CYBERCRIME AND THE CULTURE OF FEAR

Abstract

This article maps out the conceptual origins of cybercrime in social science fiction and other ‘faction’ genres to explore the relationship between rhetoric and reality in the production of knowledge about it. It goes on to illustrate how the reporting of dystopic narratives about life in networked worlds shapes public reactions to technological change. Reactions which heighten the culture of fear about cybercrime, which in turn, shapes public expectations of online risk, the formation of law and the subsequent interpretation of justice. Finally, the article identifies and responds to the various mythologies that are currently circulating about cybercrime before identifying the various tensions in the production of criminological knowledge about it that contribute to sustaining those mythologies.

Keywords:

• cybercrime
• cyberpunk
• culture of fear
• internet myths
• reassurance gap
• science fiction

Notes

Not to be confused with Gibson's 1986 book of his short stories called Burning Chrome, though the short story is reproduced at p. 176.

There exist a number of competing claims over the origination of the various cyber-concepts, which is not surprising since there was much discussion about them during the 1980s and 1990s because they excited authors, readers and other participants in the discourse. Regardless of the actual attribution, the main point here is to identify the cultural formations and the conceptual links that were made between them.

The examples of books and films listed here are intended to be illustrative and not exhaustive, and neither is the choice of media. Print media includes novels, short story anthologies, poetry, graphic novels or comics, conceptual design, non-fiction or critical studies. Audiovisual media includes cyberpunk films, films with cyberpunk elements, documentary films, TV series, Japanese anime, rock bands, computer and video games, online computer games. Choices of particular media can become very personal and tastes will vary. The object of the exercise is to draw conclusions of types that illustrate change. For a very handy index of science fiction books and magazines see The Locus Index to Science Fiction. Available at: http://www.locusmag.com/index/ (30 January 2008).

Writer Bruce Bethke is accredited with coining the word ‘Cyberpunk’ in his 1980 story ‘Cyberpunk’, see Bethke (1997).

Neal Stephenson (1992) refers to the virtual environment as the Metaverse.

Central to this theory is the contention that the same technologies which create the crimes can also be used to mediate them in policing and prevention (see further Wall 2007, Chapters 8 and 9).

H. G. Wells' better known science fiction novels are The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), The First Men in the Moon (1901).

‘Governance through crime’ is a criminological discourse that locks into the work of Jonathan Simon (2007) and David Garland (2001).

I did not look beyond the first 100 hits. Most of the remaining 55 were also reproductions of only a few sources that used the term.

Gazprom is the largest Russian business and also the main extractor of natural gas in the world.

See further, www.soca.gov.uk. ‘The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) is an Executive Non-Departmental Public Body sponsored by, but operationally independent from, the Home Office. The Agency has been formed from the amalgamation of the National Crime Squad (NCS), National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), that part of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) dealing with drug trafficking and associated criminal finance and a part of UK Immigration dealing with organised immigration crime (UKIS). SOCA is an intelligence-led agency with law enforcement powers and harm reduction responsibilities. Harm in this context is the damage caused to people and communities by serious organised crime’.

It must be noted, however, that pre-disintermediated news sources were the subject of criticism for the opposite reasons – that the editors exercised too much control and in so doing applied their own value systems!