Technocrime, Policing and Surveillance is a well constructed volume which explodes the myths and explores the complexities of this emergent, illusive and compelling area. Rich in empirical detail and punctuated with well judged conceptual and practical discussions, it is a valuable addition to the burgeoning literatures on surveillance studies and criminology.
Dr. Kirstie Ball, Reader in Surveillance and Organisation at the Open University.
In our highly technologized societies, with their intense preoccupations with security and crime, policing and the fight against crime are at the centre of a number of rapidly converging, both fascinating and worrying developments, potentially affecting us all. Technocrime, Policing and Surveillance offers a range of perspectives and topics indispensible for assessing the fears and hopes surrounding these developments, separating mundane fact from media hype and fiction, while keeping a firm eye on those changes that do matter deeply. A timely must-read for anyone with a professional, academic or political interest in the intricate interconnections between technology, society, and contemporary practices of surveillance.
Irma van der Ploeg, Professor of Infonomics and New Media at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands.
A most welcome nifty little volume bringing some conceptual rigor and fresh empirical insights to the emerging fields of techno-policing and techno-crime.
Gary T. Marx, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
It is increasingly difficult to find forms of crime and crime control that do not involve computers in some way. The book Technocrime, Policing and Surveillance provides fascinating insights into the dynamic and often unsettling world of technocrime, which will be of interest to anyone wanting to learn about new, exciting and sometimes unsettling developments in crime and crime control.
Kevin D. Haggerty, Professor of Sociology and Criminology, University of Alberta, Editor, Canadian Journal of Sociology.
Technocrime, Policing and Surveillance
The growth of technology allows us to imagine entirely new ways of committing, combating and thinking about criminality, criminals, police, courts, victims and citizens. Technology offers not only new tools for committing and fighting crime, but new ways to look for, unveil, label crimes and new ways to know, watch, prosecute and punish criminals. This book attempts to disentangle the realities, the myths, the politics, the theories and the practices of our new, technology-assisted era of crime and policing.
Technocrime, Policing and Surveillance explores new areas of technocrime and technopolicing, such as credit card fraud, the use of DNA and fingerprint databases, the work of media in creating new crimes and new criminals, as well as the proper way of doing policing, and the everyday work of police investigators and intelligence officers, as seen through their own eyes. These chapters offer new avenues for studying technology, crime and control, through innovative social science methodologies.
This book builds on the work of Leman-Langlois last book Technocrime, and brings together fresh perspectives from eminent scholars to consider how our relationship with technology and institutions of social control are being reframed, with particular emphasis on policing and surveillance. Technocrime, Policing and Surveillance will be of interest to those studying criminal justice, policing and the sociology of surveillance as well as practitioners involved with the legal aspects of law enforcement technologies, domestic security government departments and consumer advocacy groups.
Stphane Leman-Langlois holds the Canada Research Chair on Surveillance and the Social Construction of Risk and is Professor of Criminology at the Laval University School of Social Work.
Routledge Frontiers of Criminal Justice
1 Sex Offenders, Punish, Help, Change or Control?
Theory, policy and practice explored
Edited by Jo Brayford, Francis Cowe and John Deering
2 Building Justice in Post-Transition Europe
Processes of criminalisation within Central and Eastern European societies
Edited by Kay Goodall, Margaret Malloch and Bill Munro
3 Technocrime, Policing and Surveillance
Edited by Stphane Leman-Langlois
First published 2013
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2013 Selection and editorial matter, Stphane Leman-Langlois; individual chapters, the contributors
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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
Leman-Langlois, Stphane, 1965
Technocrime, policing and surveillance/Stphane Leman-Langlois. 1st ed.
p. cm. (Routledge frontiers of criminal justice)
1. Computer crimes. 2. Computer security. 3. Electronic surveillance.
I. Title.
HV6773.L46 2012
363.25968dc23
2012004168
ISBN: 978-0-415-50025-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-10524-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
The term cybercrime is an intriguing and misleading neologism; like all new media-created words, it has contradictory and inconsistent referents. From Ask.com on cybercrime I quote:
Computer crime, or super crime, refers to any crime that involves a computer and a network. The computer may have been used in the commission of a crime, or it may be the target. Netcrime refers to criminal exploitation of the internet.
Cybercrimes are defined as:
Offences that are committed against individuals or groups of individuals with a criminal motive to intentionally harm the reputation of the victim or cause physical or mental harm to the victim directly or indirectly, using modern telecommunication networks such as Internet (Chat rooms, emails, notice boards and groups) and mobile phones (SMS/MMS).
Let us consider these attempts to pin down meaning. How can one circumscribe any crime that involves a computer or network? Such a formulation begs the question of crime. Furthermore, it is a unique sort of definition of crime in that it hinges on the means used to achieve it. Should burglary then be called screw-driver crime, lock-picking crime or breaking-windows crime? Now consider the matter of intention. Intention has a noble history and again is dependent on the circularity of the definition if one has been proven to have done something, it is defined as an intentional act. Physical
