Hypercrime: The New Geometry Of Harm

386 Pages·2007·1.377 MB·English

by  Michael McGuire

Hypercrime
This book presents a new approach towards the interfaces between tech-
nology, contemporary crime and regulation. It argues that the conclusion
adopted by most criminal justice practitioners and criminologists since the
1990s – that a distinct field of policy and theory referred to as ‘cybercrime’
has emerged – is flawed on both empirical and theoretical grounds. Not only
is this a construction which depends upon a plethora of dubious statistics, it
understates the role of State and corporate actors in the production of crimes
online. Worse, this ‘cybercrime paradigm’ offers indirect justification for the
increasing acquisition of new powers by governments, so furthering what has
elsewhere been characterised as the ‘control society’.
Offering a spatial analysis of harms effected by technology, this book situ-
ates contemporary crime and its control within longer term historical devel-
opments which serve to extend the human body. Characterising the new
geometries of social interaction that result in terms of a process referred to
as ‘hyperspatialisation’, the book argues that a concept of hypercrime
becomes an equally plausible interpretation of the effect of technologies
which ‘compress’ distance – most obviously the internet or the mobile phone
system. Hypercriminalities emerge from a hyperspatial world by way of
what McLuhan once called its ‘allatonceness’ – where the (real) possibilities
of ever present, remote harms combine with inflated perceptions of their
danger. In such a world not only do credit card frauds, online predators
or viruses threaten to harm us, so too do the measures that we create to
control them.
Dr Michael McGuire teaches in the Department of Applied Social Studies at
London Metropolitan University.

Hypercrime
The new geometry of harm
Michael McGuire
First published 2007
by Routledge-Cavendish
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge-Cavendish
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
A GlassHouse book
Routledge-Cavendish is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2007 Michael McGuire
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
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
McGuire, Michael, Dr.
Hypercrime : the new geometry of harm / by Michael McGuire. –
1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978–1–904385–53–0 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 1–904385–53–2 (pbk.)
ISBN-13: 978–1–904385–93–6 (hardback)
ISBN-10: 1–904385–93–1 (hardback)
[etc.]
1. Computer crimes. 2. Cyberspace–Social aspects.
3. Cyberspace–Government policy. 4. Criminology. I. Title.
HV6773.M384 2007
3664.16′8–dc22 2007026858
ISBN 0-203-93952-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 1–904385–53–2 (pbk)
ISBN10: 1–904385–93–1 (hbk)
eISBN10: 0–203–93952–2 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–1–904385–53–0 (pbk)
ISBM13: 978–1–904385–93–6 (hbk)
eISBN13: 978–0–203–93952–9 (ebk)
Contents
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
Crime, ‘cybercrime’ and hypercrime 1
Harm in hyperspace 8
Methods and approaches 9
Outline 12
1 Crime and space 14
Space, time and crime 15
The consensual hallucinations of a ‘cyberspace’ 21
Conceptions of space 23
From space to hyperspace 24
Three outcomes 28
Psychologies of hyperspatialisation: exhilaration, paranoia and
schizophrenia 31
Crime and space 34
Crime and harm 35
Distance, incursion and harm 38
Spatial orderings of harm 39
Qualifications 41
2 The making of hypercrime 44
The origins of the hyperspatial 45
Language and the hypercriminal – deception and rumour 47
Extending the compressive power of language 49
Writing and crime 49
vi Contents
The representation of value: spatial complexification and
monetary systems 53
Transport networks and speed 55
Communication technology and hyperspatialisation – post
and telegraphy 57
Early telecommunication systems and crime 59
The Victorian internet 60
Deviance and control on the Victorian internet 61
Representation, code and control in telegraphy 63
Connecting space further – the telephone 66
Early telephone crime 67
Telephone crime: two issues of control 69
The advent of computing 73
Hyperlinks, hypertext and the populating of hyperspace 74
Making hyperspace invisible 76
Hypercrime and computers 77
3 Proximity 0: Body space 79
The hyperspatialisation of bodily harm: bodies and
distributed bodies 80
The hyperspatialisation of bodily destruction – some trends
and examples 85
Killing me softly 88
Killing symbioses 91
Collective killing in hyperspace 94
The deadly power of representation 95
Voluntary death 97
Hyperspatialisation and its accidents: indirect
killing effects 100
Hyperspatial death – folk devils and guilty parties 103
Damaging incursion – violence towards the body 103
Sexual abuse in hyperspace 103
‘Happy slapping’ 108
Psychological violence in hyperspace 109
Harassment, stalking and bullying 109
Hate crime 112
Voyeurism: indirect experiences of killing
and violence 114
Legitimate and illegitimate voyeurisms 117
Violence as leisure in hyperspace 120
Contents vii
Beyond psychological harm: capacity reduction and the
distributed body 122
Harming the cyborg’s body 124
4 Proximity 1: Property space 127
Hyperspace and illicit acquisition 128
Value and the market 129
Hyperspatialised economies and globalisation 132
Hyperspatialised money and liquid targets 133
Further targets – services and social values 135
Information as a target for theft 137
Hyperspatialised theft – how to access a property space 139
Open doors in hyperspace 142
Force as a strategy for hyperspatialised theft 142
Extortion: extensions to force 143
Blackmail and threats 144
Deception as a strategy for theft in hyperspace 144
Online fraud 146
Key duplication 147
Identification as a key 148
Identification and identity 149
Methods of identification fraud 150
Creating and altering identification 150
Stealing identification keys (I) – scavenging 152
Stealing identification keys (II) – manipulating guardians 152
Stealing identification keys (III) – utilising technology 153
The ‘theft’ of identity: critical reflections (I) – problems
with data 155
The ‘theft’ of identity: critical reflections (II) – the
identity economy 157
The identity economy: who guards the guardians? 159
Identity theft – the making of a modern mythology 161
Intellectual property: target and access 163
File wars 164
The aftermath: darknets and the new digital underground? 165
5 Proximity 2: Local space 167
Local environments 168
Local spaces: their features and their value 171
viii Contents
The hyperspatialisation of locality 174
Local and glocal 179
Violating local spaces 180
Harms to our homes – technology and family life 182
Harms to our homes – the invasion of domestic space 185
Sustenance gathering harms – work and shopping 187
Destructions and degradations of work 189
The hyperspatialisation of workplace control 191
Abuse by staff 193
Shopping and harms 194
Degradations to local trading relations 195
Incursive harms in trading – loyalty and respect 196
Consumption and environmental harms 201
Information pollution: vandalism and littering 202
The commodification of community 203
6 Proximity 3: Global space 205
Global spaces – some conceptions 206
Traditional global actors: harm and culpability 209
Hyperspatialising global spaces and their actors 212
Anarchy in IT: hacking, identity groups and the web 216
Arming for struggle in hyperspace (I): communicative power 217
Arming for struggle in hyperspace (II): representational
power 221
The hyperspatialisation of global harms 222
Spatial control: war and cyberterror – destructive incursion at
the global level 224
War (II): destructive incursion by network – ‘cyberwar’? 226
Netwar and protest 228
Wars between identities 230
Business and governance – old symbiosis or new spatial tensions? 231
Public v private hyperspaces 234
Hyperspace and the representation of presence: visibility and
invisibility 236
The transformation of global harm 239
7 Shaping space: The regulatory ecologies of hyperspace 241
Codes, rules and representations 243
Regulatory geometries and rule-based ecologies 245
Contents ix
Regulation in space and hyperspace: computers and
exceptionlessness rules 249
Regulatory ecology and rule diagrammatics 251
Borders, psychological boundaries and nomadic space 254
Transjurisdictionality and borders in agency 256
Temporal boundaries and jurisdiction 258
Formal and visible (I): regulation of movement and the
legislative landscape 260
Formal and visible (II): networked policing, uberpresent
security 265
Formal invisible control (I): filtration 271
Formal invisible control (II): footprints, hunting and traces 274
Invisible informal – regulation by format 276
Visible/invisible informal shaping – statutory control and
self-regulation 278
Limited self-regulation 278
Purity police – the IWF and unaccountable regulatory practice 281
Online community regulation – public executions and wizard
dictators 284
End space: Afterword 289
Allatonceness – living in the hyperspatial 291
Boundaries: crime and hypercrime, control and hypercontrol 292
Whither cybercrime? Wherefore hypercrime? 294
Notes 299
Bibliography 301
Index 367