. Her Ph.D., awarded in 1997 by the University of Leeds, was a comparative study of rape trials in England and Wales and the Netherlands. Her primary research and teaching interests are criminal law and evidence. Louise recently co-edited Feminist Perspectives on Evidence (with M. Childs, Cavendish, 2000) and is currently completing a monograph entitled The Adversarial Process and the Vulnerable Witness (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Peter Grabosky is a Professor in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. He was formerly the Deputy Director of the Australian Institute of Criminology. In addition to his broad port- folio of criminological publications, Peter has published a number of books and articles that are specifically related to crime and new technologies. These publications include Crime in the Digital Age: Controlling Telecommunications and Cyberspace Illegality (with R. Smith, Federation Press, 1998) and Electronic Theft: Crimes of Acquisition in the Digital Age viii Contributors (with R. Smith and G. Dempsey, Cambridge University Press, 2001). In July 1998, Peter was elected President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology. In 1999 he was elected to the Board of Directors and became Deputy Secretary General of the International Society of Criminology. Marjorie Heins is the Director of the Free Expression Policy Project at the National Coalition Against Censorship in New York City and was formerly director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Arts Censorship Project, where she was counsel in a number of major Supreme Court cases, including Reno v. ACLU. She is the author of Not in Front of the Children: 'Indecency', Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth (Hill & Wang, 2001), Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy: A Guide to America's Censorship Wars (New Press, 1993), and Three Questions About Television Ratings, in The V-Chip Debate (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998). In 1998-2000, Marjorie was a fellow of the Open Society Institute, which supported much of the research for Not in Front of the Children. Michael Levi is Professor of Criminology at Cardiff University. His major research contributions to criminology have been in the fields of white-collar crime and corruption, organized crime, money-laundering and violent crime, and his books include The Phantom Capitalists (Gower, 1981 originally Heinemann) and Regulating Fraud (Routledge, 1987). His new book, White-Collar Crime and its Victims (with A. Pithouse Oxford University Press, 2001), explores both the impact of fraud on individual and institutional victims and also their responses to it. Paul Norman is the Director of International Programmes at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth. Paul is an interdisciplinary political scientist researching regional cooperation, international organizations and international police policy-making. His current research focuses upon regional cooperation in the southern African region. Paul leads for the Institute on an EU-funded collaborative degree programme which forms part of a major police reform programme in Mauritius. Paul's recent publications include 'European Union Police Policy-Making and Co-operation', in Carr, F. & Massey, A. (eds) Public Policy in the New Europe (Edward Elgar, 1999) and 'The Terrorist Finance Unit and the Joint Action Group on Organised Crime' (Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 1998, Vol. 27, No. 4). Ken Pease is a visiting Professor in the Jill Dando Institute at University College London. He was formerly the head of the Applied Criminology Group and Professor of Criminology in the School of Human and Health Sciences at the University of Huddersfield. He has worked on the issue of repeat victimisation for 12 years and on the British Crime Survey for 14 years. Ken's current work explores the anticipation of crime trends, and the results of all of his research have been published as Home Office Research Papers. Ken has acted as a consultant to the United Nations, the Council of Europe and the Customs Contributors ix Cooperation Council. He is the only academic to sit on the Home Office National Crime Prevention Agency. A former Parole Board member and committed supporter of the Victim Support organisation, Ken was awarded the OBE for services to crime prevention in June 1997. Russell Smith is the Deputy Director of Research at the Australian Institute of Criminology. Prior to becoming a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Melbourne in 1990, Russell practised as a solicitor in Melbourne – he is a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria and a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales. Russell has written widely on various aspects of computer crime, fraud control, and professional regulation. His books include the following: Medical Discipline (Clarendon Press,

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