University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Doctoral Dissertations University of Connecticut Graduate School 12-11-2017 Law's Haze, Police Ways, and Tech's Maze: Relationships between American law, crime, and technology Meghan Peterson University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Peterson, Meghan, "Law's Haze, Police Ways, and Tech's Maze: Relationships between American law, crime, and technology" (2017). Doctoral Dissertations. 1687. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/1687 Law’s Haze, Police Ways, and Tech’s Maze Relationships between American law, crime, and technology Meghan B. Peterson, PhD University of Connecticut, 2017 In this dissertation, I explore the role of law in policing operations targeting cyber sex offenders in the United States. Specifically, I examine enforcement in this crime arena as part of an ongoing expansion within the carceral, surveillance, risk-based state. I argue that imprecision and lack of clarity within American law – particularly in the evolving world of online interactions – generate hazy, arbitrary applications in law enforcement. On this point, I submit that absence of legal clarity undermines law enforcement efforts to address crimes – both within and beyond the cyber world. Distinctive spaces of online and tech-based socialization, paired with the rapid evolution of technology, produce complex conditions for law enforcement. These components are further nourished – indeed, created – by a pervasive lack of clarity within the law. In short, law is unable to keep pace with the evolving nature of crime, the technologies of crime, and finally, the technologies of crime response, deterrence, and prevention. In chronicling the history of American sex crimes law enforcement broadly and cyber sex crimes specifically, I trace the role of unclear law in the ongoing project of carceral state development. Through my work on a State-mandated taskforce reviewing the Connecticut Sex Offender Registry, I also document impetuses of carceral state construction in the criminal justice apparatus for cataloging, monitoring, tracking, and surveilling of offenders. Moreover, I detect within the shift toward risk-assessment criminal justice sanctions the move to predict and identify not-yet- offenders among the civilian population – a premise of the carceral state drive to subsume the legal into those rendered illegal; the nonpunitive into the punitive; the civil into the penal. Law’s Haze, Police Ways, and Tech’s Maze Relationships between American law, crime, and technology Meghan B. Peterson B.A., Political Science, William Smith College, 2011 B.A., Religious Studies, William Smith College, 2011 M.A., Political Science, University of Connecticut, 2014 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut 2017 i Copyright by Meghan B. Peterson 2017 ii APPROVAL PAGE Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Law’s Haze, Police Ways, and Tech’s Maze Relationships between American law, crime, and technology Presented by Meghan B. Peterson, B.A., M.A. Major Advisor ___________________________________________________________________ Jeffrey R. Dudas Associate Advisor ___________________________________________________________________ Jane A. Gordon Associate Advisor ___________________________________________________________________ Kristin A. Kelly University of Connecticut 2017 iii Acknowledgements I thank Him for the fortitude, determination, and patience when I needed it the most. I thank Dave for his constant, loving support throughout the obsessive research and writing stages. You are my everything. I thank Papa and Mama for their tough love and listening ears. I thank Spence for his vibrant interest in the project and always peppering me with humorous questions about it. I thank Jeffrey Dudas, Jane Gordon, Kristin Kelly, David Yalof, and Kimberly Bergendahl for their ongoing support and attentive mentoring over these six years. I thank Paul Passavant and Jodi Dean for their unwavering faith in me. I could not have walked this journey alone. iv Table of Contents Prologue 10 Chapter One / Law’s Haze, Police Ways, and Tech’s Maze: Relationships between American law, crime, and technology 13 Chapter Two / Law’s Imprecision and Indecision: Sex Crimes and Law Enforcement in the United States 48 Chapter Three / Walking the Beat on the 21st Century Cyber Block: Police and Cyber Sex Offenders 75 Chapter Four / Behind Bars, On Screens: The Sex Offender Registry as a Microcosm for Understanding Law-Crime-Policing-Technology Connections 118 Chapter Five / Law’s Haze, Tech’s Maze: Seeing through law’s haze and tech’s maze 159 Appendix 174 Bibliography 178 v Prologue 1 In preparation for dissertation work, I had the opportunity to take Dr. Andrew Deener’s Sociology Qualitative Methods I Seminar during the Fall of 2013 at the University of Connecticut. For the course, I conducted semi-structured interviews with a primary contact, “Trooper A,” who at the time was a state police detective and twenty-one-year veteran on the force. We held weekly meetings and conversations in public spaces usually lasting upwards of two to two and a half hours. Trooper A put me into touch with another state Trooper B, with whom I was able to speak on several occasions via phone and on occasion in-person. The following exchange comes from one of those conversations with Trooper A. “So you still focusing on computer crimes?” “Well, I think that the focus will remain on technology-assisted, technology-based crimes, but that I am more flexible to shifting the focus to major crimes policing as well.” “Yeah, good choice. I mean, most of the crimes today do revolve around some sort of technological device: phone, IPad, laptop. You name it. Besides, the computer crimes lab doesn’t even work with phones. They don’t have the equipment or training really to do so. We usually send our guys up there to process the evidence on some of the equipment there. But again, it’s our own guys. It’s not the computer crimes people doing it. I mean, look around and think about it. Would you say you spend time on the phone more than your laptop?” “Oh, yeah, I would say it’s probably more in favor of the phone actually in terms of the breakdown. Maybe only when I am writing do I rely on my laptop more.” “Exactly, so there you go. Same with people who commit crimes. They are going to use the convenience of the phone. It’s like the alpaca case. I’ll never forget the kid in that one. I sat him down for questioning and all he was doing was texting, thinking that I couldn’t see his thumbs moving on the phone keypad. Trying to be covert. I shut him down right away.” “The alpaca case? Oh, the one from a couple of years ago when the two kids allegedly murdered all those alpacas on that farm in No-Name-Town?”1 “Yep, that’s the one. And so anyway, here this kid is sitting before me for questioning and he’s trying to be all like ‘oh, you can’t see me texting my partner in crime, ha!” Well, after I question him, I tell him that I am seizing his phone. He gets all arrogant and says, ‘You can’t take my phone, you need a warrant for that!’ I tell the punk, actually, I don’t need a warrant for this item. So you’re going to hand it over.” “And what did he do?” I ask with bursting curiosity. “He did. He did it reluctantly, but he handed it over. And boy, did I have to quickly make sure I got that to the lab for processing. Didn’t want to give him and his buddy time to disconnect the 1 Pseudonym used to protect anonymity of law enforcement source. 2 phone and erase information. You know, you can do that with an IPhone. Erase any information, data, remotely. It’s horrible for us as police. I mean, it’s a privacy thing for the phone’s owner. But it really makes it hard for us police to make sure we get the evidence we need right then and there before it disappears. And you know, here he is trying to tell me how to do my job. Can’t stand that, I wanted to tell him not to tell me how to do m job. Little did he know that there are seven exceptions to the search warrant mandate. Seven exceptions that we can apply – like, for example, in exigent circumstances – situations where we have strong reason to believe that if we don’t get the item now, important evidence may be lost forever. But even then, I could only take his phone. I could only seize it for processing. It’s not like I could go through it and start scrolling for information. I had to then write up a search warrant for the contents of the phone after his questioning.” This manuscript is about law, police, sex, crime, and technology. It is about how American law enforcement – and American society – is positioned in the crosshairs of Information Age law and order. It is about how law – along with its enforcers and breakers – operates in the wending rabbit-hole that is the online world. It is about how law, police, sex crimes, and technology come together to fuel the fire and fan the flames of the expanding carceral, surveillance-obsessed, risk-based state. And maybe, just maybe, it is about how citizens can do something about it. 3 Chapter One 4 Law’s Haze, Police Ways, and Tech’s Maze Relationships between American law, crime, and technology Sex offenders are our modern-day monsters, producing tidal waves of public demand.2 As the Internet filled with people, people filled the Internet with everything that was the worst and best about humanity…[i]n response, all police became the Internet police.3 2 Simon, Jonathan.