Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age

• How has the Internet transformed criminal behaviour?
• What is different about cybercrime compared with traditional criminal activity?
• What new criminal opportunities have arisen?
• How might cybercrime impact on public security?

In this exciting new text, David Wall carefully examines these and other important issues. He discusses what is known about cybercrime, disentangling the rhetoric of risk assessment from its reality. Looking at the full range of cybercrime, he shows how the increase in personal computing power available within a globalized communications network has impacted on the nature and response to criminal activities.

Drawing upon empirical research findings and multidisciplinary sources he goes on to argue that we are beginning to experience a new generation of automated cybercrimes, which are almost completely mediated by networked technologies that are themselves converging. We have now entered the world of low-impact, multiple victim crimes in which bank robbers, for example, no longer have to meticulously plan the theft of millions of dollars.

New technological capabilities at their disposal now mean that one person can now effectively commit millions of robberies of $1 each. Against this background, he scrutinizes the regulatory challenges that cybercrime poses for the criminal (and civil) justice processes, at both the national and the international levels. This book offers the most comprehensive, and intellectually robust, account of cybercrime currently available.