Wayne Noble

New Perspectives on Cybercrime

This exciting and timely collection showcases recent work on Cybercrime by members of Uclan Cybercrime Research Unit [UCRU], directed by Dr Tim Owen at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. This book offers up-to-date perspectives on Cybercrime based upon a Realist social ontology, alongside suggestions for how research into Cybercrime might move beyond what can be seen as the main theoretical obstacles facing criminological theory: the stagnation of critical criminology and the nihilistic relativism of the postmodern and post-structuralist cultural turn. Organised into three sections; ‘Law and Order in Cyberspace’, ‘Gender and Deviance in Cyberspace’, and ‘Identity and Cyberspace’, this cutting-edge volume explores some of the most crucial issues we face today on the internet: grooming, gendered violence, freedom of speech and intellectual property crime. Providing unique new theory on Cybercrime, this book will appeal to scholars and advanced students of Criminology, Law, Sociology, Philosophy, Policing and Forensic Science, Information Technology and Journalism, in addition to professionals working within law and order agencies and the security services.

Cyber Grooming: How Biological Variables Reinforce Cognitive Distortion

This chapter is an examination and assessment of secondary research based on the development and techniques of cyber grooming. The intention here is to define the main stages of expansion from the public sphere grooming to cyber grooming by using a range of Biological Positivist, Feminist and Marxist theories. Additionally, it will attempt to identify the biological variables influencing cyber groomers, with emphasis on the power given to them by the conglomerate of cyber-stature. This approach is influenced by Owen’s (2012, 2014) Genetic-Social framework and employed in an attempt to understand a potential aetiology of cyber grooming. Additionally, there is an examination of Sykes and Matza’s (1957) principle thesis: the techniques of neutralisation and a suggested possible expansion of how these may affect Owen’s (2012, 2014) notion of ‘the biological variable’.

Something You Wish You Had Never Seen – Videos of Death & Murder on Facebook, You Tube and Other Media Platforms

The sudden intrusion upon social media of videos depicting atrocity and murder has become more prevalent over the last couple of years, but why is this so? Does this constitute another (although extreme) form of spam? Is there also a social engineering element to this, in that it will attract people’s morbid curiosity and induce outrage, all of which results in computer traffic in the competition for our attention on the Internet?

Silenced by Free Speech: How Cyberabuse Affects Debate and Democracy

The early days of the Internet promised much. Posting online seemed to offer a freedom from expectation and prejudice. In the words of the New Yorker cartoon, on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. We believed nobody knew your gender, age or race either. Your beauty or lack of it was of no account, your mind was disembodied, pure spirit, freed from the hidebound judgements of society.

Cyber Vigilantism – How the Cyber Mob Behaves

Social media can be seen as a democratising force in which everyone can have their say and each person has an opinion which they can voice to the whole world. So when a person encounters something which he or she feels is wrong, or feels that an injustice has been done, then the person can take to the Internet and voice his or her outrage. But what if this went too far and calls of outrage mutated into calls for ‘justice’ outside the law? This is the problem of cyber vigilantism in which the sentiments of the mob sweep across social media. It would appear that the speed of communication has overtaken the ability of some to think objectively.

Trolling, the Ugly Face of the Social Network

Much of modern social interaction takes place using digital communications, using the Smartphone and tablet devices which have seemingly become ubiquitous to our modern generation. As will all interactions between individuals, not all will be pleasant or tasteful; some may be rude and offensive, possibly even harmful to the person on the receiving end. The fact that this takes place is not unusual, it happens often enough in the ‘offline’ world, but it is scale and reach of such activities which should give us pause for thought. The question we must now ask is ‘what are the unique circumstances which make online social media particularly ripe for incivility?’ and ‘how should we categorise it?’ Also discussed here will be motivations and the theories surrounding the aetiology of this behaviour. This chapter will discuss the motivations of trolling in relation to Nietzsche’s concepts of ‘resentiment’, ‘slave morality’ and ‘nihilism’ and draw upon the concept of ‘causal probability’ in order to shed new light upon this activity.

Biology and Cybercrime: Towards a Genetic-Social, Predictive Model of Cyber Violence

In what follows, an updated version of Owen’s (2014) Genetic-Social, meta-theoretical framework which has been employed in over 20 publications is briefly outlined and certain meta-constructs are ‘applied’ to the study of online violence. On 24 September 2015, the International Telecommunications Union, an agency of the United Nations, published a report on ‘Cyber Violence Against Women and Girls: A World-Wide Wake-Up Call’. The report, which at the time of writing (November 2015) has been formally retracted, appeared to define ‘cyber violence’ in terms of ‘online trolling’ and ‘online hate-speech’ targeted at women and girls. It is contended here that we need to conceptualise ‘cyber violence’ in broader terms. Cyber violence can be regarded as behaviour by an actor which takes place online and which is hostile and aggressive, and which may also be offensive, indecent, obscene or of a menacing character. The victims can be of any background with regard to age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality or social class.

Neuro-Agency, Neuro-Ethics and Cybercrime

In this chapter, we examine Owen and Owen’s (2015) meta-construct of neuro-agency and developments in neuroscience concerning notions of free will, embodied cognition, neuroplasticity and neuro-ethics in relation to cybercrime. The meta-construct, neuro-agency is employed in Genetic-Social metatheoretical reasoning as an acknowledgement of the neural influence upon human free will. It is contended here that it is timely and essential to acknowledge recent developments in the neuroscience of free will and to abandon the ‘old’ term, ‘agency’. Whilst, a neural influence upon human free will is acknowledged here, it is not argued that free will is an illusion, as has been suggested by the hard-line, determinist work of Eagleman (2011). The suggestion here is that the most convincing model of free will, and the one which has played the most significant role in the development of Owen and Owen’s (ibid) notion of neuro-agency, is the ‘soft compatabilist’ model of free will offered by Dennett (1981), in which a belief in both determinism and free will is not seen as logically inconsistent. In what follows, we firstly examine selected examples from the literature on the subject of the ‘neuroscience of free will’.

The Problem of ‘Virtual Criminology’

In this chapter, we briefly consider what is meant by virtual and hybrid cybercriminologies (Brown 2003 and 2006), and then move on to codify the new version of Owen’s (2014) Genetic-Social framework, which incorporates several new meta-concepts since the publication of the work of Owen (2014) and Owen and Owen (2015), which include Tim Owen’s concept of Neuro-Agency and Martin Heidegger’s concepts of Dasein and Ontic Truth. We then ‘apply’ some of the meta-concepts, which now incorporate insights from neuroscience (Dennett 1981; Dennett et al. 2007; Moll et al. 2005) and the philosophy of Heidegger (2010) to the study of these recent forms of criminological theorising pertaining to cybercrime. It is contended that virtual and hybrid cybercriminologies should be rejected in favour of concepts of neuro-agency and psychobiography. The former meta-concept reflects the idea that when considering ‘Who is in charge?’, one should keep firmly in mind that human beings (Dasein) are the product of natural selection, a cocktail of the mutuality between genes and environment, and we must acknowledge the neuroscience of free will (agency) and the evolved nature of moral reasoning. The latter meta-concept, psychobiography, refers to the asocial, inherited aspects of the person or disposition. Machinery and cyber technology may simulate a ‘merging’ between the human and the technical, but in the harsh light of a Heideggarian theory of pure surface, no cyborg or machine can ever qualify as Dasein. As Heidegger (2010) made clear, the human being is not an isolated subject removed from the realm of objects but that does not mean that we can ‘merge’ with the non-human, as Brown (2006, 2013) appears to suggest. For Heidegger, being is time, to be a human being is to exist temporally between birth and death. No cyborg or machine can function without being programmed by human neuro-agency, and no cyborg or machine has the cognition to formulate and act upon decisions. It is the human being (Dasein) that can do so, and only the human being has a self capable of being what it is through confronting the reality of death. No cyborg has the capacity to grasp this finitude and ‘become who one is’.

Re-Thinking IPC – Should We Re-think Our Attitudes Towards Property and Ownership in the Wake of Internet I.P. Crime?

In the wake of such technical developments as digital downloads, cloud services and online streaming, we must re-examine what it means to own property. Peer-2-Peer file sharing amongst a generation of young people has raised some awkward questions, such as: what do we actually own? If I buy something do I own it in perpetuity? Do I therefore have to right to resell it and lend it as I would do with other items of property? How should the law deal with copyright infringement and the theft of intangible property? It must be stressed that there are many other forms of intellectual property crime (IPC) (such as stealing industrial secrets for example), but this chapter will focus upon the type associated with file-sharing websites such as The Pirate Bay. It will also offer possible solutions to the problem and suggest ways to manage the situation whilst critiquing previous approaches to the control of intellectual property. This chapter revisits the findings and conclusions drawn from previous research undertaken in ‘A Critical Engagement with Piratical Opinion’ (Noble 2011) and updates the debate surrounding Intellectual Property.