SUBTEXT AND ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND FOR THE COURSE:

Cybercrime, Cyberterrorism, and Digital Law Enforcement
NYLS CRI150 SPRING 2009
Professor K. A. Taipale (bio) (contact)

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Jump Menu: Select Class Unit Unit 00: Course Abstract/Home Page Unit 01: Overview: What is Cybercrime? Unit 02: Computer Intusion and Attack (Unauthorized Access) Unit 03: Computer Viruses, Time Bombs, Trojans, Malicious Code (Malware) Unit 04: Online Fraud and Identity Theft, Intellectual Proerty Theft; Virtual Crime Unit 05: Online Vice: Gambling; Pornography; Child Exploitation Unit 06: International Aspects and Jurisdiction Unit 07: Infrastructure and Information Security; Risk Management Unit 08: Investigating Cybercrime: Digital Evidence and Computer Forensics Unit 09: Interception, Search and Seizure, and Surveillance Unit 10: Information Warfare, Cyberterrorism, and Hacktivism Unit 11: Terrorism, Radicalization, and The War of Ideas Unit 12: Trade Secret Theft and Economic Espionage Unit 13: National Security Unit 14: Case Study: CALEA, VoIP ---------- Research Paper Information Useful Links for Defining Technical Terms Course SUBTEXT

SUBTEXT AND ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND FOR THE COURSE:

The subtext of this course (and, the primary thing worth understanding) is how the emergence of advanced information societies challenges certain existing theories of criminal justice and the underlying constructs of social control and individual freedom.

In particular, this course recognizes and examines how technology is helping accelerate the ongoing transformation of modern information-based societies from a notional Beccarian ("punishment") model of social order based on accountability for deviant actions after they occur, [see Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment (1764) below], first, to a Foucauldian ("disciplinary") model based on authorization, preemption, and general social compliance through ubiquitous preventative surveillance and control through system constraints, [see Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1975, Alan Sheridan, tr., 1977, 1995) below], and, ultimately, to a complex Deleuzian ("control") model based increasingly on seduction and enticement through manipulation of opportunity and desire rather than just coercion or constraint, [see Gilles Deleuze, Postscript to the Societies of Control, L'Autre Journal, No. 1 (May 1990 below]).

In this emergent model, security is not achieved primarily by policing through arrest and prosecution but by risk management through surveillance, information exchange, auditing, communication, and classification.

See The Eye of God: The Social Construction of Omniveillance (The Surveillance Society).

Suggested optional background reading includes:

Cesare Beccaria, ON CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (1764) (ISBN:0915145979) (the Enlightment and criminal law reform).

Jeremy Bentham, THE PANOPTICON LETTERS (1787) (setting out a plan of construction and management for prisons and other institutional buildings in which the central authority can observe all prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not. Control is then maintained through the mental uncertainty that in itself becomes a crucial instrument of discipline). See also, Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham) (ISBN:0198205163).

John Austin, THE PROVIDENCE OF JURISPRUDENCE DETERMINED (1832) (ISBN:0521447569) ("positive laws" versus moral principles).

Franz Kafka, THE TRIAL (1925) (ISBN:0805209999) (Joseph K. is arrested, tried and executed for an unspecified crime) (subtext examines the clash of traditional law based on morality with modern law based on rules).

B. Traven, DAS TOTENSCHIFF (1926); THE DEATH SHIP (tr. 1934) (ISBN:1556521103) (Kafkaesque journey of American sailor who has lost his identity papers):

Official: “You ought to have some papers to show who you are.”
Protagonist: “I do not need any papers. I know who I am.”
Official: “Maybe so. But others are also interested in who you are.”

George Orwell, NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949) (ISBN:0899663680) (depicts a totalitarian society of the future, ruled by an omnipotent dictator called Big Brother. In this society, called Oceania, people’s thoughts and actions are continuously monitored.  The term Big Brother has subsequently been used to refer to any ruler or government that invades the privacy of its citizens).

Jacques Ellul, THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY (1964) (ISBN:0394703901) (postulating that human activity has been technicized -- rendered efficient -- and, thus, diminished in the process).

John Rawls, A THEORY OF JUSTICE (1971) (ISBN:0674000781) (justice as fairness, "veil of ignorance", the liberty principle, and the difference principle) (See also, Rawls, JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS: A Restatement (2001) (ISBN:0674005112).

Michel Foucault, DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH: THE BIRTH OF THE PRISON (1975) (ISBN:0679752552) (arguing that the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul. Foucault invokes Bentham's panopticon as metaphor for the whole of modern "disciplinary" societies in which control is maintained through pervasive inclinations to observe and normalize).

David Burnham, THE RISE OF THE COMPUTER STATE (1983) (ISBN:0394514378) (early examiniation of the consequences of a modern computerized state in which information is easily aggregated and maintained by large bureaucracies).

BRAZIL (MCA-Universal 1985) (Terry Gilliam, dir.) (ASIN:0780022181) (Kafka meets Monty Python in a complex story reflecting on industrialization, terrorism, government control and bureaucracy, and technology gone wrong. A minor bureaucrat in a retro-future dystopia overcome by bureaucratic inefficiency tries to correct an administrative error and himself becomes an enemy of the state):

Protagonist: “Do you want to see my papers?”
Official: “No need, sir”
Protagonist: “But I could be anyone.”
Official: “No you couldn’t, sir, this is [the Ministry of] Information Retrieval.”

Gilles Deleuze, Postscript on Control Societies, L'Autre Journal, No. 1 (May 1990) (tranlated and reprinted in CTRL [SPACE] infra).

David Lyon, THE ELECTRONIC EYE (1994) (ISBN:0816625158) (how electronic surveillance orders society).

David Brin, THE TRANSPARENT SOCIETY (1998) (ISBN:0738201448) (arguing for "reciprical transparency," not secrecy, to counter ubiquitous surveillance technology).

Stephen M. Feldman, AMERICAN LEGAL THOUGHT FROM PREMODERNISM TO POSTMODERNISM (2000) (ISBN:0195109678) (tracing the evolution of American legal thought).

MINORITY REPORT (20th Century Fox 2002) (Steven Spielberg, dir.) (ASIN:B00005JL78) ("precogs" predict who will commit murder in the future thus allowing for their preemptive arrest).

CTRL [SPACE]: RHETORIC OF SURVEILLANCE FROM BENTHAM TO BIG BROTHER (Thomas Y. Levin, et al., eds., MIT Press, 2002) (ISBN:0262621657) (CTRL [SPACE] is a catalog of surveillance art, containing images and essays relating to surveillance. The catalog includes essays by philosophers Michel Foucault (The Eye of Power: A Conversation with Jean-Pierre Barou and Michelle Perrot), Paul Virilio (The Visual Crash), Jean Baudrillard (Telemorphosis), Gilles Deleuze (Postscript on Control Societies), Victor Burgin, and Slavoj Zizek, among others. CTRL [SPACE] also includes images from many well-known, and lesser known, Western artists in the emerging genre of surveillance art, including Sophie Calle, Diller + Scofidio, Dan Graham, Pierre Huyghe, Michael Klier, Rem Koolhaas, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Thomas Ruff, Julia Scher, Andy Warhol and Peter Weibel, among others.)

David Lyon, SURVEILLANCE AS SOCIAL SORTING (2003) (ISBN:0415278732) (the politics and ethics of categorization; surveillance as a means of creating and maintaining social differences by verifying identities and assessing risk).

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, CONTROL AND FREEDOM (2006) (ISBN:0262033321) (exploring the paradoxical narratives of control and freedom in a networked world).

Registered Students login to NYLS Portal for updated Reading Assignments.

Jump Menu: Select Class Unit Unit 00: Course Abstract/Home Page Unit 01: Overview: What is Cybercrime? Unit 02: Computer Intusion and Attack (Unauthorized Access) Unit 03: Computer Viruses, Time Bombs, Trojans, Malicious Code (Malware) Unit 04: Online Fraud and Identity Theft, Intellectual Proerty Theft; Virtual Crime Unit 05: Online Vice: Gambling; Pornography; Child Exploitation Unit 06: International Aspects and Jurisdiction Unit 07: Infrastructure and Information Security; Risk Management Unit 08: Investigating Cybercrime: Digital Evidence and Computer Forensics Unit 09: Interception, Search and Seizure, and Surveillance Unit 10: Information Warfare, Cyberterrorism, and Hacktivism Unit 11: Terrorism, Radicalization, and The War of Ideas Unit 12: Trade Secret Theft and Economic Espionage Unit 13: National Security Unit 14: Case Study: CALEA, VoIP ---------- Research Paper Information Useful Links for Defining Technical Terms Course Subtext

Course Outline/Class Units

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1. Overview, What is Cybercrime?
2. Computer Intrusions and Attacks (Unauthorized Access)
3. Computer Viruses, Time Bombs, Trojans, Malicious Code (Malware)
4. Online Fraud and Identity Theft; Intellectual Property Theft; Virtual Crime
5. Online Vice: Gambling; Pornography; Child Exploitation
6. International Aspects and Jurisdiction
7. Infrastructure and Information Security; Risk Management
8. Investigating Cybercrime: Digital Evidence and Computer Forensics
9. Interception, Search and Seizure, and Surveillance
10. Information Warfare, Cyberterrorism, and Hacktivism
11. Terrorism, Radicalization, and The War of Ideas
12. Trade Secret Theft and Economic Espionage
13. National Security
14. Case Study: CALEA, VoIP

Course Information

1. PAPER RESEARCH
2. USEFUL LINKS FOR DEFINING TECHNICAL TERMS
3. COURSE SUBTEXT AND OPTIONAL BACKGROUND MATERIAL

Registered Students login to NYLS Portal for updated Reading Assignments.